New Performance Levers: When Conversion Happens Beyond Ads

Meeting with Samir Slimani, Head of Performance Marketing at WPP Media France.

As paid media becomes increasingly complex (regulatory pressure, fragmentation of usage, tracking volatility, cost inflation), performance is no longer limited to simply "optimizing bids on a platform." It is also built through hybrid levers—sometimes underestimated—that directly bridge recommendation, conversation, and transaction: affiliation, ROI-oriented influencer marketing, CRM, messaging, content-to-commerce, drive-to-store, social commerce, and now, new environments like AI interfaces. 

WPP Media: When we speak of "new performance levers," what are we really talking about in 2026?

Samir Slimani: Many associate "performance" solely with platforms. That’s part of the game, but not the whole story. Other levers often sit between media, product, content, and CRM: affiliation¹, performance influence (including gifting² and creator affiliation), emailing, SMS, RCS³, conversational channels like WhatsApp, native newsletter ads, content-to-commerce⁴, drive-to-store, and TikTok Shop with AI as an accelerator.

These levers share a common trait: they bridge the gap between intention and action, sometimes bypassing the traditional "impression → click → site → purchase" model. They are also highly useful when brands have to navigate constraints regarding consent, measurement, or access to audiences that have become harder to capture solely via classic paid media.

To me, the topic of "new performance levers" is essentially: how do we recreate incrementality⁵, conversion, and brand preference when customer journeys are fragmented and historical mechanisms are running out of steam?

WPP Media: Why are we seeing a resurgence of affiliation in acquisition strategies?

Samir Slimani: Because affiliation has become a rational answer to three very concrete problems.

First problem: Profitability. Affiliation remains one of the few channels natively oriented towards "pay for performance" (CPA, CPL, CPO), with a variable cost logic and shared risk. In a context where pressure on margins is increasing, advertisers are reevaluating models where media spend is more directly correlated to a result.

Second problem: The diversity of touchpoints. Modern affiliation is no longer just a network of cashback sites and comparators. It has expanded to creators, media outlets, communities, recommendation environments, and much less linear journeys.

Third problem: Governance and incrementality. Affiliation long suffered from a bias: part of the value captured was sometimes "already acquired" (e.g., a coupon used by a buyer who had already decided to purchase). The market has matured: advertisers now demand attribution rules, partner segmentation, test plans, and a contribution-based view. This is where the agency brings value: structuring a program, selecting the right partners, designing the mechanics, securing tracking, and managing for incrementality, not just volume.

WPP Media: Influencer marketing is often perceived as a branding lever. How does it become a measurable performance lever?

Samir Slimani: Influencer marketing has reached maturity. It is now a bridge between emotion and performance. The French market produces a massive volume of content: over 322,000 brand mentions made by 47,200 creators in one year, generating 27.6 billion views and 1.29 billion engagements. Crucially, only a minority of this content comes from commercial collaborations—about 15.5%. This means that "earned" and organic content remain dominant, and there is a major stake in intelligently activating recommendation rather than "forcing" it.

To make influence perform, we must stop managing it purely as a media buy and start managing it as a system for producing proof (UGC, demonstrations, reviews) and then distribution. Gifting strategies are a good example: industrialized via platforms, they allow for the activation of micro and nano creators at scale to obtain authentic content, which is then reused on other channels (e-commerce sites, CRM, ads, product pages).

The CPA (Performance Marketing Alliance) Influence Barometer—of which we are members alongside the UMICC (Union of Influence Professionals and Content Creators)—highlights a key point: micro-creators show higher engagement rates (e.g., 4.42% on Instagram and 6.21% on TikTok) compared to more massive profiles. In other words: for performance, the "right casting" is often more profitable than the "big name."

WPP Media’s role is to orchestrate all of this: content strategy, profile selection, mechanics (affiliation, codes, bundles, live shopping), usage rights, and above all, real measurement (business results, not just views and likes).

WPP Media: Email, SMS, RCS, WhatsApp… Why are CRM and conversational channels returning to the center of performance?

Samir Slimani: Because brands are rediscovering a simple truth: when attention is expensive, the most profitable asset is the direct relationship.

CRM and messaging channels have four structural advantages:

1. They rely on first-party data, offering better resilience against privacy changes.

2. They allow for real personalization based on history, context, and intent.

3. They accelerate conversion, particularly via scenarios: cart abandonment, back-in-stock, reactivation, post-purchase, cross-sell, appointment booking, drive-to-store.

4. They create a continuum with other levers. A concrete example: an influencer campaign generates content; this content becomes assets; these assets feed email and messaging sequences; and the whole system reinforces conversion.

Modern performance is often this ability to circulate a single "signal" (proof, product benefit, offer) across multiple touchpoints, rather than hoping one single channel will do it all.

WPP Media: Content-to-commerce and TikTok Shop are shaking up customer journeys. What does this change for brands?

Samir Slimani: It changes the conversion mechanics. We are no longer just "redirecting" to a product page; we are transforming content into a point of sale, or into an action trigger within a very short journey.

TikTok, for example, has become an intention machine in certain segments: discovery, consideration, proof, and sometimes transaction all within the same environment. The subject is no longer solely "getting visibility," but building a framework where content, creators, offers, catalogs, logistics, and measurement work together. Otherwise, TikTok Shop is just another shop window.

At WPP Media, the value lies in orchestration: defining the assortment, offer strategy, creator plan, affiliation mechanics, content reuse, and feedback loops (what sells, why, on which format, with which message).

WPP Media: Drive-to-store remains a blind spot in digital performance. Why?

Samir Slimani: Because many advertisers continue to manage digital as if the final objective were the click. However, for a retail brand or a network, the final objective is store traffic and offline sales.

The difficulty with drive-to-store is measurement. But the stakes are too high to ignore: brands need robust approaches combining geolocation signals, test plans, and contributional reading, with a pragmatic logic: manage for decision-making, not statistical perfection.

There is a useful parallel with the "Lidl stops TV ads" debate. The point isn't that "a medium is dying." The point is: regulation, usage habits, and measurement models are redefining trade-offs. Efficiency must be read within a system, not in a silo.

WPP Media: OpenAI is opening the door to advertising. What is the potential impact on performance and the ecosystem, particularly affiliation?

Samir Slimani: We must separate two topics.

The first is advertising within a conversational interface. OpenAI has established structuring principles: answers are not influenced by ads, ads are separate and clearly identified, conversations remain private regarding advertisers, and paid offers (Plus/Pro/Business/Enterprise) do not feature advertising. If these principles are upheld, we are seeing the emergence of a new territory: advertising formats "assisted" by conversation, where the user can interact with an ad just as they would with an advisor. This is very different from classic display.

The second is commerce and recommendation. ChatGPT is already, effectively, a decision-support interface. Tomorrow, if part of shopping journeys shifts towards conversational environments, the entire value chain moves: attribution, comparison, the role of publishers, the role of creators, and the position of platforms.

Regarding affiliation, there are two extreme scenarios. Either AI becomes an accelerator and redistributes value (by relying on affiliate content, creators, and publishers, with clarified attribution). Or it brutally "disintermediates," capturing the transaction and part of the value that historically remunerated the ecosystem.

The rational position is neither to fantasize nor to suffer: test early, frame the measurement, and secure governance. Our role as an agency is precisely there: helping brands explore these pilot grounds without losing sight of the fundamentals (transparency, compliance, incrementality, and real contribution).

WPP Media: There is a lot of talk about AI. Where is the real value, and where is the fantasy?

Samir Slimani: The real value is in industrialization: faster production speed, better signal exploitation, better testing capacity. The fantasy is believing that AI replaces judgment.

Even at WPP, the most coherent narrative is that of AI augmenting the collective, not AI "doing it instead". In a recent interview, WPP's CTO highlighted the massive adoption of WPP Open as an AI operating system to plan, create, and execute, while reminding us that creative judgment must remain human. This is exactly the balance to aim for in performance: automate the mechanics, keep the strategic intelligence and responsibility.

WPP Media: If you had to give a roadmap to brands for 2026, what would it be?

Samir Slimani: I would give five priorities, in order:

1. Redefine performance: Stop thinking in siloed channels. Performance is the capacity to create measurable demand and convert it across multiple surfaces.

2. Build a distribution "portfolio": Affiliation, creators, retail, conversational, PRM email, native. Objective: orchestrate channels that become loops, not a dependency on a single platform.

3. Measure in contribution, not just attribution: Otherwise, you cut what creates demand and overpay for what captures the end of the journey. Our ONE VIDEO approach illustrates this logic of unified management and homogeneous measurement, beyond isolated performance.

4. Treat content as a sales asset: UGC, creator content, newsletters, shoppability. Formats that reassure, prove, and sell.

5. Institutionalize Test & Learn: Whether on OpenAI, TikTok Shop, or retail, the advantage is not "being right," it is learning fast, documenting, and then industrializing.

At WPP Media, our role is precisely to orchestrate these new levers, secure measurement, and help brands gain a lead on terrains where the rules are being defined in real-time.

Glossary

¹ Affiliation: A model where a partner is remunerated based on performance (sale, lead, action).

² Gifting: Providing products or services to creators to generate authentic content, industrialized via platforms.

³ RCS: Rich Communication Services; a standard for enriched messaging (carousels, buttons, tracking) beyond SMS.

⁴ Content-to-commerce: Strategy where content becomes a direct trigger for conversion (shoppable content, live shopping).

⁵ Incrementality: Measurement of what is truly generated "in addition," versus volume that would have occurred without the specific lever.