Date: Monday, January 12th, 2009.  Session 5d, 2:00pm.
Session Description: How are videos being used by affiliates and merchants?  A detailed look into how and where they are performing best with suggested hints and tips to drive better click through and conversions. The panel consisted of:

• Marty M. Fahncke, President, FawnKey & Associates (Moderator)
• Michael Jenkins, CEO/Founder, MarketLeverage
• Melissa Salas, Director of Marketing, Buy.com
• Jonathan Stefansky, EVP Sales and Marketing, Qoof

This wasn’t the panel I had planned on going to, but I’m glad I went and checked it out.  There was some interesting factoids dropped and I enjoyed the Twitter going in the background with the anonymous admirer of Melissa asking if she was in the videos.

Bullet Point Review!

• There’s tremendous potential.
• Consider your site when trying to figure out what will work.
• Besides person to person, video is the second highest sales driver.
• ML looked at 2008 as the year of infrastructure.
• Big marketers have taken note of online video.
• In 2007, 59% of internet users watched video online.  In 2008 that skyrocketed to 77%.
• With banner blindness there’s a need for a new type of creative.
• Banners are the lowest performing; video overcomes even the success of text links.
• Give the affiliate a better way to convert.
• Low cost for affiliates – no streaming costs, no hosting costs, widgets are interactive.
• Attention spans are around 3 minutes.
• Content must be engaging and capture the user within 15 seconds.
• Networks and merchants wouldn’t invest in video if it didn’t work.
• Affiliates are very eager to receive the best content for the least work.
• People who are in video now are in it for it’s potential, not the actual of today.
• 77 million unique visitors on YouTube (my notes might be wrong on that, and I didn’t write down if that was per day or per month, but I think it was per day.)
• MLTV raises brand awareness, bloggers talk about it.
• Companies are very sensitive to UCG (User Generated Content).
• DO: think about the shelf life of a video.  Videos about how to do something instead of a hot trend or product will be relevant longer.
• DON’T: set your videos to auto play with sound.  It’s incredibly intrusive, especially if someone’s at work, which is where most people view videos due to faster broadband connections.
• DON’T: go over 3 minutes.
• DO: grab attention within the first 15 seconds.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Where are things with .tv domains?  They’re increasing in popularity, but they still don’t get near the traffic a .com domain does.
• How do you track this?  Qoof embeds links with the AID and PID for tracking.  Others use view time, page views, how long people stay on the page, etc. to track success.

Once again, Michael Buechele of 11|15 Media blogged about this session for the official Affiliate Summit Blog.  Check out his recap for anything I may have missed while tweeting : Affiliate Summit West 2009 Session Recap – Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?

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This session was September 18th and promised to tell publishers and advertisers alike how to embrace web 2.0 in their marketing campaigns and get in on the discussion about upcoming trends for emerging markets, Commission Junction, and the industry as a whole. The panel consisted of:

• Angela Mihalakopoulos, Associate Business Development Manager, Commission Junction (Moderator)
• Shergul Arshad,Vice President Business Development, Stylefeeder
• Melissa D. Salas, Director of Marketing, Buy.com
• David Silverman, Director Business Development, Aggregate Knowledge

Other than a stray weird comment about user generated content being the primary technology of web 2.0 (it’s not a technology), the panel was pretty good.  Lots of good ideas, but I apologize in advance if my notes are a big fragmented.

Bullet Point Review!

• The piece of the pie this represents is still small.
• Common tie for web 2.0 is UGC (user generated content).
• UGC drives social interaction.
• Collaborate, engage, interaction, control.
• You don’t have to do everything, do what’s right for your business.
• Web 2.0 allows the ability to grow rapidly.
• Open source software is your friend.
• Modules: RSS, blogs, video, podcasts, forums, chat rooms.
• Bookmarks integrated with advertisers RSS feeds.
• Many technologies can work together without developers to alter them.
• How do you measure?
• -> Increase in conversions/revenue.
• -> Ask for reviews.
• -> Brand awareness can’t always be measured.
• -> For video, how long did viewers watch
• -> Natural search
• -> Test & improve.
• CJ has “emerging markets” team.
• Advanced link section works well with web 2.0 technologies.
• Market to individuals instead of segments.
• -> Use personalization and customization whenever possible.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Try using the CRM angle when approaching management about embracing these web 2.0 avenues.
• Create your benchmarks at the beginning so you know your goals.

I was a bit ahead of the curve in terms of web 2.0 so I heard a lot of stuff I’d heard before, but hopefully this is new for you!

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This week has been nuts – I’ve been on both coasts, in three time zones, and multiple states of mind. Yesterday, I admit, was really hard to get my head back into an “office” frame of mind. Which includes coming back to blogging. So here’s the easy post of the week – a wrap up of stuff you might have missed.

• PsPrint gets some ink in USA Today – woot! This is just plain a great article about print marketing, aside from what obviously lead me to this article. Kudos to author Rhonda Abrams!
• We also got a nod on InsideCRM.com, even though I wish we were higher up than #50. Give us some credit, man!
• Delivery.com came to my rescue in Boston. Seriously, it’s awesome!
• FeedFront, a new magazine being put out by Shawn Collins & Missy Ward, is coming to us soon! There looks to be some great articles. On the AffiliateThing podcast this week Shawn mentioned that it will most likely be a quarterly thing, and free! So go sign up – what do you have to lose?
• Affiliate-Karma.com has been launched by the internet geek girl herself Stephanie Agresta – not for nothing, but from what I can tell it’s just another outsourced program management firm.
• Remember that even the smallest of holidays, like the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, allow for great marketing opportunities!
• BuyTV, an online show hosted by Melissa Salas, is going national. G4 picked it up to run on their cable network. Just goes to show that great web content can take you places!

That’s about it for this week. I did have to declare feed bankruptcy and Digg shout bankruptcy to help weed through the stuff I missed at the beginning of the week, so if there’s anything I should have seen and didn’t, share it with me in the comments.

Have a terrific Memorial Day weekend!

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