In a few days, a great many of us will congregate in San Francisco for Ad:Tech. It used to be that going to Ad:Tech meant time off and drinking more than one should on “work nights.”

Last week’s DM Confidential included an article discussing the impacts of rapid growth, something many in our industry have experienced both in terms of revenues and people. With that growth, though, come many often-unanticipated challenges…

In an industry that at times appears to be completely anonymous and automated I find it rather relieving when I receive the “So and so has moved on to pursue other interests and so and so will be your new account rep” email. I tend to get so entirely caught up with…

While not directly connected to the topic discussed in this week’s Trends Report, the purchase of CDT by 180 Solutions touches upon a topic that I would wager many in this space have faced – growth. With the successes of 2004, many in our space found themselves rapidly hiring…

One of the most consistent trends in our industry over the past year revolves around companies in our space either selling a portion of their company for funding or buying another company for growth.

The first thing anybody generally does after selecting and paying for a technology to run their affiliate program is to have second thoughts. Did I buy the right software, ASP, or whatever?

A break from Direct marketing talk, The column may be about politics, or sex, religion, lost youth, lost love, or lost lives, but it will be something that relates to you. It will be something that relates to us all.

Imagine $100 bills being dropped from a helicopter and a mad rush of people scrambling to pick up as much money as they could. A young woman is stuffing as much as she can down her shirt, another kid is just simply jumping up and catching the bills as they fall from the sky and in the background is an older gentleman pulling a vacuum cleaner out of the back of his Lexus LS.

An Affiliate Manager’s job isn’t easy. My affiliates who are reading this right now will attest to the 20 IM conversations I juggle, while simultaneously answering email, running reports, adding/deleting/modifying campaigns, answering posts on message boards, all while carrying on a coherent and pleasant conversation via phone.

Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics and protagonist of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget smaller than that of nearly every other team.