ReveNews
DoubleClick Performics “Age of Ingenuity”
DoubleClick Performics held its 2007 Client Summit this past Monday at Tuesday at the Ritz Carlton in Chicago. The event was a high quality affair, with an excellent line up of speakers, including the most enjoyable keynote I’ve ever seen by Freakonomics author Stephen D Levitt.
Although folks always seem to gripe that panel and presentation content seems the same at every conference, good ideas always bubble up into my brain as I watch them. Performics’ employees Brian Marcus and Tony Nelan led an interesting panel to see how affiliates would react if Loew’s were to launch an affiliate program. (I thought it was kind a cool and kind of a weird thing to talk about a company that does not have an affiliate program.)Eva Klein of FatWallet; Don Basford, search arbitrager; Mike Allen of Shopping-Bargains; and John Toskey of DBG (who’s getting married next week) weighed in with different perspectives. Although FatWallet represented content affiliates with their forums to round out search arbitrage, loyalty, and coupons, it made me think that there is no article-writing affiliate I can think of who is on a par with these other big guys. I think there is a big opportunity along these lines for bloggers, magazines, and other content publishers. For example, I often talk to magazine sites who only take CPM advertising. Fair enough, though they’d surely do well with some kind of product link catalog if there were someone at the company to make it happen. Perhaps PopShops really can help us all in a big way?
One interesting twist on the Performics conference is that they also manage search campaigns and invited some search-only clients, along with a couple affiliates who distribute these feeds on a pay per click basis, if we can still call these affiliates. It seems Performics, at least, is positioned not to lose out on the new BizRates that form relationships with merchants through affiliate networks only to later change the monetization of those relationships to CPC, leaving the networks out in the cold.
On the other hand, Performics’ announced its self-service model,AffiliateDirect, just over a month ago. (Historically Performics has preferred to manage the programs in its network.) There were several other outsourced program management agencies in Chicago. We’ve noticed a welcome warming of networks’ attitudes toward OPMs. In my view this is smart as we collectively represent a lot of potential clients for them.
Interestingly, one panel with MSN, Google, and Yahoo was essentially a promotion for tandem display/pay-per-click ads. I regard CPC as similar to CPA in that both are performance driven and ROI focused (or at least they should be), but CPM is another step away and an unusual subject for an affiliate marketing conference. Perhaps this is an indication of DoubleClick’s influence?
And on that topic, DoubleClick executives seem confident that the Google acquistion would be approved later this year, prompting me to muse that there might be a Google/DoubleClick/Performics booth at the next Affiliate Summit with Performics people handing out “We love affiliate marketing” beach towels at one end and Google people handing out “We hate affiliate marketing” beach towels at the other.
Hi Brook. Yes it was a great show, and always great to see you. I too was impressed with the quality of the event. My write up is at: http://www.internetgeekgirl.com
One quick note on your analysis: I appreciated the mixture of presenters focused on other marketing channels. I work with clients on all aspects of their online marketing plan, and I think it’s important to realize that affiliate programs do not exist in a vacuum. Investment in other channels increase the strength of the affiliate channel. It was no surprise to see that display ads strengthen effectiveness of search ads.
I thought everyone knew that.
Again, a great event. Thanks for the write-up!
Excellent write up Brook and you hit all the high points. I thought the agenda was very well laid out and the networking opportunities abound.
As one of the OPM’s using their AffiliateDirect system I have been very pleased with the support from the company. Unlike other “do it yourself” systems I have access to many staff members and they eagerly ask my input.
Kudos to Mr. Hamrick for enquiring after CPA actions to the MSN,Google,Yahoo panel, who acknowledged such demand. Of course, Google actually has launched CPA actions. I definitely agree that the service has been great with the AffiliateDirect system.