A4U 'Innovation in Travel' session

[mattg]

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SweetPete's words on holidaysuncovered, esp re brand building and aiming to deliver more than a click in/click out experience chimed with me. Nice result for the founder. (Hey would be fun to speculate on the purchase price ....).

Being in the 'chain' of user service is essential of course, but only the last link gets paid under the affiliate model, there's the rub. (haha the Webgains presenter in the voucher codes session 'we don't have any data on how many cookies get overwritten', audience member 'how can you possibly not have the data', she: 'yes we do have the data, we haven't analysed it but, but it's somewhere between 2% & 60% depending on program'). :blush

As for CJ & LastMinute, mostly a history lesson, not sure what the aim was there.

[Chris Clarkson]

I went to this session too. I'd like to apologise to Pete Norwood, I was actually looking forward to hearing his part, but left after 20 minutes of "the history of travel since 1880" by the chap from lastminute.com

He actually got up to about 2006 and I was looking forward to finally getting something "innovation". He then jumped onto telling us about the lastminute brand. Final straw.

Again, I didn't hear Pete's part (I aim to watch it on the video!) but it did seem the first two speakers were told the session title and then didn't talk to each other in any way to make the session work as a whole.

Very disappointing!

[Keith]

Pete's part of the session was certainly the best bit, I have to admit to stifling more than few yawns during the middle sector and if I'd been nearer the back would have legged it too.

[visitorgrowth]

Have to agree, it was probably the worst session of all those I attended over the 2 days.

Pete's part was pretty good, but it really was fluff from the speakers from CJ and Lastminute.

[Hero]

haha the Webgains presenter in the voucher codes session 'we don't have any data on how many cookies get overwritten', audience member 'how can you possibly not have the data', she: 'yes we do have the data, we haven't analysed it but, but it's somewhere between 2% & 60% depending on program'.

allow me to clarify - the data of seeing how the customer interacts with the merchant through the affiliate channel is there, but not in a format that is readily accessible and available at any time. At this stage, no network knows exactly what the overlap is. Awin have just launched an analytics path trying to establish what that is for their programs and all networks have pulled logs apart to see the data. As James Little also mentioned, most networks are working on a solution to get that data in a comprehensive report.

What we were all trying to get across through the session is that there is no blanket approach and one size fits all. As I mentioned in the presentation, I have seen reports for specific merchants where the overlap is 2%. I have also been told from another network that for a specific merchant on their network, that overlap was 60% (although I never said that it's between 2 and 60% for all merchants, I must point out, you have misunderstood that).This clearly displays that each merchant is different and needs to be analysed separately. Each merchant needs to understand what each affiliate, each advertising method and each marketing channel is worth to them, before deciding on the who and how to pay and allocate budget.

[mattg]

although I never said that it's between 2 and 60% for all merchants, I must point out, you have misunderstood that

Hero, it's a fine point of wording but I accept that, I'm sorry if that was a misrepresentation, it was unintentional.

As an aside (not aimed at Hero) - one of the difficulties here for a site that may be further back in the cookie chain is the lack of published data on this issue. Without published data, we're in the dark and that fuels speculation I think. And without knowing the size of the 'problem' we don't know if we should be putting resources into solving it.

[Hero]

As an aside (not aimed at Hero) - one of the difficulties here for a site that may be further back in the cookie chain is the lack of published data on this issue. Without published data, we're in the dark and that fuels speculation I think. And without knowing the size of the 'problem' we don't know if we should be putting resources into solving it.

you're absolutely right and that was the whole point of the session - in order to be effective, you have to measure. In order to measure, you have to have the data. Apart from the networks' efforts, merchants can also get the data from their analytics packs and by using local tracking, which will give them the information on a wider scale, not just within the affiliate channel. Affiliates however are indeed in the dark and need the info to come from networks and merchants.