A4u Expo Europe: Munich

Well I’m excited to report that I’ll be heading over to Munich on the 19th May, to attend the A4u Expo in Munich.

The event is organised by Matthew Wood of Existem and A4UForum fame, and I have been invited by Marcus Rader from Tradetracker to guest on a panel discussing online & offline convergence, and I think how and when we will start seeing the pay on performance model in offline media. This is a fascinating subject – the stats back up the huge potential for the offline space to move into the Performance realm.  Here’s my profile for the event:  my A4uExpo profile

Also on the panel will be Ricki Jones, from Impact Radius UK, a chap called Tom from tom.de, a lady called Caroline Ferguson from Leads2Travel in Holland, and Marcus himself moderating.

Having worked in offline media back in the 90s and understanding clients needs to understand sales uplift and return on investment, before this whole affiliate world came to life, it will be fascinating to hear what some of these guys have to say.  The ROI of old was based on the factor of fear: ‘what will happen to my sales if I stop advertising?’ This was particularly true of TV advertising. I worked on the COI account in my last ‘nonline’ media role, and there we trialled unique URLs in press ads encouraging consumers to visit these particular pages, more so that we could track which ads in which titles were being followed up; it didn’t give the consumer anything, and it didn’t really work.

Offering consumers something special, something unique, something desirable, in return for them visiting a designated URL would be the way forward, and this would be a tactical deployment to attract new customers by offering them something they otherwise wouldn’t get.  Otherwise where’s the incentive not to just go brand via Google, then to Voucher Code, then to site.

I know Impact Radius business model in the US and UK is to build performance-based relationships across media. So far in the UK, we haven’t seen this statement result in any live campaigns offline, and it will be interesting to hear about progress there.

I’m also going to dig out some stats on share of market, gaps, opportunities, anything anyone might already be up to in the nonline performance space (I know they are calling it something else), just to have a couple of mixed metaphors up my sleeve.  Rabbits I think.

If you’re going to the Expo I’ll be around most of the day on the 19th, and also for the evening networking event, and also for most of the day on the 20th, so pop by the stand… oh no hang on… er…I’ll be loitering around the stands of my UK buddies…