Comments on GeoffBlog.com: My review of A4U Expo 2009 - Excel, London

Cool to see you appreciated my Tweets! I really e...

2009-10-23T11:09:49.568+01:00

Cool to see you appreciated my Tweets!

I really enjoyed A4u this year, maybe next year we could catch a beer or something ;)

Hi Geoff Glad you enjoyed (most of) the Expo, I t...

2009-10-19T13:49:13.577+01:00

Hi Geoff

Glad you enjoyed (most of) the Expo, I think it was a great couple of days. It looks like my comment really got picked up on by you and Jason so I thought it would be worth clarifying.

From the data I've been running to look at our journeys to sale, it appears that cashback sites stand out as the sole interaction for a lot of sales. It's important to take into account what I'm looking at here - I defined an interaction as one click from an affiliate site to a merchant site. As a merchant, I don't have visibility on where the traffic came from before hitting that cashback site.

For what it's worth, I've just had a quick play around on Hitwise looking at some of the top cashback sites clickstreams and for most of them none of their top sources of referring traffic are what I would class as affiliate content sites. That's not to say this gives the whole picture and data might be different if you looked at in more granular detail.

My overall point was related to data I have access to. If you've got data about the downstream traffic from your own content sites that shows cashback as a big issue then I think this is something it could be really valuable to share from a merchant perspective, as this is something we can never see.

I also really want to point out the value that Vodafone places on content affiliates - we're not solely about supporting big volume drivers. We work with a great long tail of affiliates we have actively cultivated over the last couple of years. We are obviously aware that if content affiliates don’t continue to see stable ROI, we will lose this valuable sales channel which is part of the reason for doing this analysis and looking at new reward mechanisms.

Hope that gives a bit more background to a comment that might have looked strange in isolation

Thanks

Julia

Great write-up. Cheers Geoff and Jonathan for th...

2009-10-17T19:36:36.022+01:00

Great write-up.

Cheers Geoff and Jonathan for the kind comments about my talk.

Look forward to catching up with you soon.

I wouldn't agree with Julia's (and I think...

2009-10-16T16:12:11.317+01:00

I wouldn't agree with Julia's (and I think Helen) made the same comment about cashback sites.

The first rule of cashback club is to delete your cookies and tracking information off your computer (prior to click) so you know you will get the sale. This makes it really hard for networks and merchants to track this activity in line with other channels.

You could do it by IP and User-Agent matching to make a best guess scenario but it is unlikely any networks or merchants have done this.

thanks Geoff, very kind of you Sri

2009-10-15T16:16:42.164+01:00

thanks Geoff, very kind of you

Sri

Hi Geoff I attended the A4Uexpo this year and had...

2009-10-15T13:32:52.946+01:00

Hi Geoff

I attended the A4Uexpo this year and had a great time - lots of interesting seminars and it's a really good opportunity to meet lots of different people and learn something new.

My favourite seminars were:

1. Landing Page Success Story by Ben Jesson of Conversion Rate Experts

2. Nadeem Azam - 12 biggest mistakes over the last 12 years

3. PPC campaigns by Sri Sharma

Hopefully I'll be back next year....

Jonathan Cannovan
PaidOnResults.com

Yes I noticed not only in that presentation but al...

2009-10-15T13:26:36.511+01:00

Yes I noticed not only in that presentation but also others that virtually no-one (myself included!) seemed to be willing to put their hands up and get involved. Not sure what the reason was, but wonder whether there's a better way of dealing with sessions that need interaction, Kieron tried a twitter hashtag for meet the super affiliates, not sure if it worked well though?

Hi Geoff - thanks for your feedback on the extreme...

2009-10-15T13:08:40.350+01:00

Hi Geoff - thanks for your feedback on the extreme SEO panel. I think a format like this requires a lot of interaction from the audience, and the previous evening may have played a roll in muting normally active attendees! Ciaran did a great job of driving the discussion forward.

I think I speak on the behalf of each of the panel mebers when I say it's really important to us that you get (actionable) value from these sessions, so with that in mind, if there are any tips or issues you were looking to get answers on, feel very welcome to drop me a line via this contact form.