This week saw the launch of the first expert-led supplement of 2015 off the back of a roundtable discussion which brought together leading travel marketing specialists to discuss the changes and challenges facing this large sector of the industry.

PerformanceIN welcomed onboard a new PI Columnist, Jeremy Waite, Head of Digital Strategy, Marketing Cloud EMEA at Salesforce. Jeremy kicked things off with a thought-provoking piece on the disillusionment of marginal gains. Performance marketing and Olympic-level track cycling share some similarities, it appears.  

We shared a day in the life with ‘weekday Londoner’ and MD EMEA at OpenX, Andrew Buckman, to find out more about his new position and how he likes to surprise his team members. Waitrose online marketing executive, Asil Azad gave us an insight into his day-to-day working life with one of the country’s most successful supermarket chains.

RadiumOne European MD Rupert Stains discussed how companies can best utilise the untapped opportunities of dark social data, which makes up 74% of all digital sharing in the UK, and as we continue our longtail month, Helen Southgate poses the question; does the affiliate ‘long tail’ actually exist?

The social networks

Also hitting the digital marketing headlines this week was the news that Facebook had announced the launch of a new business ad feature to help companies target their ads more effectively, by increasing management for targeting particular products to relevant audiences across all devices.

Pinterest announced it has banned all affiliate links on its platform, prompting Keep.com, the ‘shoppable’ bookmarking site, to set up its own affiliate programme for users.

And in this week’s masterclass, Brandwatch’s Will McInnes explores five ways to master social media analytics.

In other news…

Figures from Strategy Analytics reveal that this year will see 50% of the nation’s overall marketing spend in the UK going towards digital channels.

New research on 500 companies across the retail, hospitality and leisure industries shows that nearly all (99%) have considered location-based targeting as a possible inclusion for their marketing plans

Meanwhile speculation has been mounting over the buyout of mobile payments firm Monitise, with Visa and MasterCard being touted as potential investors.