The questionnaire consists of 12 short questions and shouldn’t take more than five minutes to complete. If you would like to participate, please make sure to allow cookies and click here to start the survey. We are looking forward to the results! Thanks to all participants and of course good luck to Petr and his thesis!

It is time again for ‘the best meet the best’: The zanox Global Alliance Summit 2009, the exclusive and international get-together of our top partners, just kicked-off in Berlin!

After the launch of our zanox Publisher Initiative last year, this year’s highlights provide our partners with insights into market trends as well as new zanox projects. Today’s conference at the zanox Campus in Berlin includes presentations and discussions on highly relevant topics such as the shift from CPM to CPA or the financial crisis as an opportunity for business growth. We will be also more than proud to officially announce the first zanox VIP Publishers and VIP Welcome Advertisers and to introduce everybody to the new zanox Application Store.

For those of you who are interested in what goes on during the conference, just follow us on Twitter and we’ll keep you up to date! We are very excited about a great and inspiring Global Alliance Summit 2009 and about welcoming everybody in Berlin!

The a4uexpo in Amsterdam has just kicked-off! It’s one of the most promising European conferences on Affiliate Marketing, which we support as a Silver Sponsor. The educational and networking event takes place on 28 and 29 April at the RAI Congress Centre in Amsterdam and we are there with an international team! If you want to stop by, you can find us at booth #19.

Denis Maibaum, our Global Product Manager, will hold a session on “Innovative AdMedia Design with Google Gadgets” on day 2, 29 April, 9:30 to 10:30, in room B-B1. His session will inspire advertisers, agencies and affiliates to create better and more creative admedia using innovative technology and new concepts. You will learn how to generate global traffic with Google’s new ad format Gadget Ads, and be presented a wide number of live examples, best-practise gadgets we exclusively created for Fleurop and some interesting business models for affiliates.

Also, Robert Schneider, our Head of Global Publisher Sales, will join Shopzilla for the panel “XML and Data Feeds – Standardisation and Implemtation for Success” on day 1, 28 April, 16:30 to 17:30 in room  C–D. In this session you will learn how affiliates are using feeds in affiliate marketing and what you must do as a merchant to construct your feeds in a standardised way that makes them attractive. You’ll also learn how you, as an affiliate, can use the raw data to construct value, add websites, widgets and applications.

Looking forward to seeing many of you in Amsterdam!

UPDATE: For all of you who didn’t have a chance to attend Robert’s and Denis’s sessions, we are happy to provide you with the presentations both of them they held during the event. Here is Robert’s presentation on XML and Data Feeds:

I attended several sessions and found the following ones most valuable: Ryan Sarver talked about  “W3C Geolocation API – Adding ‘Where’ to Web Applications“and showed us how important location information will be for the future developments of apps. In “Best Practices in Social Media Integration for Web Publishers and Content Providers” Bob Buch, VP of business development for Digg,  pointed out the essential ingredients for social media integration. Tara Hunt explained how to have a good community presence during her session “The Whuffie Factor:  The 5 keys for Maxing Social Capital and Winning with Online Communities” and I learned a lot from Jyri Engestrom, talking about  “Building Sites Around Social Objects”. All in all, it was a great event and we are already looking forward to next year!

Day one started off with a session called “What’s coming for HTML developments”, including loads of interesting examples and tools for web developers. Another session I found really great was “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries: He talked about how to identify a profitable business model faster and cheaper than the competitors, exploring the consumer’s wants and needs as well as about how to build a company-wide culture of decision-making.

Day two at the Web 2.0 Expo started off with the session “CRM with Facebook” by Clara Shih, the founder of  Faceforce, which integrates Salesforce CRM with Facebook. It’s the first social enterprise mash-up, which will also be valuable in regard to Twitter. Clara walked us through the thinking behind Faceforce, future development plans, and how the social networking phenomenon at large will fundamentally change how business software is developed, deployed, and used.

I also attended the sessions “Enterprise 2.0” by Aron Kim and “It’s the people, stupid” by Deborah Schulz. Deborah talked about web products for connected consumers and put emphasise on helping users to participate, instead of interupting them. I particularly liked this outcome of the session: “Love you give will come back to you”. More interesting sessions and update to follow shortly! Photos as well of course, just managed to capture a snaptshot with my phone, hope you like it. And by the way, if you want to stop by to meet the zanox team, our booth is #435! Lookign forward to seeing you there!

The GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is one of the most inportant events for the global mobile industry. We were keen to learn what the latest trends are and what industry expert think. And as expected, they all agreed on one key direction: The internet turns mobile! This is mostly due to the iPhone’s great success and how its technology changed the mobile internet world and its overall concept. Following the iPhone App Store’s best practise, companies such as blackberry, Nokia, Google Android, O2 or Microsoft announced their own coming-soon versions of an application store during the congress.  Another outcome of the Barcelona event was that the industry finally recognised the power of openAPIs and is more than keen on using it as a basis for third-party developments of the global development community.

We believe that the mobile marketing potential will massively grow in importance and volume in the very near future. There are more than three billion mobile phones all around the world already and the number will increase even more, that’s for sure. Together with most advanced mobile phones also the applications and the features provided are increasing.  For the first time, more advanced features are permitting to integrate pure web based applications with the mobile world allowing value added services not imaginable before. We are now really active in finding mobile internet monetisation opportunities using for example our Web Services infrastructure and some new great project we are currently working on.

zanox France took part in one of the most important French tradeshows this week – as a silver sponsor and speaker: The Forum E-Marketing, which took place on January 27 and 28 at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. Hundreds of experts were present to fill all the expectations of the 15.000 visitors on digital marketing, during two days of meetings and exchanges. With 200 exhibitors, 200 free conferences and eight training sessions, the Forum E-Marketing was a great opportunity for zanox France to show its own expertise: Especially the conference “Affiliation: an anti-crisis weapon”, co-animated by Guillaume Gélis and Nicolas Nauche, was a huge success for us. And for those of you who missed the conference, you can read a brief recap here (in French).

And for everybody who didn’t have the chance to visit ad:tech Shanghai, you can watch a little video here.

Once again the biggest show in New York was a huge success for zanox. After having collected hundreds of potential leads and publisher contacts, zanox USA is now off to a “big apple” start! We met with some of our biggest clients, and also put faces to some new potential ones as well.

To be in the big city during the election week and having witnessed the positive energy and flair among zanox’s fellow publisher community, I feel there is a new sense of hope and continued dedication within the US towards affiliate marketing. In contrast to what predictions may portray during these unstable financial times, I see the continued optimism and drive within the industry. I know zanox will continue to do its best monetizing the internet and taking care that we are doing our best to bring global offers to our publisher base. I look forward to the end of 2008, but I am even more energetic to see what in 2009 the affiliate marketing arena brings.

The Berlin Web Week is approaching quickly. It kicks off tonight with the Pre-Web 2.0 Expo Europe Drinkup at QBA.

zanox will take actively part in the Berlin Web Week to strengthen Berlin’s postition as the Start-up and innovation center in Europe; including a booth at Web 2.0 Expo Europe and sponsorships of the leading networking events like BarCamp Berlin 3 and LateCrunch.

Additionally we will host the Facebook Garage at our GAP Campus on 20. October 2008 and the zanox Web Services Contest Finale – Night of Innovations 2008 on 24. October 2008.

Berlin Web Week events at a glance at berlinwebweek.de and on zanox.com.