Give us the Raw Data, Reflections on Affiliate Marketing in the Netherlands

Last week I attended and spoke at the excellent Zanox Academy event at the wonderful Art Deco Tuschinski Theater in the centre of Amsterdam.

It was an honour to be invited to speak and it was really interesting to see how the Dutch market is shaping up.

There are some very smart affiliates who are embracing the key concepts of Affiliate Marketing however although in Dutch I could sense some of the audience questioning the value that agencies and even networks are really giving to affiliates and whether there is room for 6 large networks in what is a relatively small market.

I was also surprised that Loyalty / Cashback and Voucher Code sites really don’t exist - an opportunity perhaps?

The same key issues were being discussed. Network Transparency, Best Practice, Adware, Cookies,  API’s and Widgets.

The latter of which I questioned the actual usage in my presentation.  Look at at all these widgets being developed by networks and advertisers; are they actually being used on a large scale? No.

For me I’d rather networks spend their time and R&D budget to work more closely with advertisers to clean up the product feed and API and give us quality raw data.  With this the most creative and dynamic affiliates can start adding real value to the relationship.

Obviously this raw data can be quite sensitive, however its a crazy scenario when affiliates are forced to screen scrape sites to collect the information required to enable their websites to function and add real value.

As affiliate revenue continues to be driven on the whole by a small percentage of publishers, merchants should work more closely with their affiliates, even if we need to sign NDA’s.

On the whole it was a very enjoyable event and I’ve come away with a good understanding of the market and the issues facing the industry. The issues which very closely follow the UK.

In April 2009 we’ll be heading over to Amsterdam with a4uexpo Europe Our first true pan European event to be held at the RAI Centre.