Sustaining 200 Million Shoppers Through a Replatform: A Contentful Migration for Ibotta
Ibotta’s Performance Network reaches over 200 million consumers, and the replatform to Contentful had to happen without the promotions stopping. We worked inside their team rather than beside it — architecture, platform guidance and the troubleshooting that keeps a migration moving.
The work
“Wow! We are so thankful and impressed with your ability to flex fast and support this project.”
The Challenge: A Replatform in the Revenue Path
Ibotta’s Performance Network reaches more than 200 million consumers and sits directly in the revenue path — brands buying access to shoppers, shoppers earning cash back — so the replatform had to happen without the promotions ever stopping. There is no quiet quarter in performance marketing, and a content freeze is lost revenue for the brands on the other side of it.
The Strategy: Inside the Team, for Exactly as Long as Needed
Worked inside Ibotta’s team rather than delivering to it, because what they needed was a specific depth for a bounded period.
- Architecture and platform guidance through the migration. Contentful decisions that are hard to reverse later, and content modeling built to serve years of campaigns.
- Troubleshooting the class of problem that stops a migration for a week. The kind no one solves quickly unless they have seen it before.
- Workflows sized to the cadence the network runs at. Built for Ibotta’s marketers to operate rather than for an agency to run on their behalf.
The Outcomes: The Network Never Stopped, the Capability Stayed
The network never stopped, and the capability stayed.
- Growth | Promotions turning brand spend into real-world sales, running throughout the replatform | No content freeze on a platform that cannot afford one
- Engagement | Content workflows Ibotta’s own team owns | An engagement built to leave capability behind rather than become a dependency
The detail
The constraint the migration had to work inside
- The platform sits directly in the revenue path. Brands buy access to shoppers and shoppers earn cash back — an average of $261 a year each. Every promotion is a transaction between the two, and the content platform is where those promotions are assembled and published.
- There is no quiet quarter in performance marketing. A content freeze is not an inconvenience, it is lost revenue for the brands on the other side of it. The migration could not pause the network.
- Ibotta already had the strategy and the team. What a replatform demands on top of that is a specific and temporary depth: architecture decisions that are hard to reverse later, content modeling that has to serve years of campaigns, and the class of platform problem that stops a migration for a week if no one in the room has seen it before.
- Hiring for that is the wrong answer. The need is intense, it is bounded, and it disappears when the migration lands. Recruiting against it means paying a permanent cost for a temporary problem.
How it was done
- Inside the team, not delivering to it. Architecture and platform guidance through the replatform, troubleshooting problems as they surfaced, and content workflows built for the cadence the network actually runs at.
- Responding to the migration rather than to the plan. Ibotta’s own word for it was flexing fast — reacting to what the work turned up rather than to what a document written months earlier had predicted.
- The measure is whether their team moves faster. That is the test for this kind of engagement, and it is a different test from whether a deliverable arrived on the date beside it.
What was left behind
- Workflows Ibotta’s own team owns. The promotions that turn brand spend into real-world sales run on content workflows that do not need us.
- Capability, not a dependency. The engagement was never meant to become one. Leaving the capability behind was the point of the form it took.
Replatform without downtime questions
Can a content platform be replaced without a content freeze?
It has to be, when the platform sits in the revenue path. Ibotta’s Performance Network reaches more than 200 million consumers, and every promotion is a transaction between a brand and a shopper — a freeze is lost revenue for the brands on the other side of it. The replatform to Contentful ran with the network publishing throughout.
When should a team bring in outside platform expertise?
When the need is deep, bounded and temporary. A replatform demands architecture decisions that are hard to reverse, content modeling that has to serve years of campaigns, and the class of platform problem that stops a migration for a week if no one in the room has seen it before. Hiring against that means a permanent cost for a temporary problem.
What is an embedded agency engagement?
Outside expertise working inside the client’s own team. For Ibotta it meant architecture and platform guidance through the replatform, troubleshooting problems as they surfaced, and content workflows built for the cadence the network actually runs at — responding to what the migration turned up rather than to what a document written months earlier predicted. Ibotta’s own word for it was flexing fast.
How do you avoid agency dependency after a CMS replatform?
Build the engagement to leave capability behind. The Ibotta replatform by Pare & Co ended with content workflows Ibotta’s own team owns and runs without us — and a network that never stopped publishing while the platform under it changed. The handoff was the point, not an exit clause.
Client leadership
Doug Sisko
Doug Sisko’s specialty is growth and conversion strategy. He has led replatforms for consumer companies where traffic and revenue continue through the migration.