Dominic Sofia is Publisher Manager at dgmAustralia, Australia’s leading affiliate marketing agency. Dom was also the only Australian with an official presence at the prestigious International Affiliate Summit last month. Dom reports from one of the world’s largest affiliate markets.


Vegas Baby! - Saturday Feb 23rd

To my jetlagged eyes, the arrivals hall at Las Vegas airport looked like an over-sized RSL club with wall to wall poker machines - and a few hidden baggage carousels. My suits and shirts were accounted for, but the over sized bag carrying dgmAustralia’s promotional materials, including an inflatable boxing kangaroo, had not arrived. After assurances from the airline that they would be at my hotel in no time at all, I caught a cab to the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino - the location of The Affiliate Summit West 2008.


Sunday Feb 24th – day one of the Affiliate Summit

The summit began with a 6 hour networking session, the “Meet Market”, where international affiliate networks, media buyers and sellers, and solution providers gathered to strike up business partnerships.

With just three hours to go, the dgmAustralia table showed no sign of our promotional materials, or the eye-catching over-sized Boxing Kangaroo. It was destined to be the most understated Meet Market table in the venue: just my laptop and two Aussie flags. It could hardly compete with companies like affspy.com and Super Affiliates Lab, and their bevy of beautiful Vegas girls drawing the crowds.

Despite these odds, as soon as the doors opened I had my first visitor. The first person to receive the dgmAustralia network pitch in the US had a name badge which read Nathan “Lord Crypt” KC. I was beginning to doubt the merits of my long trip to Vegas. However, after a few moments it became clear that Lord Crypt was actually a substantial US affiliate, and very interested in opportunities in the Australian and Asia Pacific markets.

The Meet Market gave me the chance to meet a number of significant US dot-coms, who all expressed their uniquely American enthusiasm for our work and said they were “ready to do business now!” Either the understated table 73 was unusually popular, with people crowding around to hear why an Aussie was in the US touting his wares, or they were just politely nodding and looking over my shoulder at the Vegas girls manning the affspy booth.

I soon heard of a lavish party that night, hosted by ShareaSale (one of the US’s substantial affiliate networks). With the promise of 5 open bars, full catering and even a 5 person spinning bed (hello, Vegas!), I was keen to score an invite. But even with the help of my new friend Lord Crypt, I failed dismally. Judging by the number of in-party twitter postings (http://twitter.com/asw08) - the conference online forum that kept all attendees up to date during the event - it can’t really have been much of a party. Unless it’s actually normal to twitter while partying in the US.

Meet Market was a bit like speed dating, and I was exhausted by the end of the day. But I was impressed with the knowledge and understanding of my new contacts - I only had to explain once how affiliate marketing and CPA advertising worked, which highlights how much further advanced the competitive US market is, compared with Australia, which has traditionally been lead generation focused.

I found my missing luggage in my hotel room that evening, along with a note from US customs explaining that they held up my luggage in LAX for customs inspection. Perhaps they didn’t believe I was bringing in hundreds of boomerangs and an inflatable boxing kangaroo for legitimate purposes. In hindsight, I’m glad I decided not to take the boxes of dgm branded pill shaped mints as well.

Monday Feb 25th - day two of the Affiliate Summit

An epic day of learning sessions and speakers, with over 3,000 delegates jammed into the conference halls.

Jason Calacanis, an internet entrepreneur, made the opening remarks and keynote address. Starting with just a photocopied technology newsletter, Calacanis expanded his business to develop a blog network that was later sold to AOL for $25million. He is now working on Mahalo.com, a human powered search engine which he claims will improve the relevance of search results compared with algorithmic search engines - such as Google and Yahoo.

Calacanis has had several confrontations with the SEO community. He has famously declared all SEO to be ‘bullshit’, and all SEOs to be ‘snake oil salesmen’. His address outlined what he sees as one of the key challenges faced by the affiliate community and the internet as a whole: the way that websites, and affiliates who create websites, do little or nothing to enhance the online experience of a user. He believes that sites that trick users to click on links or force clicks are in place only to earn ‘a quick buck’ and are at ‘the bottom of the internet food chain.’

Initially this was not received well by a hall full of affiliate marketing professionals. But Calacanis proposed a solution: encouraging long term relationships with website readers and users, rather than underhanded deception. This definitely made sense to everyone, and from our perspective I couldn’t agree more. We’ve been developing close working relations with our affiliates for years now, and with great success.

At 11.30am, the first of the classroom sessions for the summit kicked off with a choice of:

• video innovation in affiliate marketing,

• affiliate pay per click (PPC): brand enhancement of bid escalation,

• email is media, or

• domaining and address bar driven traffic

Given the number of affiliates using PPC as a delivery channel, I chose to sit in on the debate on affiliate PPC.

Both of the speakers were spot on in their assessment of the key challenges of running PPC and agency managed client SEM campaigns in unison.

Reassuringly, the American experience seems to be in line with the current Australian market - especially when it came to the discussion on how to choose affiliate partners. We have invested a lot of time educating our clients on the benefits of working in tandem with selected PPC affiliates, with great success.

At 3:00pm, I dropped into the managing your affiliate manager class, to get some tips on what clients really want from our network. Discussions on cookie lengths and CPA rates based on the life time value of the customers tended to dominate the discussion – not far beyond the level of understanding already in Australia, which was also encouraging.

One key point from this talk, and a constant bug bear of affiliates in general, is the stop-start nature of some advertiser campaigns. One affiliate on the panel summed it up perfectly as: “If a customer is worth ten dollars to you, and you pay an affiliate 5 dollars for every customer, why would you ever stop?” A market as advanced as the US obviously runs into the same issues we face as a network, with CPA buys based on advertising marcoms budgets rather than acquisition budgets.

Tuesday Feb 26th - last day of the Affiliate Summit

The next day began badly, with a sore head after attending the Affiliate Bash at the Venetian Hotel. Drinks and dancing had flowed on until the early hours, dispelling all rumours that affiliate people don’t know how to have a good time.

During breakfast, I found my Aussie popularity continuing to rise with more US organisations approaching me, interested in the opportunities in the Australian market. Is it my charm, my accent, or had word spread about the quality of our Australian operations and client list?

The last agenda item was Super Affiliate Strategies, the busiest class so far. I suspect, from the Q&A session questions, that a lot of the attendees left feeling they didn’t get what they came for. Many seemed to be after a quick buck, whereas the panel was very much focused on long term, and long tail campaigns. John Chow, a major internet success story, noted that his highly trafficked blog began as a personal hobby and slowly gained readership. It was his entry to Super Affiliate status, but it wasn’t an overnight money-maker.

So my last classroom session ended the way it started for me: with the somewhat controversial yet pertinent argument put forward by Jason Calacanis in the key note address. It flowed through each of the classroom sessions I attended, and was picked up again and pushed home by the Super Affiliates themselves in the final panel. Focusing on the user experience of a website is the only real way to long term success in this business. And spending time developing relationships with the right network of affiliates is key.

Attending this world-class event was certainly a success for dgmAustralia. It was reassuring to know that our experience and strategy is very much in line with the US, and I’d be willing to bet that we’ll enjoy some great business from our American peers in the very near future.

For further information:

“Affiliate Summit, Inc. was founded by affiliate marketing industry veterans Shawn Collins and Missy Ward and serves the affiliate marketing professional community. The mission of Affiliate Summit is to be the leading global source of learning and networking opportunities surrounding the affiliate marketing industry.” www.affiliatesummit.com

http://blog.affiliatesummit.com/2008/02/26/affiliate-summit-2008-west-day-2/

http://blog.affiliatesummit.com/2008/02/26/affiliate-summit-west-2008-monday

Video recap - Meet Market live

http://blog.affiliatesummit.com/2008/02/25/affiliate-summit-2008-west-day-1/