Two days and a whole lot of learning at the India Affiliate Summit 2016

Its a great time to be in India and being an advertising, public relations and marketing professional with many years of experience in the Middle East, I'm enjoying the opportunity to be a part of the 'new India' which is surging ahead by leaps and bounds in every field. 

The India Affiliate Summit 2016 was  designed to revolutionize the Affiliate marketplace in India. Held at the Leela Gurgaon on the 1st and 2nd of September and with an opportunity for   networking and observing innovation in its best avatars,  the Summit was segregated to provide all participants the opportunity to hobnob with fellow affiliates and  brands alike, with the Affiliate Street being one of the main attractions.

An Overview- Day I at the India Affiliate Summit, Leela Gurgaon

Initiated by IAMAI to bring affiliates and the performance marketing industry together, it provided  educational sessions on the latest industry issues along with networking opportunities for affiliate marketers.

  

One of the panel discussions 

Starting off with the  interesting theme    'Demystifying New Age Marketing' with the Theme Address by Ms Parul Bhargava, Co Founder and CEO V Commission Media, followed by the Leadership address - 'Constructing a Good Affiliate' programme where the Speaker was Mr Anurag Gupta, Founder and MD, DGM India, the programme elicited a great deal of attention from the packed audience who then followed it up with related  questions and feedback. 

Interspersed with visits to the Affiliate Street, I thoroughly enjoyed the  first day and ensured that I attended each of the sessions.  

The Affiliate Street was a  section completely dedicated to Affiliate marketers and gave all the participants  a chance to immerse, converse and disperse insights on performance-based marketing. - wouldn't be too far fetched if I said that it was a great opportunity  to experience the future of marketing

With publishers, brands, ad networks, bloggers and agencies in attendance, the setup

At Affiliate Street and loving it!

sought to replicate a “marketplace” which  had ‘streets and vendors’ with the main aim of furthering  business’ opportunities through affiliate marketing.

This innovative setup was  intended to encourage healthy competition and bring together the 1500+ delegates and 100+ companies at the Summit.

Affiliate marketing is not a novel concept in India.  However, the proliferation  of the internet and digital mediums have given a new life to affiliate marketing by making it more effective and easy to adopt.

Definitions of affiliate marketing vary from 

'a broad performance based marketing in which one or more affiliates is  rewarded for each customer influenced by the affiliate's own marketing efforts' to a narrow one like ' affiliate marketing is the practice of an advertiser paying a third party to publish ads on their web page.

As monetary compensation, various payment structures exist such as the percentage of sale and a fixed sum for conversion.

Based on the white paper released by the IAMAI at the conference,  currently affiliate marketing accounts for less than 10% of digital marketing spend against 15% in some matured markets. Growth of affiliate marketing spend would be driven by three key factors-

Increasing digital marketing spends

Adoption of affiliate marketing by new industries

Improved ecosystems for affiliate marketing on marketing platforms.

According to Ms Parul Bhargava, CEO V Commission Media Pvt. Ltd, 'Currently the technology in the mobile space is not able to effectively attribute sales to the affiliate which drove the last click. I strongly  believe  that with the power of the media, performance marketing on mobile platform will gain further prominence and the mobile ecosystem would evolve to mirror the internet based ecosystem for affiliate marketing"

All tweets came up on this large screen 

I'm detailing some of the sessions in no particular order of preference so that you can get an idea of the diversity and range a the India Affiliate Summit.

Cracking the Affiliate Marketing Code 

 Featuring Panelists like Ankur Singla, Founder and CEO HelpChat, Rajat Garg, Founder, Shimply, Neha Surekha,VP Marketing and Innovation, Airtel, Abhijit Banerjee, Head Affiliates, V Commission, Nadeesh Ramachandran, Vice President, Sales and Strategy, V Serv, and Saurabh Khemka, Business Head, Affiliate Marketing, NetCORE soltions, it was moderated by Sourabh Gupta, Engagement Manager, Technology and Digital, TATAStrategic Management group. 

Some key points of discussion-

From driving sales to building brands through affiliate marketing

How to identify the right affiliates and incentivise them for improving the brand

How can affiliates position themselves to become an attractive proposition for brands and networks.

Means or the end-Last Click vs Multi Click attribution

Moderated by Ms Parul Bhargava, and panelists like Gaurav Arora, Head, Acquisition Online marketing, Nearbuy, Sharat Krishnan, Vice President, Marketing, Blue Stone.com, Praveen Meloth, Head Marketing, Shop CJ, Ashish Bhatnagar, Head, Mobileand Affiliate Marketing, ShopClues,and Prasad Shejale, Co Founder and CEO, Logic Serve Group, the session covered a wide range of relevant topics, viz.

Is the current norm of last click wins unfair to affiliates?

How feasible is multi click attribution?

How can emerging technologies help in solving this puzzle?

Harsh Agarwal, Founder Shout Me Loud, Day 2
Definitely, one of, if not 'the' most popular speakers at the IAS 2016.

One of the more hard hitting sessions was Ordering its way to growth- Affiliate for E Commerce and Food Tech.

Moderated by Pankaj Gupta, Senior Practice Head-Consumer and retail,TATA Strategic Management Group, and with panelists like Meera Iyer, Head Marketing Big Basket, Shekhar Sharma, National Director, Group M Interaction, Sourav Shah, Head Digital Marketing and CRM,Jubilant Food works and Pramod Rao, Senior VP Marketing and Growth, Zomato, it was really useful!

Another session that I really must mention was the closing one.

Titled 'Into the Crystal Ball, New Age drivers for affiliate marketing' it started off with a packed audience and by the time it was half way through, there were more people standing in all the aisles and listening intently.

With panelists like Sumit Kumar, VP Digital, Oxygen Wallet,  Himanshu Periwal, Vice President , Ixigo, Rohan Bhargava , Co Founder, Cash Karo.com and moderated by Sourabh Gupta, Engagement Manager, Technology and Digital, TATA Strategic Management Group, it clearly showed all the path forward and closed on the very positive note that affiliate marketing is definitely set to be the  'next big thing' as a marketing tool in India.