Affiliate Summit Europe 2019 – Claudia Batschi-Rota moderated German Country Roundtable
The Affiliate Summit events have been founded in 2003 for the purpose of providing educational sessions on the latest industry issues and fostering a productive networking environment for affiliate marketers. An important element of these conventions are the Country Roundtables, where local subject matter experts & peers debate the latest disruptors, opportunities and trends in their region. Each roundtable discusses their own nuances in areas like legal requirements, payment challenges, consumer trends and affiliate network support.
This year’s German Country Roundtable was moderated by Claudia Batschi-Rota, Country Manager Germany and Austria at Tradedoubler. Top subjects in the discussion yesterday where the effects of ITP 2.0 and GDPR on the affiliate industry, as well as trends like Blockchain technology and latest developments in influencer marketing.
Most attendees perceive ITP 2.0 as a challenge for their business, even though affiliate networks came up with solutions to mitigate the issues. Claudia highlighted the importance of mobile, which many advertisers are slow to adopt whereas publishers move much faster. Larger advertisers might not regard affiliate as so business critical and claim they need more time to implement changes.
The audience then discussed transparency issues with tracking standards and deduplication. At the moment publishers and networks need to trust that clients are accurately managing their deduplication processes. Blockchain technology, which Tradedoubler recently announced as part of their product vision for 2019, was perceived as a possible solution to guarantee more transparency throughout the industry. Accountable transparency could also improve consumer confidence.
Another hot topic in the discussion were the implications of GDPR for the affiliate industry. GDPR has been hyped, but it seems that many German sites still don’t have privacy policies and are way behind. And many publishers collect more data then they need. We are curious how this topic will evolve.
Blockchain and smart contracts have been discussed as a possible solution to speed up publisher payments and mitigate fraud problems. With smart contracts, publishers could be paid immediately on completion of micro events and transactions. Less leakage would mean more money for honest publishers and cashflow is key for publishers.
Some particularities of the German market have been mentioned during the course of the session. Payment terms are 30 days longer in Germany than in other markets. And Germany is the most risk averse tier one market. That means more legal checks, validations, due diligence and longer payment terms. Publishers who want to enter the German market need to be aware of these cultural particularities. In order to make programs work better, native German localisations are required.
Trends and differences in influencer marketing was discussed as the last key topic of the roundtable. Influencers are more gathered around platforms in Germany than e.g. in the UK, where direct relationships are more common. Gifting was seen as an important tool to engage with influencers. Where publishers are paid, all activity could go through networks to get full visibility of how users engage through full funnel. Claudia briefly mentioned that Metapic, a Tradedoubler company that helps influencers with intuitive tools to create appealing and revenue generating content, has now launched in Germany and other markets.
A very interesting and inspiring roundtable came to an end, but if you are around at the Affiliate Summit Europe in Amsterdam, you can meet us at stand E29. We are more than happy to continue the discussion of trend topics for 2019, to plan the implementation with you and to help you grow your business.
