One of the hottest (in every sense?) events in marketing is over. The two days of the annual Affiliate World Europe have been a bash of insights, trends, and crucial knowledge for the industry players.
Our experts didn’t come back home empty-handed as well. Thus, it would be a shame if we missed out on some fine analysis.
Where is the industry headed? What are its main problems? And how do you surf the wave of changes? Read on and find out!
Conference Highlights Overview
Since the conference gathered thousands of professionals, we physically can’t cover every speech. So don’t be mad for not mentioning your favorites!
Now that’s settled, let’s talk about the industry trends that dominated the majority of Affiliate World Barcelona.
AI: Higher Profits, Fewer Troubles
That’s kinda predictable, but what gives? Artificial intelligence bathed in the headlights of every second speech this year.
However, those weren’t general summaries of obvious stuff like “AI is revolutionary.”
For example, Nadim Kuttab revealed how his team uses AI to scale native ads. In his masterclass, he told how with the help of generative AI, they create dozens of landing pages and ad variations, bringing to life million-dollar native ad campaigns.
In addition, Martin Kocandrie shared how to use AI in campaign optimization within Google’s Performance Max.
Native Advertising: The King of Personalization
The general wave of personalized advertising hasn’t skipped the sights of affiliates. So aside from AI, native advertising was the hottest topic on AWE Barcelona.
In her speech, Anna Gita shared the secrets of crafting high-converting VSLs(videos pitching ads to customers) for native ads and pre-sells. Anna shared insights on segmenting audiences and tailoring native messaging, all with the help of AI tools.
Worth Mentioning: eCommerce & PPC Revenue & Fake Web
Despite being a little overshadowed by two former topics, we’d share the third place on the hype pedestal between ecommerce, PPC revenue, and fake web.
We’ve discovered in multiple speeches that eCommerce is one of the fastest-growing niches in the industry despite the economic decline.
Andrew Turner presented multiple proprietary methods of driving up to a 50% uplift in PPC revenue. The methods included RTB decisions powered by Google Analytics, leveraging unique data sets, and implementation of a scoring system.
As for the fake web, we had an interesting speech by Maor Aharoni, who unpacked the complexities of fake traffic and explained how to deal with fraud.
Epom Expert Attendees Share Their Insights
Our special agents deployed right at the heart of Affiliate World Europe have their own insights to share.
The market is still oversaturated with direct CPA advertisers that buy affiliate traffic specifically and refuse to manage their own media buying.
However, there is an emerging layer of CPA advertisers who plan to manage traffic with their own resources or are at least ready to consider this possibility.
We offered such brands to use Epom’s retargeting script on their landings to launch retargeted campaigns on interested users. We’ll see how that goes soon enough.
The conference name is “Affiliate World,” – so it is no wonder why participants' most used keywords were traffic, performance, leads, and conversions. The focus of affiliates is conversions rather than brand awareness.
Epom White-label DSP feels like fish in the sea in such an environment. We chose “retargeting” as the key feature to present to our potential clients, and this was a great bet.
We had many direct advertisers and media buyers who were interested in an easy combination of cross-platform retargeting and main media buying types.
We came to AWE on 12th July to research the market and show the retargeting capabilities of our solution to the advertisers unwilling to develop their own.
I was glad about the positive feedback, but I was even more delighted to hear so many great speeches on industry changes and how we should react to them. We left AWE on 13th July being truly impressed!
Where Does the Wind of Marketing Blow?
35+ speakers, 5000+ attendees, and 210+ exhibitors, this year’s Affiliate World Europe 2023 was a remarkable event (at least that’s what our experts say) to attend.
Most industry players see the potential of AI and personalization with native ads, so most tech vendors and ad business owners move in that direction. Ecommerce remains hot despite an upcoming crisis, which is curious.
Just like before, lots of affiliate advertisers aren’t ready to develop/try their solution, so like Andriy said – affiliate marketing is onto conversions, not brand awareness.
Still, Epom’s ad server is capable of much more than retargeting. Get your free trial today to empower your advertising business!
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