A4U Expo Goes Dutch
May 14th, 2009Such is the busy world of affiliate marketing it’s taken me a little while to produce this write up on the A4U Expo held on 28th and 29th of April in Amsterdam but given the significance of the event I wanted to share a few thoughts on it.
I have to admit when Matt Wood announced he was taking the A4U Expo show on the road I didn’t pay much attention to it. Affiliate Window is a UK network with a UK focus and as such I thought there would be limited value in our network having any involvement. But when Matt contacted me asking if I’d like to speak at the event I delved a little deeper into the agenda for the two day conference.
It’s fair to say the Expo struck a good balance, offering a pan-European conference with a British slant. And let’s not forget the Internet isn’t constrained by national borders so there is inevitable crossover between trends and developments.
Highlights for me from these conferences tend to be the areas I know least about. Anything involving SEO tends to attract my interest and sessions on linking strategies and WordPress optimisation tips were particularly informative. As ever the biggest challenge with the Expos is deciding which clashing session you’d like to miss least and as such I usually opt to miss some of the bread and butter affiliate specific content.
Inevitably there were some disappointing sessions and I still think there is work to be done with pushing the level of sophistication available through more advanced sessions but the overall sustained quality Matt manages to squeeze from the small army of speakers is enviable. I’m also keen to help encourage more merchants to participate and share best practice.
My own session (I was part of a panel alongside Affiliate Future, Nectar and TopCashback) was a little disappointing dealing with the cashback and reward market – a market I’ve been led to believe is significantly less developed in mainland Europe compared to its British neighbour – but the perennial challenge is knowing at what level to pitch to as wide an audience as possible without rendering the content too basic or complex.
One interesting nugget I gleaned from the Q&A of my session was how the Dutch market sought to regulate cashback rebate catchers and toolbars late last year. Given this is a discussion that has been running parallel on this side of the water made me wonder if some of the claimed differences between the UK and the rest of Europe aren’t as pronounced as we always assume they are.
Overall the Expo was an excellent opportunity to hear new ideas, meet old friends and discuss the industry away from the cut and thrust of day to day business. As such these will always be invaluable events. The fact that Matt Wood and his team are able to do so in such a professional and polished way is a testament to their hard work and how far we’ve all come as an industry.
I look forward to seeing you all in London for the A4U Expo in October.
Kevin Edwards
Strategy Director
October 5th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
We think Affiliate Window is one of those few networks that can really make a difference to Merchants. In our most recent post we discuss AW as the network to aspire to. However, for smaller online merchants it can sometimes be a daunting exercise. They have to balance rising marketing spends and then raise further funds to pay for the AW start-up costs. Perhaps the commercial team can look at a start-up solution which allows merchants to grow into the fully blown service?