Affiliate Marketing blog by James Little

A friday funny for you all.

See if you can spot the hard part of this journey from London to Chicago (point 37 if you get a bit lost along the way).

A number of months ago I saw a message from Neil Durrant (MD of Submission Technology) on the UK-Netmarketing email list asking for any €œexperts€ of white labelling to get in touch.

Knowing that they owned GreasyPalm I become intrigued and managed to pull of a few details to confirm my suspicions that they were aiming to launch a white label cashback service.

It’s finally been made official now:  Press Release  | White Label Cashback

It could see some interesting times for the affiliate industry; while cashback sites have had a hand in generating a huge amount of leads or sales I’ve always felt that the €œnormal person on the street€ doesn’t know anything about them.  This could soon change.

So it seems that the Affiliate Summit is coming to London - they have posted a message on their site to confirm the date, September 28, the day after AD:Tech London and a month before the a4uexpo.

Would be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this.. Two large affiliate events can surely only be good for the affiliate industry, but are there enough advertisers for both in such a short period?

Will affiliates attend both events, especially when it requires two trips to London in two months?

I guess costs will be a factor too - Affiliate Summit usually charges around $2,000 for a pass whereas the a4uevents are usually split dependant on if you are an affiliate, agency or network.

Interesting times ahead - lets hope that both events bring good PR for the affiliate marketing as a whole.

Interesting news - Will is a good guy and will do well I feel.  Congrats on the promotion if you read this.

From NMA

William Cooper has been appointed as CEO and president of Tradedoubler, the affiliate network.

Cooper has been acting-CEO since January, but now permanently moves up from his role as COO.

The move comes a week after the Swedish-owned network rejected a $900m (£459.6m) takeover offer from AOL.

“We are pleased to announce this appointment. William has a deep knowledge of the company having joined it soon after its launch,” said Kjell Duveblad, Tradedoubler chairman of the board.

“We have a number of challenges and opportunities in front of us and his experience will be invaluable as we continue to expand the business over the coming years,” added Duveblad.

“We have an unrivalled pan-European footprint and a market leading position in many of our products and services throughout the 18 European countries in which we operate,” said Cooper. “I hope that over time we can expand both our geographic footprint and our products and services in order to meet the requirements of our advertisers and publishers”.

In January the company said that profits for 2006 were up by 53% to SEK 480.3 (£34.9m), with a 61% increase in revenues.

I have two Exhibit Hall passes to July’s Affiliate Summit to give away (July 8th-10th in Miami). The passes, worth up to $499 each will be given away as follows:

1 to be put into a prize draw for anyone that links to this blog by 20th April (which is also my birthday).

1 x whoever makes the most (non-spam) comments on the blog by 20th April.

I got my ticket sorted today and am very much looking forward to attending my first summit (and going to Miami for the first time).

The first UK Affiliate Dinner event was held on 16th March and after some good feedback from the attendees we are arranging another London event for Friday 27th April.

The event will be hosted at The Bunker Bar in Covent Garden - there is no need for upfront payment but a registration form will be up and running the gauge the number of attendees.

There is seating space reserved for up to 30 people and a full food menu is available for the night. As with the previous event I’ll be there from about 6pm. There are no sponsors and no speakers - just turn up, have a bite to eat and enjoy the company of others in the industry.

Bunker Bar
41 Earlham Street
London
WC2H 9LX
tel. 0207 240 0606

Full details on the Affiliate Dinner website.

Last night I hosted the first London Affiliate Dinner. Twenty of us turned up to The George for a Friday night of food, fun and f(w)ine.

From what I can remember everyone seemed to have a good time and the wine went down well - we were kicked out around 11.30pm but my sources tell me that some continued to drink in a hotel bar somewhere nearby.

I’ve got two more events planned over the next few months; another one in London and one up in Liverpool - full details and dates to come over the next few weeks.

Thanks to everyone who turned up and hope you enjoy some of the photos from the event.

From the TradeDoubler website.

Our shareholders have decided not to accept AOL’s offer to buy their shares at 215 SEK per share.

 

As a Board we considered the offer to be attractive and hence we decided to recommend it to our shareholders and let them decide. However, this offer is now behind us and we must now look forward.

 

TradeDoubler has a very exciting and attractive future ahead as an independent company. We believe that given our unique pan European footprint, our growing range of products, robust technology but most importantly the knowledge and expertise we have within the company, we are perfectly placed to take advantage of the opportunities this rapidly growing industry will give us over the coming years.

 

Looking at the business plan for 2007 we will intensify our recruitment activities in all countries and we will intensify our product development efforts.

 

We continue to assess opportunities to grow our business both geographically and from a product perspective in order to increase our revenues, profitability and to deliver shareholder value.

Interesting stuff - I wonder if any other offers are on the horizon.

This was posted on the a4uforum today as a quote from the latest edition of NMA.

“Next year we’ll reintroduce affiliate marketing but as it should be, as opposed to affiliates as they were” said Nick Robertson, ASOS CEO.

“(There’ll be) no silly commissions being paid to grubby little people in grubby studios growing income at our expense, getting in the way of genuine sales”

I am absolutely astonished (and that’s putting it mildly) at this quote.  ASOS was a big success story in the UK on how a brand can be built by affiliates but famously killed that relationship after culling affiliates and changing the terms before shutting it down completely towards the end of 2006.

Bearing in mind that sales are on a PERFORMANCE basis I still have no idea how on earth they can say that affiliates were €œgetting in the way€ of sales.  Can’t wait to see how their re-launch goes and will make sure I remember this quote at the time.