Every week PerformanceIN looks back on its weekly coverage to give you – the reader – a concise update of happenings in the performance marketing industry, as well as the opinion shared by our expert contributors on a broad range of talking points.
In the news
In the headlines this week, Kerri Pollard stepped down from a long reign as president of CJ Affiliate by Conversant, succeeded by Waleed Al-Atraqchi.
CEO John Giuliani admitted that finding a candidate worthy of stepping into Pollard’s shoes represented a “challenge”, but Al-Atraqchi looks to be an exciting replacement, having grown company revenue at Nielsen-owned software provider Affinnova by an average of 33% over nine consecutive years.
Al-Atrachqi commended the former president’s ‘vision and leadership’ in building one of the largest and most successful affiliate marketing companies in the world.
Performance Marketing Insights: Europe, which sets up camp in Berlin at the end of June, revealed former Apple creative director and ‘iMan’ Ken Segall as a second keynote speaker at the two-day conference.
Standing tall as Europe’s largest performance advertising conference; the event already promises sessions tackling mobile, big data, personalisation, multi-channel marketing, as well as a keynote from content marketing personality Mike King.
Ken Segall, who notably ‘put the i in iMac’, worked alongside Steve Jobs for 12 years, fine-tuning products, interfaces, advertising and brand, and will lead a headline session on marketing ‘simplicity’.
Also in the news, eBay announced plans to roll out a new product which allows web merchants to pay commission for every sale generated from its online advertising, with higher rates meaning more prominent positions in the site’s search window.
And budgets for TV advertising appear to be on a further decline as digital formats took an even greater chunk of marketer spend during April.
Catch up with the full news stream here, including AdBlock’s mission to eradicate advertorial and CAKE’s latest international expansion.
Expert-led
Tom Sadler, from Australian company Indago Digital, asked a controversial question: could Google’s new products spell disaster for the price comparison industry? Google’s comparison products come as part of its quest to create ‘frictionless’ paths to purchase, but do they really pose such a threat?
Praises are so often sung about Facebook ads that we seldom hear about the negatives. Cat Leaver, head of marketing at AD, took a refreshingly balanced look at the platform for advertisers, weighing up both the pros and cons of placement on the ‘ever-evolving beast’.
On the note of social, OgilvyOne dnx CEO Drew Nicholson looked at the role it plays in B2B marketing, noting that, much like networking in person, good social skills are crucial in turning conversation into a conversion.
And our masterclass this week dived into the world of native advertising, pointing at how marketers really can prosper from this innovative format.
Catch up on the week’s viewpoints in full here, including whether affiliate marketing might be in need of a new payout model, and why best practice in email marketing is becoming ‘de-facto’ law.