text: 'Best Publisher Support Team' 2011 was won by Affilinet - read the interview following their success | PerformanceIN
  'Best Publisher Support Team' 2011 was won by Affilinet - read the interview following their success
  How did you enjoy the evening, were there any particular highlights (besides picking up your award)?
  "It's the venue that really works for me across the evening, a really impressive setting with excellent food and a great place for networking with the top players in the industry. Seeing the number of people in attendance was a highlight as I have been to every awards ceremony and each year the growth is fantastic."
  Did you anticipate such a good response from the judges?
  "We felt that we had a really strong message in our entry for this award as we'd invested a lot of resource and time in developing the offering and team in the previous year. It's never good to expect to win, but we were confident of our publisher services team and very very pleased to have our hard work recognised."
  The increase in Publishers that were using your network facilitated the need to expand your publisher support channels. What new processes / systems did you adopt and what made it appealing to Publishers do you think?
  "Our key focus was on our people, processes and service. As a result of the growth of the publisher team and developing our publisher offering, we grew our publisher base significantly without compromising on quality. Our focus was on tailoring recruitment across specific verticals, predominantly through a series of new program wins, and also in setting up partnerships with new publisher business models within mobile, social and retargeting. Listening to and understanding our publishers needs was key to us being able to deliver what we did to enable us to win this award and showcase our achievements."
  Do Affilinet have anything up their sleeve over the next few months in the run up to the 2012 Performance Marketing Awards?
  "We certainly do! We've not long launched updates to our Product Level Tracking, Voucher and Offer Management Tool and Publisher Sign Up Process; the first few months of 2012 are set to see further developments and releases we're very keen to bring to the market."
  What do you think are the new factors within the Performance Marketing space to contend with?
  "Utilising all the data we can and will have, intelligently. This is something which is much more established within other channels, and we all need to find ways of bringing together all the individual channels and verticals we have within our networks, client teams and ultimately bringing more spend into our industry. I believe that 2012 will continue to see new providers coming into the space right across the data, tracking, management and technology arenas, but that the position of the networks will remain strong through a true demonstration of our unique value. Something which is not always considered, but which came to the fore at the Expo in 2011 is the experienced resource working within the industry and how we ensure that this remains with us and is added to by a continuous flow of new talent and advocates; this could become quite a key topic if we achieve everything prior..."
  What's next for Affilinet?
  "Outside of the product and service developments I have mentioned, we are actively growing our team in the UK and across Europe, enabling us to invest more quality time and resource in all of our partners businesses and activity. We continue to work very strongly in the UK and are working all the time to make the most of our European footprint and data set... (to be a complete cliché) watch this space."
  View the winning video from 2011 below:
  Interview with Gary Bicker, UK country manager at Affilinet.
  The Performance Marketing Awards will take place at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London on 15th May 2012. If you would like to be a part of next year's awards, by sponsoring the event or booking a table contact Stuart Pringle stuart.pringle@existem.com or phone 0117 203 3013.