Rakuten Advertising has launched Mirai, an AI agent designed to streamline affiliate campaign management for advertisers. The conversational tool enables advertisers to build and manage affiliate offers through natural language, reducing manual configuration and technical overhead. Mirai offers three core capabilities: analysing business objectives to recommend commission structures, automating complex backend configuration through real-time code generation, and processing natural language requests to handle details like promotional dates. The platform aims to apply strategic intelligence to routine affiliate programme management tasks. Currently available for affiliate offer creation and management, Mirai will expand to cover partner identification, recruitment, performance optimisation and reporting. Rakuten Advertising, a division of Rakuten Group, plans to develop additional capabilities in coming months.

Rakuten Advertising has partnered with Similarweb to help brands measure and optimise their visibility within large language models and AI-driven discovery channels. The collaboration integrates Similarweb's proprietary data into Rakuten Advertising's analytics platform, offering clients insights into how their content surfaces in generative AI environments. As AI reshapes consumer discovery, the partnership aims to provide brands with tools beyond traditional metrics to understand where purchasing decisions are influenced. Similarweb's data, built on real user behavioural insights, will enable Rakuten Advertising clients to develop more informed performance marketing strategies. The integration represents Rakuten Advertising's continued investment in helping clients navigate the evolving digital marketing landscape, providing transparency and competitive advantages in AI-driven brand discovery.