This week, the Hello Partner team enjoyed a fantastic day out at impact.com’s Partnership Experience 2023 in London. We flew up an impressive set of lifts, which are apparently the fastest in Europe, to the dizzying heights of Landing Forty Two. With our ears still popping, we joined a crowd of partnership professionals before spectacular views of the capital city skyline, ready for a day of non-stop networking and note-taking.
At the event, we sponsored the popular ice cream stand, interviewed multiple attendees to hear their affiliate hot takes, and tantalised others with our ‘Guess How Many Sweets in a Jar’ game (stay tuned to find out who won next week). Additionally, we collected notes from each session, and spoke with senior members of the impact.com team, all so that we could bring you the key takeaways from the day.
Similar to previous conferences, there was a lot of chatter about how much affiliate marketing has changed, and how it is now impacting the entire customer journey. Unlike other conferences, there was little talk about artificial intelligence.
Owen Hancock, Regional Vice President (RVP), Marketing - EMEA at impact.com, said that the overarching themes of the day were supposed to be long-term partnerships and authenticity – and these indeed came through. But we also noticed a couple more ideas stimulating conversation and sparking interest. Below, we bring you our key takeaways from iPX 2023 London.
The death of the affiliate network master tag?
During the afternoon session, ‘3 Fundamental Features & 3 Future Fundamentals’, the notion that the end is nigh for the affiliate network master tag immediately caught our attention. Matthew Wood, Founder of Hello Partner, even took to LinkedIn to ask people what they thought of the suggestion.
The session’s presenters, James Bennie, RVP, Customer Success, at impact.com, and Matt Sheppard, Customer Success Director, impact.com, proposed that tag-based integrations will be replaced by server-to-server or API-based tracking over the next few years. If this is to be the case, what does it mean for the partnership landscape?
