British Invasion

May/June 2007 Issue: Page 120

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The U.K. is the place to be and everyone from Link- Share execs to the Affiliate Summit conference crew to yours truly is crossing the pond.

What the British lack in good taste for cuisine, they more than make up for in entrepreneurial spirit. That's why the U.K. is a hotbed of online marketing activity and this fall, the host to a bevy of exciting conferences. And while the Brits appear to be the pillars of politeness, competition between some of the events is heating up and taking a nasty turn.

a4uexpo is being billed as the first conference for affiliate marketers to be held in London. Not true. Especially since a4uexpo is being held at the end of October (25 and 26), while the Affiliate Summit (brought to you by the All-American co-hosts Shawn Collins and Missy Ward) is being held in London a full month prior.

I've heard some rumbling that the a4uexpo folks are aggressively encouraging U.K. affiliates not to attend the rival show, "which is run by outsiders." What kind of affiliate team spirit is that?

When it comes to unpleasant allegations … there was a recent debate regarding the existence of sexism in the online marketing community. Not surprisingly, most women say, "Hell yeah!" it's prevalent, while the majority of men note that advertising has long relied on the old adage, "Sex sells." Regardless of the fact that the debate will never be resolved, it's great to see this topic as it relates to affiliate marketing being brought up by a man. The question – raised by Sam Harrelson on his CostPerNews.com blog – is worth further exploration and continued examination.

It didn't take long but Karen Verelley is out as vice president of marketing at LinkShare. Armed with lots of experience and an ego to match, Verelley apparently rubbed some LinkShare staffers (who were embracing the kinder, gentler, post- Messer LinkShare) the wrong way. Mark Kirshner, who has worked with LinkShare as a consultant for years, replaced Verelley. Kirshner will help the company prep for its annual New York gala – the Golden Links.

The black-tie awards always draw a top-tier crowd of affiliates and merchants and typically feature a bigname comedian as the host. Past emcees include Robert Schimmel, Kathy Griffin and Mario Cantone. This year the NYC bash is going local and going after more "Saturday Night Live" talent. So at press time, the leading candidates to poke fun at the network and its merchants and publishers are SNL "Weekend Update" guy Seth Meyers or SNL resident impressionist Darrell Hammond.

LinkShare poobah Steve Denton had his own March Madness. Just as his team, the West Virginia Mountaineers, were winning the NIT (take that NCAA!), big hoops fan Denton was in London on a mission to meet with 50 publishers in 50 hours. OK, the get-togethers weren't all one-onone meetings – there was a small lunch and another small dinner, along with some one-on-ones, but still, very impressive.

Not quite as impressive is Overstock. com. It has a lot of issues these days, but I'll stick to just two this time around. First, the company's auctions platform. Overstock Auctions (launched in September 2004) has been struggling since it eliminated subscription-pricing programs and abandoned storefront development. The good news – Overstock recently lowered its listing and commission fees for sellers. The bad news – it will launch one-day auctions (which often make it easier for scammers to defraud shoppers) and there has been a delay of the long-promised bid-cancellation feature and its Classifieds.

The second issue for Overstock is that CEO Patrick Byrne continues to have control issues about what is being said regarding his company. The latest victim is Wikipedia. Overstock has now gotten into a weird cycle of editing Wikipedia entries and changing the Overstock.com URL to a longer URL that includes a dummy affiliate ID and tracking code. This allows the company to track who is coming to its site via Wikipedia. Typically the new tracking URL is detected and changed back to the standard home page by someone working on Wikipedia entries. Then someone from Overstock (presumably) almost immediately goes in and reverts it to the tracking URL. This back-and-forth has been going for months.

Don't wait months to tell me what you know. If you've got some top-secret information or just a juicy helping of gossip that you want to share, let me know now. I'll send you a Revenue Tshirt for your tidbit. Email me at TheSpider@RevenueToday.com or call the hotline directly at 415-732-7456.

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