Today’s host was the wonderful Will Bonaddio, Senior Client Partner at Electric House, who’s own expertise and passion for the industry made him a dynamic and compelling presence. Don’t forget to watch his closing comments, during which he discusses his main takeaways from the day’s events – including the misconception that affiliate is a shady industry, annoying adverts, and the future of browser extensions.
To open the show, Impact’s Managing Director for EMEA, Florian Gramshammer, presented a keynote, during which he discussed modern partnerships and how they’re becoming essential. The day’s sessions followed suit, focusing heavily on how, for every area of the industry, partnerships are truly the answer we need to problems such as the loss of third-party data.
Here’s a run down of some of the key themes of the day…
The user comes first…
The focus on industry wellbeing and support was definitely prevalent throughout today’s sessions – the user being the main focus of this concern. We’re obviously familiar with the impending loss of data, and the fact that this is beneficial to consumers but will wreak havoc on advertising. There seemed to be many solutions discussed today, and with focus for not only the consumer’s privacy preferences, but for those in the industry who will suffer from the privacy changes.
As Kevin Edwards, Global Strategy Director at Awin said: ”One of the beauties of the affiliate channel in that there is a lot of flexibility and a lot of creativity, so there are always discussions we can have about keeping that balancing act.”
More future gazing
With borders beginning to reopen, its (hopefully!) time that we can start thinking about travelling. In their ‘New Horizons – Expedia Helps the Travel Industry Take Flight’ session, Michael Long, Senior Manager, Retail Partnerships (UK & Nordics) at Expedia Group and George Gray, Global Client Lead at Partnerize, discussed the upwards trajectory for the travel industry as it emerges from the upheaval of the pandemic with a new lease of life.
That upward trajectory is certainly not limited to travel. From the amount of positive statistics surrounding the increase of those engaging with the channel, it’s clear we’re all feeling positive about the future – that’s why…
…partnerships should be priority
Another topic that was at the front of people’s minds throughout today’s sessions was that of the importance of quality of partnerships, and the importance of partnerships in general. Transparency between partners is of utmost importance at a time when we cannot meet in person. To repeat the phrase we have all heard too often, these times are unsure and things are unreliable – we should not add our partners to that list.
Tomorrow is the final day of this year’s PI LIVE Global – we can’t believe how quickly it is flying by. Tune in at 1pm GMT tomorrow, and if you don’t already have a ticket, grab one now – trust me, you don’t want to miss out on tomorrow’s sessions.
