Reflections on the LinkShare Symposium
Once again, LinkShare hosted their Symposium at the chic Chelsea Piers overlooking the Hudson River in Manhattan. Last year, I wrote that the Symposium was “100% pure LinkShare and 100% pure New York: grand, full of glitz, big-brand focused, and, of course, corporate“. That’s LinkShare’s style and it rings true this year as well.
The main event at the Symposium is a one day conference with the morning consisting of general sessions while the afternoon is packed with breakout sessions.
LinkShare always presents content that challenges affiliate marketers to think about the big picture and then helps the attendees drill down to think about how that applies to performance-based marketing. LinkShare stands out with their thought leadership in this direction and I always find it refreshing to take time out to view the world in this way.
Chelsea Piers
Stephen Messer opened the event and said the industry is maturing, a topic he hit on at Affiliate Summit. He then went on to say that he is a libertarian, but we need to regulate the Internet a little, so that marketers feel safe and know who their partners are – the point of Project Athena — and he is absolutely right.
I find it interesting that last year at the Symposium, the sessions discussed some of the tougher issues in the industry, spyware, spam, cookie stuffing, etc and this year LinkShare answered that with Project Athena. We all know Project Athena has not been a smooth ride for anyone, but once the network gets passed the some of the monster pot holes in the road, it will be a competitive advantage.
Next up was Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman, America Online & President, AOL Audience Business. Ted gave a wonderful presentation that everyone genuinely enjoyed. Ted brought textbook integrated marketing to life as he captured the audience and took us on a tour of the history of marketing with some case studies thrown in. The meat for interactive marketers is that 1% of marketing budgets used to be new media and the rest other types of advertising – TV, radio, print, etc. Now if an advertiser’s marketing budget is less than 10% for new media, the advertiser is missing the boat. In other words, what was the 1% rule is now the 10% rule. He made us stop and think when he said that this all occurred only 10 years after Amazon launched – the world changes quickly these days. And he pointed out that is will change more as spend on traditional media and non-traditional media flip-flop in the years to come. Think about the day McDonald’s spends more advertising online than off. Makes you think…doesn’t it?
Closing the morning sessions was the Executive Industry Visionary Panel with leaders from Overstock, Yahoo, IBM as well as others. The general topic of this session was consumer behavior online and how it applies to affiliate marketing.
Putting these three sessions together, the theme here is that online marketing and affiliate marketing in general has grown-up which coupled with the fact I saw more gray hair at this event than any other drives the point home even more.
I spend most of the afternoon session in the hall networking. Some of the faces where the same as the Summit, but LinkShare’s big brands always draw affiliates that you don’t see at any of the other conferences. While all affiliates are in all the networks, and affiliates clearly choose their advertisers by revenue potential, some clearly do have favorite networks. LinkShare has a loyal following that shows up at this event and who have even spoken up on the boards to support them given the major challenges with Project Athena.
The two sessions I did pop into touched on search. LinkShare understands as well that search and affiliates is truly one channel that needs to be managed in unison to meet the needs of the merchant. The objectives and strategies might be different for various merchants but the fact these channels needs to be managed together is key.
Is it in LinkShare’s interest to think these two channels are interconnected? Yes, absolutely! However, the bottom line is that they are correct. Every piece of data people have shared with me proves this over and over again. I think as advertisers really start to look hard at these two channels, they will find that they can drive more revenue, or realize more efficiency, or even both by looking at these channels together.
Unlike my previous trip to the Symposium, this year, I got to watch a little of the LinkShare DealMaker session in action. It’s a chance for affiliates to walk around and cut VIP deals with merchants. It’s really interesting to watch super affiliates choose which merchant partners they want to work with and be able to negotiate VIP commissions that make it worth their time to even try a merchant. VIP deals are best done in person LinkShare creates a win-win-win with this: merchants drive more sales, affiliates earn increased commissions, and LinkShare earns more. What’s not to like?
The day ended with a cocktail and networking reception for me while others went on to a party at hip club in the meat packing district. (I went home to get some work done – I know, I know I need a life but I did party hard in Vegas.)
As a final note, LinkShare has been putting this event on for a long time and they got it down. Stephanie Schwab from Converseon said to me the next day, “LinkShare put on a fantastic event” and she is right.
Update: Search Engine Roundtable has a nice entry on this event.
