PI Live learnings

Last week gave us another amazing return to Old Billingsgate, in London for the latest PI Live show – and one of the busiest conferences for years. Based on our conversations we had at the conference, we thought it worthwhile sharing some of these PI Live learnings in more detail.

PI Live has always been one of the best opportunities for renewing old conversions and making new connections within the wider affiliate industry. The 2022 show took that to a new level and as first-time exhibitors, we congratulate Matt Wood and the team for an excellent event.

Great Interaction

Exhibiting enabled the Moonpull team to have some really useful interactions with a huge variety of folk across the affiliate world. It was fascinating to hear real-world experience of tracking issues from publishers, agencies and networks.

The conference was also a chance to hear from some of the leading figures in the industry. Attendees were treated to expert presentations and panel sessions on subjects as diverse as de-siloing the affiliate ‘channel’ to exploring aspects of partnership marketing.

Leading affiliate network, Awin also used the event as a vehicle to release their inaugural Power100 report. The report profiles 100 of the most exciting partnerships on our global platform across every market and sector, to inspire, inform and challenge your perceptions of affiliate and partner marketing

Strength of Affiliate

Importantly, most speakers had a very positive view of the strengths of the affiliate marketing sector against a global backdrop of more challenging economic times. The sector may currently not be growing as fast as some other disciplines as Matt Higgins of Dentsu noted. However with the changes coming in advertising cookies, the general consensus was that affiliate was well placed to weather the changes as much of the sector has already addressed this.

The conference highlighted a number of key areas in the affiliate world which are proving the strength of the model, which enables advertisers to access specialist affiliate publishers across all marketing channels. William Hamer-Jones expanded on this in his session on the importance of de-siloing affiliate.

Brand partnerships featured in a panel led by Nic Yates of Silverbean and another featuring Anthony Clements, Kevin Edwards and Linda O’Connell speaking from a network perspective.

The recent state of the industry survey reports that affiliate now accounts for more than 10% of revenue. The challenge is to ensure affiliate has an appropriate share of voice for “brands to continue investment so affiliate marketing grows in importance”.

Q&A on Compromised Tracking

Moonpull founder Steve Brown led a session on Wednesday on ‘Identifying and Understanding Compromised Tracking’. For the 9:30am session on day (usually a bit of a ‘graveyard shift’) this was extremely well attended with around a hundred participants, which suggested a real appetite to understand the issues being covered.

The organisers posed a few questions to the audience which were enlightening, especially given the event focus. Responding to the question “Do you feel you understand the role of consent management platforms in gathering and applying user consent as it applies to affiliate marketing”, only 10% said they did understand well; 67% said not very well.

The audience were also asked “Do you feel you can look at a consent management (CMP) pop up, and get a fell for whether the consent gathering was appropriate”. Only 6% responded yes and 59% didn’t know.

Steve outlined the issues surrounding first- and third-party and server tracking. For many newer entrants to the industry, it was a chance to get a more technical grounding in the most basic mechanism in the affiliate industry.

A quotation by Mark Kuhillow from 2007 is still one of the best descriptions for what tracking should achieve: “Affiliates need to be assured that they are being paid for all the sales they generate, and that the traffic they have driven is being correctly, fairly and accurately tracked as this will have a direct impact on the commissions they earn.”

Steve’s description of third-party cookies as “eavesdropping on a conversation” was commented on by a few people as the best description they’d heard. Despite the big technical changes in tracking however there are still issues that affect all tracking and Steve shared that around 14% of all first-party tracking is potentially compromised.

The parting shot from Steve was that there was definitely good news for the affiliate industry. Affiliate networks and SaaS platforms are all now taking the issues around tracking and cookie consent more seriously. Several are now actively using Moonpull to assist in this.

There is also the positive in that Moonpull can help publishers in developing their strategy for link choice based on a technical understanding of each advertiser.

Learnings Drive Development

From conversations with networks, publishers and OPMs at the show, it would appear that there is an almost-limitless appetite for Moonpull’s auditing service. The benefits for publishers and networks are clear providing a strong ROI.

There is a growing realisation that better-informed technical conversations lead to improved processes and strategy, significant commissions being more accurately attributed and strengthened commercial partnerships developed.

As OPMs and agencies are closely measured by advertisers, in terms of tracked sales volume, ensuring that all sales are tracked is a crucial issue. That’s especially the case for any accounts being managed purely on a performance basis.

If you would like to see more of how Moonpull can benefit your own business, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a line on the Contact page