Today was the first official day of Affiliate Summit West, out here in Las Vegas. Last night my plane was on the run way in Newark, NJ just as the snow was starting to come down heavy. In the end it all worked out fine, while others had some nasty delays.
Once arriving in Las Vegas, I headed over to the Rio where there was a nice long line for check in. I’m still hearing and seeing complaints on Twitter about people arriving and having waiting times of over 2 hours. I can’t complain much as it only took around 30 minutes for myself to check in and get to my room. Later that night I headed over to the Buy.at party at the Palms. It was a great party, but also super packed and only accepting “people on the list“.
That brings us to today, which was the first official day of Affiliate Summit West. After breakfast we headed down to get our badges and came to another massive line. It took around 30-45 minutes and then we were set.
Once again, Affiliate Summit has sold out and there are over 3,200+ attendees this year. I usually like to hit up a few sessions, but this time around I have been finding myself jumping in and out of them as they seem either too basic, or just not that interesting.
The meet market also was open today. While the exhibit hall is still being setup, everyone crowded into the meet market for networking and meeting with other business partners and friends.The full exhibit hall opens tomorrow, and is said to have over 100 exhibitors.
While in the meet market I met up with ShoeMoney and Alex Schultz from Facebook (both on my panel tomorrow). I actually ended up talking with Alex and the Facebook team for quite a while, and their future is looking good. Alex has deep background in affiliate marketing and understands the problems with approvals and low quality offers on the network. This topic and more will be covered in the “Advertising on Facebook” panel tomorrow.
As for now, I’m getting ready to head on over to the Market Leverage affiliates dinner at the Encore.
If you are here at Affiliate Summit, be sure to say hi and introduce yourself!
3,200. that's a lot of people. It sounds like fun though. I can't imagine the wait being over 2 hours for some people, that's ridiculous. I use to work out of Las Vegas and during events like CES or the NBA All-Star game the city goes nuts. Traffic is crazy. 2 hour wait to check in is unheard of though. Wow.
Man, those are great numbers. I hope you are finding the sessions better today.
That's really interesting talking to the facebook guys and it gives me a little more hope about their advertising methods.
Man! I really wanted to be there this year, but certainly in 2010!
Have a blast. hopefully it ends up being worth your while.. as conferences are always what you make of it!
Zac,
I arrived on Saturday night after a nine hour drive from SF Bay area CA.
I enjoyed getting there early enough to get my badge at 9:30 am on Sunday, no line at all. If you flew all night I can understand your wanting to get some rest.
Enjoyed the panel with you, Alex and Shoemoney, and the Facebook advertising issues.
I guess nickycakes caused quite a stir in the Expo Hall when he complained loudly that he "wanted to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on Facebook, but you won't let me".
Thanks for speaking with me after your panel. It was encouraging!
Respectfully,
Nicholas Chase
http://www.twitter.com/nachase
That certainly was a very different ASW show. The industry is growing. There were many new people, publishers, affiliates, big brands and agencies.
Rebecca at the Performance Marketing Alliance said 25% of the people coming by were there to learn more about performance marketing.
We are also seeing this happening on our Advaliant platform. So good work everyone. Lets keep pushing to make the industry bigger and better than ever!
Peter B
MediaTrust/Advaliant
CEO
i didn't know the affiliate summit.
maybe next year or next affiliate summit i can join.
Its great that you got to talk to people from the Facebook team. Facebook's future looks bright indeed.