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Kaiserstraße 117/4, 1070 Wien
Austrian Link Building Servicesfabi@site-media.co.uk
Kaiserstraße 117/4, 1070 Wien
Agency partnership
A performance agency with an Austrian client, a German supply chain, and a quality problem they could not diagnose from outside the market.
Engagement brief
Unbranded delivery · approval rate
Client identity withheld. Figures are client-reported from the supported window.
At a glance
Engagement signals drawn from the same reporting cadence used with the client during the supported window.
Delivery
Unbranded
Partner brand only
Standard
Written
Shared acceptance criteria
Review cycle
Synced
Their PM tool & naming
Client contact
None
Agency-facing only
Situation
The agency is good at what it does and had held the account for several years. When the client expanded into Austria, the agency did what most would: extended the existing German supplier arrangement across the border and assumed the difference was administrative.
The client's in-house team, who are Austrian, started rejecting placements. Sometimes for reasons the agency could verify and sometimes for reasons that were difficult to argue with from another country: this publication is not taken seriously here, this article does not read like it was written by an Austrian, this regional title is not the one that matters in that state. Each rejection cost the agency a replacement and a small amount of credibility.
By the time they contacted us, the account team had lost confidence in their own recommendations, which is a worse position than having no supplier at all. They needed someone who could make that judgement reliably, and they needed it to arrive looking like their own work.
Programme architecture
Scrub the timeline to see how the work was sequenced. Each phase had a single commercial job.
Align
What qualifies, what is rejected, vertical limits and permitted German anchor forms — short and binding.
Approach
The brief was not complicated. Take the part that requires being in the market, deliver it unbranded, and never appear in front of the client.
Before any work started we agreed a written standard with their account lead: what qualifies, what is rejected outright, which verticals are off limits for this client, and which anchor forms are permitted in German. Short, shared, and used to settle every disagreement since.
Candidates now arrive as an unbranded document with our reading of each publication attached, including the reservations. Their account manager forwards it with their own cover note. The reasoning is what the client is really buying, and it travels with the recommendation.
The in-flight articles were being translated from German originals. We rewrote the ones worth saving and commissioned the rest from native writers working in this market, delivered to the agency for review before any publisher saw them.
Their project tool, their naming conventions, their reporting format, their approval cycle. We adapted because we are the supplier, and because a partner who makes you change your process is a partner who creates work.
More than once we have told them a target they set would mean placing somewhere we would refuse. Those conversations happen on a call with their team only. None of them has reached their client, which is the point of the arrangement.
Distribution intelligence
Placement mix and geographic intensity for this engagement. Interactive panels below mirror the reporting format we use with clients.
Coverage mix
Share of placements by channel. Hover or select a bar for the note.
Strict sector whitelist.
Before / after
Indexed movement from the client's own measurement over the supported window.
Regional intensity
Relative placement weight across Austrian federal states.
Wien80
Outcome
Reported by the partner agency from their own approval tracking. Figures below are theirs and are published with their permission once confirmed.
Approved at first review
89%
Proportion of shortlisted publications the client accepted without a second round.
Client-side rejections
−63%
Change in rejection rate compared with the quarter before the partnership started.
Onboarding to first delivery
6 weeks
From the first briefing call to the first approved shortlist in their hands.
Keyword ladder
Illustrative rank movement on priority terms. Select a row for the delta.
24 → 8−16
Figures above are client-reported from their own tracking over the supported window. We publish them as measured; we do not invent or inflate the source numbers.
In their words
We stopped defending placements we could not judge from Germany. The shortlists arrive ready to forward, and our client only sees work that already clears their bar.
Other engagements
Next step
Send us a live brief rather than a request for a deck. You will get back the shortlist and the reasoning in a format you could forward to your client this afternoon.
Vienna, Austria