Affiliate Summits

This past week, two different types of gatherings took place for those in the affiliate / performance marketing world, one small, the other large, one in the middle of the country and the other in the city that founded the country. The first event contained some of the stronger names in the affiliate space at an invite only event, the other with ten times the amount of people and an even broader roster of affiliate powerhouses. More than half the attendees of the first event, CPA Empire Breakaway Summit, made their way straight from Denver, Colorado, to Affiliate Summit East in Boston, Massachusetts, and despite the challenging economic environment, or perhaps because of it, both shows found themselves well attended and full of activity. CPA Empire’s show was a much more intimate affair, a gathering of fewer than two hundred with enough food and entertainment thrown at its attendees to make anyone who doesn’t work with the company, whose big announcement was the rebranding of the company to Affiliate.com, to start working together in time for next year’s event. Affiliate Summit offers no shortage  of networking and entertainment as well, but as it’s not a client summit, less of a common bond exists, but the only downside comes from having been spoiled by the free entertainment in Denver.

We had the opportunity to attend both, and presented below we give our take on some of the consistent themes.

• Early is the new late – So often at shows, attendees roll-up to registration well after the first events have kicked off. Affiliate Summit, for example, generally starts on a Sunday afternoon with the first speaking sessions taking place on that following Monday. To encourage attendance, Affiliate Summit begins with their "Meat Market," a hyper networking event that puts all participating companies on equal footing – no booths, only table tops. This year, instead of people showing up just in time for the networking event, or as often happens in the past, showing up to catch the tail end of it, people began getting in the day before, using the time not to check out the town but to have meetings with existing clients. The shows offer such an abundance of meeting opportunities that instead of risking not getting to certain people, they make sure to get to them ahead of time.

• International – Not that the US market has peaked, but there has a been a real sea of change, both literally and figuratively. The International market is far from mature, but companies are starting to make some large amounts of money in some of the usual suspects – ringtones and financial services. While it sounds appealing to get paid in euros or pounds with the current exchange rates, a company interested in international has some real questions to ask, the first being whether to go direct to the advertiser or work through an advertiser (who will pay in local dollars). The argument for either often parallels a similar discussion when deciding whether to work with a network on domestic offers; except with an international offer there is an additional layer of management that comes from the culture difference and time difference. The same culture differences come out when trying to acquire traffic to promote international offers. The display guys have it easy, as they simply load up a creative and show it for a given country. Email is a little more difficult, although if given the language to use by the advertiser, not terribly difficult. The guys in search have it the hardest, as it requires some challenges that we take for granted when advertising in English – from keywords to copy and not just words but also the nuances, such as football versus soccer for English.
• Diversification – Just looking at the crowd that goes to the shows, will provide an insight into the ever-changing nature of the industry, and here we think mainly to the rise in alternative sources of traffic. At both shows, a not-insignificant number of people couldn’t legally participate in many of the festivities, or in the case of Affiliate Summit, even go to the show. Social media has spawned a whole new generation of affiliate marketers, ones whose inherent understanding of the platforms have made them especially adept and the best way to advertise. Historically, those who focused one media type didn’t head over to another, but a major trend has companies actively working on becoming more versatile, from individual affiliates actively expanding how they get traffic to larger companies hiring specific talent or even acquiring other companies with that strength. In years past, there might not have been social media, but there was always more than one means to acquiring traffic and promoting offers; those who had a certain niche often didn’t see the need to broaden their tool set, but that attitude seems to have shifted.
• Mobile consolidation – Last year, people felt definite pressure in the ringtone space, but it still allowed for a broad number of players to make money; this year, while ringtone and other mobile subscription offers still do well in the grand scheme, the number of people making money on them has decreased and the gap between those who know and those who don’t has increased. The changes that have occurred in the space don’t look to slow as carriers are expected to continue waffling on their support for aggregators, and Google’s policy of supporting the ever-increasing crushing of anyone who tries to promote these offers. That of course won’t mean some won’t excel, but it highlights the divide between those trying and those few who find a way to make it work.
• All about the people – At both shows, you had a mix of those who had worked in the space for years and those who just began; even if the crowd only existed of the "old-timers", it would still yield value, because of the learnings that take place in between the shows. Shows tend to serve two purposes; either they act as the platform for new product unveiling or the central gathering spot, the latter being the dominant value-add of these shows. New offers come out, new companies with new products, but Internet development cycles in the performance marketing space don’t lend themselves to events whose sole focus is that. Whether new or old to the space, and despite its virtual nature, it’s always important to show face and to cultivate relationships, as that’s where the money is, and if it isn’t, it will be.