Targeting the friction—and market—of digital media payments

Tipalti is building a presence at the intersection of electronic media and advertising, where a different kind of 'faster payment' movement is taking hold.

"In performance marketing, all advertisers need to get paid when the conversion or sale occurs," said Brett Grow, CEO of LinkTrust, a company that tracks digital marketing performance.

LinkTrust just added Tipalti's payment gateway to its mix of services for companies that use digital media. That includes advertisers, referral companies and publishers. The combined workflow includes marketing and payments, with more than 190 countries, six different payment methods and 120 currencies available in the same location.

"The pain point for the [digital advertising market] is the payment experience," said Rob Israch, chief marketing officer at Tipalti. "You have to deliver that seamlessly."

LinkTrust and Tipalti are targeting an emerging advertising ecosystem in which payments are based on tangible results such as successful referrals or conversions. LinkTrust, which tracks and analyzes marketing campaigns and is expanding to include CRM, social networking content and other consumer relationship technology, contends relationships in this new advertising and marketing ecosystem can quickly end based on the absence of swift and accurate payments.

"The clients have had to go to Quickbooks of other payment platforms, or cut checks manually," Grow said. "This new [Tipalti] partnership alleviates that. The software brings up the commission report, and the payment can be made by the click of a button."

The companies increasingly include small to medium sized businesses and e-commerce startups that rely on electronic lead generation and marketing that's both targeted and dynamic. "We want to create a place where they can go in and actually see their entire invoice, performance history and payment method," Israch said.

Tipalti's overall strategy over the past few years has been to provide payment, tax forms, compliance and other services for the expanding freelancer-based economy. As companies employ more contract workers, payroll becomes more complex, covering different methods and geographies. Tipalti's cloud-based integration with NetSuite's ERP technology allows payment processing and reconciliation for multiple payment types.

Tipalti's first foray into advertising payments came in 2013 when it added payments function and tracking to Cake Marketing's digital marketing dashboard. Tipalti later partnered with digital media company Paladin to power payments to video content creators. Most recently, Tipalti received a new round of investment to add new audiences for its mix of mass-payment technology.

"There's opportunity in the ad tech space," Israch said. "There are a lot of online marketplaces, e-commerce companies and increasingly manufacturing and retail services companies. It runs the gamut."

All businesses, but particularly smaller businesses, live on cash flow and anything that can be done to speed remittance and reduce payment friction in B-to-B transactions is a good thing, according to Thad Peterson, a senior analyst at Aite Group.

"Payments automation partnerships like Tipalti and LinkTrust are also a precursor to the infrastructure that will be needed for the Internet of Things to achieve its potential," Peterson said. "This is a great example of a payments organization adapting its offering to changes in the B-to-B space."