Update from Affiliate Summit 2010 in Las Vegas

The affiliate summit conference was huge and we here at PhantomALERT wanted to share a bit of what we learned with you. I remember attending 5 years ago when it was a fledgling initiative with 10 or so booths and was totally amazed to see how it has exploded. It has lost some of it's affiliate focus in that the majority of the booths were from ad networks, agencies or solutions providers. There were a few merchant programs with booths recruiting for publishers but I don't see that as appealing as participating at the "meet market" tables -- in speaking with other merchants they confirmed that this is still well worth the investment (it was sold out in early october and everything completely sold out with 1 month to go).

The keynote speaker was excellent and left me with some great takeaways that continues to reinforce the direction affiliates need to take in online marketing. Brian Clark (Copyblogger.com) used numerous examples to illustrate the point that affiliates need to create for themselves a media asset. Gone are the days of PPC with one-page-click-through websites, sites built with duplicated content and just another shopping comparison site. He stressed the need for affiliates to create sites using their own unique content. That type of site will be immune to google slaps & will continue to grow with organic traffic. To further grow a site he suggested marketing using mashups of tried and true mixed with modern -- he gave a number of examples of songs and music that blended old rock ballads with current hip hop beats that have shot through the charts & video imagery of old movies/stars overlaid into new product ads and so on. To find success it's important to just put something out there, and then iterate and learn from the failures to find those successes.

If you would like to discuss how we can help you implement some of these techniques to make your PhantomALERT campaigns more successful, please send an email to affiliatemanager@phantomalert.com and lets set up a meeting!