Matt Bailey’s affiliate blog

At the recent IAB Affiliate Council meeting we debated how merchants can gain increased transparency over what affiliates are doing, and at the same time sell themselves to merchants/agencies/networks to reduce the chance of being rejected from their campaign.
Therefore I thought it would be useful to write a quick post on what we look for [...]

Please find below the minutes from the IAB Affiliate Council meeting last week. I aim to discuss some of these issues in more detail on the blog shortly.
Research project

Distinction made between “headline stories”, that we can gather quite quickly, and more complex examples that would better be demonstrated through case studies.
Headline stories, examples
i. [...]

There seems to be a common assumption in the affiliate world that the cookie period should be 30 days. I am concerned that not enough thought goes into determining this. What rationale is used by merchants/networks when setting cookie periods?
Sector differences
Different vertical sectors have different buying cycles and so this should influence the length of [...]

The issue of PI tracking through the affiliate channel has died down recently, having been a big issue 3-4 years ago. However is it now time to revisit this?
Because of the last click wins model, many affiliates contribute to sales that they do not get rewarded for, and content affiliates are generally considered to be [...]

Every Friday we have a little quiz that goes round our office, with the previous weeks winner setting it. I was fortunate enought that last weeks quiz was on football and so won. Here is the quiz I set for this week on 1990s TV.

1990s UK Television » Make Your Own Quiz

There is often a great deal of talk about how merchants can optimise the “affiliate channel” to drive the best return on their investment. I tend to baulk at mentions of affiliate marketing as a single channel that can be treated the same as display, PPC or SEO.
3-4 years ago then yes, affiliate marketing could [...]

Having reviewed both Day 1 and Day 2 of A4U Expo Amsterdam in previous blog posts, here’s a few reasons why you should go.

Excellent sessions which will help, invigorate and inspire affiliates, merchants, agencies and networks alike
The exhibition where you will get chance to find out more about the European market
Unbeatable networking opportunities.
Queens Day in [...]

Following on from this post here are what I see as the stand out events on day 2.
Day 2 9.30
Clearly I’ll be intrigued as to what Auke Boersma of Affilinet has to say about the role of media agencies in affiliate marketing. This is something I have strong views on, as you would expect, so [...]

Hopefully everyone is aware of the A4U Expo in Amsterdam in April, Existem’s first foray on to the continent. The agenda looks really good and I thought I’d pick out a few potential highlights for the first day.
Day 1 – 9.30
i-level’s very own Judith Lewis opens up on the first morning. Judith’s always worth listening [...]

In an earlier blog post I spoke about Spotify and at the time I said
Another thing I’d like to see is some way of finding out what other people interested in the same stuff as me are listening to. I like to keep up with new music but unfortunately am not cool enough to be [...]