I just returned home from a great trip to Chicago. I was there over the weekend for the third annual Affiliate Manager Certification Seminar hosted by Andy Rodriguez Consulting and then I also had the pleasure of attending the Performics Client Summit on Monday and Tuesday.

Both events provided lots of great networking opportunities, tons of useful information and even a little fun – but both in very different ways.

The Affiliate Manager certification Seminar was a small group of about 35 people (affiliates and merchant affiliate managers). It was an amazing chance to get to know people in a much deeper way than I have experienced at many recent conferences. It was a chance to bond and form close relationships that helped me gain a much better understanding of issues in the industry - particularly adware and parasiteware.

Kellie Stevens, president of AffiliateFairPlay.com, lived up to the hype of our host who repeatedly promised the group that Kellie’s talk on adware “will blow your mind.” She delivered the goods showing data, video, and other indisputable facts related to who is engaging in controversial affiliate behavior and how they are perpetrating those bad actions. Basically, she followed how the revenue was generated.

One example Kellie used was that of an affiliate redirecting affiliate links to steal commissions. The merchant cited was in the room. In fact, the affiliate manager for the merchant, who used her own money and vacation time to attend the seminar (applause here. please), turned around in the middle of Kellie’s example, borrowed a laptop from another attendee, logged into her Commission Junction account and terminated the offending affiliate immediately. It was great (applause again).

I was stunned at the scope of the issue and shocked at the sophisticated tactics employed to pull off such schemes. I’ve written about it many times before but never really understood the full impact. Often the trail was so convoluted and complex that it took several times of explaining who did what for us to follow along. In some cases, it took Kellie hours and hours to perform her testing and sort out the chain of events she was sharing with us.

Kellie does this testing primarily for free and is widely regarded (except by the adware folks, obviously) as an exceptionally giving person and a priceless resource for others in the community. She’s preparing to make an announcement later this month that will help a lot of people in the industry better understand what’s happening with adware. Stay tuned. We’ll have the details here later and in the magazine (the Sept. /Oct. issue)

That sort of unwavering dedication to ethical behavior in the affiliate and performance marketing space is rare but growing as people become more educated as to how these actions ultimately end up negatively impacting every one in the industry.

To reward this type of ethics Kellie presented the first-ever Affiliate Fair Practice Award. The recipient was Brian Littleton, CEO of affiliate network ShareASale, which does not allow any adware applications in it network and is staunchly opposed to bad behaviors from affiliates (check out the Sept. /Oct. issue for more details).

ShareASale, which is often named as the fourth biggest network with about 1,800 merchants, let it out of the bag they are holding an event in November in Las Vegas (called Think Tank) where they have invited a limited number of affiliates and merchants to discuss some serious issues. I also heard some rumblings about a Hispanic version of ShareASale, which given the rise of Hispanics online (see the March/April 2006 issue of Revenue) would be a major milestone for the industry.

ShareASale is based in Chicago and Brian, along with ShareASale’s fabulous Carolyn Tang, were generous hosts while we were in the Windy City. I wanted to extend a big thanks to Brian for getting the group tickets to the Cubs/Phillies game. While enjoying all the fun of the bleachers (yes, that means lots of beer) there was an idea hatched among several affiliates. On the spot they all got things rolling and while I can’t reveal the idea, I have no doubt that it will come to fruition, be a wicked huge success and be an amazing collaboration.

So, going to Wrigley Field was a huge thrill for a baseball fan like me. Having basically grown up at Fenway Park I appreciated the history of Wrigley and loved the passionate fans. I also had the chance to experience the first couple of innings of the Cubbies game from across the street at one of the private roof top decks. Performics hosted a great party for the game. I wanted to hang out there longer, but HAD to go into the park eventually to truly say I’d been to Wrigley.

The entire Performics event was classy all the way. My only complaint is that there were too many Performics people. Every time I turned around to try and talk with someone there were three or four Performics gals gathered and chatting it up. More than one person jokingly asked me something along the lines of “has a sorority bus just let off at the hotel?”

But overall it was a great event. The speakers were dynamite. Anne Holland, president of Marketing Sherpa was entertaining and as always brought lots of data. Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing Group, had a presentation jam packed with survey data that was enlightening. Affiliate David Lewis (check out his new venture This Next), delivered a humorous talk about the day in the life of an affiliate.

The food was non stop. It was like being at the home of some Italian grandma. Heaven forbid anyone went two hours without a snack or refreshment. The networking was outstanding. I met so many merchants and affiliates that I have interesting things happening. I’ve got a lot of following up to do in the next several days.

Best of all, Performics doesn’t charge any of its merchants or affiliates to attend (about 400 total). They put on this elegant event at no-cost to the attendees. Unlike Commission Junction, which I heard from some attendees at the Performics event, is charging everyone – including its Top Performers - to attend CJU in September. I talked with a couple of CJ top performing affiliates and they very disappointed by that move. They also questioned why CJ would want to raise such negative feelings among its best affiliates – especially during this time when LMI has already ruffled affiliate feathers.

However, those folks are not the only one that have to foot the bill for CJU attendance. I was told that regardless of being with the press (which never, ever pays for any events since they are there to cover them as news) that I must fork over $695 to attend CJU. I was told that all the press passes had been given out and that I was still welcome to attend, if I wanted to pay. Several of CJ’s top affiliates suggested that I pass and said they might do the same.

I’m still debating whether or not I will attend CJU. Recently, I expressed that CJU was one of my favorite events of the year and I hate to miss it. Anyway, if you’re going to be at CJU let me know. Maybe that will help make my decision.

Meanwhile, I’m very content to stay put in San Francisco for a while.

lisap@revenuetoday.com