Helen Southgate

I am what I think is a typical Norwich fan, ever the optimist, modest in defeat and always certain that we will do well.  In recent years it has been tougher to think like this as I have seen my club drop from the heights of the Premier League to where we are now, mid table in league one.

At the end of last season I took defeat gracefully and accepted our relegation from the championship.  Even when Bryan Gunn was appointed I thought it was a wrong decision but I stood by my club and let them keep my rebate.  Up until Saturday I regretted this and was starting to lose motivation.  I have to travel from London for every home game and being witness to the 7-1 defeat, missing the Wycombe game, being put through the boredom of the Walsall game and then travelling to MK Dons for another disappointing TV performance, on travelling to the game against Charlton on Saturday I was feeling less of an optimist.

However, the game on Saturday completely restored my passion and faith.  It was back to the type of football we like to see, albeit still a class or two below where we would like to be but it was a game where we passed the ball around and looked exciting upfront.  Most pleasing of all however was the way we came back from 2-0 down and could very nearly have won the game, and would have deserved to.  The team fought hard and never gave up – that is the Norwich team I want to see.  Some players were outstanding as well, Korey Smith, Darel Russell and the man I bought with my rebate, Grant Holt.  It was worth that £80 rebate in the end, bring on Gillingham.

I have worked at two affiliate networks over the last 7.5 years so I not only understand the pressures involved from this side but more importantly I have seen how this has rapidly changed.  Back in 2002 there were a few key networks, UK Affiliates (now dgm), Commission Junction, Online Media Group, Affiliate Window, Tradedoubler and Buy.at.  So much the same as it is today except for a few additions from outside the UK.

When I started in affiliate marketing back in 2002 I started as an account manager, dedicated to one rather large account which later became two accounts, but never more than two.  Because my time was solely spent on these accounts I knew their business model inside out, I knew all of the affiliates, I had history with the accounts so I knew which levers to pull to drive sales.  It was an incredibly successful partnership.  Over the last few years I sadly think that this dedication to account management has been lost from many affiliate networks, visible proof of this has been the entrance of agencies into this space and some clients moving their campaigns in-house.

So why has this been lost?  I think there are a few reasons for this but the most significant is that overrides have decreased.  It is becoming harder for networks to justify the time they can allocate to each account and these conversations happen regularly, the sign of a saturated market perhaps?  I also think that in a quest to gain business affiliate networks have shot themselves in the foot by selling themselves on incredibly low overrides.

So, where does this leave affiliate networks? It’s a tough environment out there at the moment for networks, the barriers have dropped and online agencies have got a foothold in the market, selling themselves on consultancy.  Off the shelf tracking technologies are easily available and some networks even lease their own technologies.  The larger affiliates have more buying power and can easily move direct and clients themselves are seeing advantages of taking their entire campaign or the top affiliates in-house.  So perhaps a hopeless case you might say?  However, ever the optimist I think that there is still a place for networks but they need to position themselves carefully, should they offer service and added value or should they simply be a technology provider?

I will watch this space with extreme interest but I would expect that in the next year things will only get tougher and will be interesting to see where the networks strategies take them next.

If you are interested in this topic get yourself to Day One of the A4U Expo as this is a topic being discussed and I would expect it to be a lively, heated and emotional debate.

The talk of the town at the moment is Real Time Search.  Google want it, Twitter has it and Facebook have just acquired it through FriendFeed, so what is all the fuss about?

The definition of Real Time Search is highly contested.  My personal view is that real time search can only be defined as being immediate, so if an event has just happened or news has just broken you should be able to find it immediately.  This is why users are turning to feeds such as Twitter and Facebook for up to date news rather than Google as Google will tend to source articles which are not generally instantaneous as have to be written and published.  Users more and more are looking to real time search, hence Google’s desire to catch up and provide it.

Real Time Search emphasises the switch that has happened over recent years from document-centric content to people-centric content.  The news we often rely on (and journalists now rely on) is from the public, unknown people writing what they know, see and hear.   This is not exactly new per se; journalists have been doing this for a long time, using people at the scene of an event to get immediate news.  The Sky News iPhone application even has a function whereby you can send Sky News a report from your iPhone.

It is clear to see that society behaviour is changing with the ease of acquiring information, people want to know what is happening immediately and they want it wherever they are.  You can see why the newspapers are suffering as people don’t want to wait a day now to read the news, they want it immediately.  However, newspapers should realise this and capitalise on being able to add comment, rounded views and interviews to news that people will likely already know.

I do wonder whether there will be a point that there is too much information and users can no longer get what they want quickly as they have to filter out masses of irrelevant content.  However, it appears the giants of search are already aware of this with Google releasing its upgraded Caffeine infrastructure and Microsoft launching Bing, both reported to deliver more relevant information sooner. Also, the kings of Real Time Search are developing their applications further, FriendFeed for example allows you to search for a term amongst your friends, although I struggle to see the use in that, but perhaps that’s more reflective of my circle of friends!