Official Blog

Last week we signed our agreement with the Plug&PlayTechCenter in Sunnyvale, CA, at the Plug&Play Expo over there. From 1 June 2009 we will have a zanox pavillion with eight desks and one meeting area. It will be located right next to the Apple AppStore & Stanford University co-op and our colleague Chris Loonan will move over from our New York office. It was quite exiting to see all the positive feedback and reactions we got from all the participants we talked to at the Expo conference. No surprise they specially liked our monetization 2.0 t-shirts. They had 90 VC´s attending and 40 start-ups pitching. Those pitches were a very strong statement of the enormous creativity and brain power that comes out of the Valley. We now hope to participate in this and use the collective intelligence to generate and co-create new ideas and apps for our zanox Application Store. Have a look at the short video I took to get an impression of the event and the location:

The people who run the center are absolutly amazing! They welcomed us very warmly and I hardly saw a team with a more positive spirit. Big thanks again to Kayvan, Saeed, Jupe, Candace and Jacky. You guys are great!

So, if anybody is interested to meet us over there or to use our facilities please get in contact and we will discuss opportunities.

Following the great success of our Berlin-based zanox Campus, we now decided to open a second Campus in the heart of Silicon Valley! It will serve as a new open meeting point for publishers, start-up businesses and developers. Designed as a Think Tank for modern web-based business models, projects and partners in Silicon Valley, we created it to support new online talents. We would also like to use both Campuses, Berlin and Silicon Valley, as an open exchange space for all our partners across the US and Europe.

With our first US-based zanox Campus, we would like to invite the creative community in Silicon Valley to help us promote and pursue innovation within our industry. In return, we will offer access to our affiliate network’s infrastructure, our partners and last but not least attractive investment opportunities for the most promising business models. This is where our just recently launched  $2 Million zanox Application Store Contest comes in.

If you are interested in learning more, just drop by from 5 pm onwards today at the Plug & Play TechCenter in San Francisco: Our CEO Thomas Hessler will officially announce the new zanox Campus during the cocktail reception. Some first pics and impressions are to follow shortly! Hope to see you in the Valley soon!

An exclusive club for our Very Important Partners: We are thrilled to announce the launch of the zanox VIP Club today!  The zanox VIP Club is an exclusive programme for the highest-profile publishers in our network. It’s been designed for our top-performing, professional publishers and offers even better opportunities for your revenue growth and transparent, exclusive partnerships.

Our zanox VIP Publishers will exclusively receive attractive benefits from selected advertisers, such as the automatic approval of programme applications, a short-term approval for leads and sales or a guaranteed confirmation rate. In order to be selected as a VIP, publishers have to fulfil strong quality criteria, which you can have a look at in detail here.

Indeed we put very high-level standards and strong quality criteria on our zanox VIP Club – which is because we want to enhance the level of transparency for all partners within our network even more. We believe that this will take the quality of our network to a new dimension, which is yet unique within the industry!

You might spot the new zanox VIP Club logo at some place in our user interface now, which is a mark of distinction for our zanox VIP Publishers. But it’s not only our publishers who can join the zanox VIP Club – our advertisers are invited to apply as a “VIP welcome” advertiser in order to be sure of cooperating only with the most profitable, reputable and highest-quality publishers within the network.

For more information on the zanox VIP Club, check out our VIP landing page and the VIP Club Q&A on the zanox Wiki. Hope to welcome some of you soon too in the zanox VIP Club!

Here is what the zanox people have been waiting for since everybody returned to their home offices again after a great Aspen weekend in Poland: The Best of Aspen 2009 video, featuring the zanox teams from Berlin, Madrid, Milan, London, New York, Warszawa, Amsterdam, Paris, Stockholm, Shanghai and our eprofessional colleagues from Hamburg. Check it out and enjoy!

It’s been nine years to the day since zanox was founded by Thomas Hessler, Jens Hewald and Heiko Rauch. That’s why there is a great birthday party going on at zanox GAP Campus at this very moment – with cake, champagne and music! Here is a first impression of a happy Jens cutting the cake. Happy birthday everybody!

Many of us have worked really hard to make this year’s corporate kick-off event a special one: Today, more than 200 of our employees from all over the world will meet up for our yearly stragtegy meeting at the zanox Headquarters. After the big conference at our Berlin office,  Aspen 2009 will lead us to the town of Karpacz in the Giant Mountains, Poland. Following the zanox tradition, loads of snow and some exciting activities are an essential part of our trip which is meant for networking as well as exchanging ideas and knowledge. Presentations, bar camps, group works as well as fun activities such as skiing, snowboarding or sledging will keep us busy and entertained over the weekend. We can’t wait to see everybody again and look very much forward to a few days of creativity and fun! We will of course keep you updated on Twitter. Aspen 2009 will be a fantastic one!

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).

We are more than happy to announce that we’ll support the most promising European conference for Affiliate Marketing in 2009: the a4uexpo Europe. The educational and networking event will take place on 28 and 29 April at the RAI Congress Centre in Amsterdam and we’ll be there with an international team! We are very much looking forward to a conference agenda with more than 50 industry experts, workshops, panels and Q&A sessions. Of course you can also meet us at the a4uexpo Exhibition, which is an essential part of the event. We will keep you up-to-date on our agenda for Amsterdam and hope to see you there!

Huh? Everybody jumps up from their desks, looks out of the office window, blackberry cam in hand, and goes “ohhhh”. What’s going on? No, no fireworks – but an impressive red sky over Berlin. And here is the proof (no Photoshop!):

Romantic, isn’t it?

It’s getting a little quieter in the zanox offices: Most of the chocolates from our advent calendars has already been eaten and people are preparing for a couple of nice, relaxing holidays with their families, friends and loads of good food!

So we would like to take the chance to thank you for a successful year 2008 and to wish you all a merry Christmas!

As you might already know, we decided to stop donating and start investing in innovative ideas and entrepreneurship around the world this Christmas. From now on, we will help people who don’t have the chance to get financial support from a bank. Read more about our investment in sustainability here: www.zanox.com/sustainability

We are looking forward to working with you in a new successful year 2009!

Have a happy holiday and a fabulous Christmas!

It’s that time of the year again – and it’s time for a new exciting zanox project to kick-off. This Christmas, we decided to stop donating and start investing in innovative ideas and entrepreneurship around the world. From now on, we will support several social projects based on the idea of online microfinance platforms. Now you might be wondering what microfinance is and why we decided to support microfinance on a long-term basis – that’s why we prepared this nice little video:

We are very excited about the potential of online microfinance: Imagine a world where ambitious and innovative entrepreneurs are not dependent on the goodwill and random decision-making of big financial players anymore. This is the true web 2.0 spirit we believe in as a company.

And yes, the idea of microfinance might have been emerged in the context of developing countries, but it’s not limited to third world projects. Similar platforms have been founded in Europe to support European projects.

We’ll kick-off with 10,000 Euros, using different platforms and supporting different projects. For example we invested in Sammy Ngure Kungu’s cyber café in Kenya. Sammy plans to expand his business and would like to buy more computers.

And we supported the Nancy Patiño Menacho Group, an ambitious group of female entrepreneurs in Bolivia. The group members are involved in varoius economic activities such as cosmetics or food shops and internet cafés.

Of course we will keep you up to date on the progress on this blog and will soon introduce more projects we invest in.

We hope that many of you will follow us on this way and are now as thrilled about microfinance as we are.

Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year,

Thomas Hessler
and the whole zanox team

We just got back from a very successful ad:tech Shanghai 2008! The two-day event gave us the chance to maintain and expand our Asian Pacific network as well as to gain and share essential industry knowledge. This year, Jennifer Zhang, our Regional Director Asia Pacific, had been invited to take part in the Affiliate Marketing Panel. Jennifer was more than happy to talk about industry trends and show some best practice cases. The panel was part of the the ad:tech conference, which focused on the state of the industry, new technologies and the latest case studies. We also noticed that more and more international publishers show strong interest in the Chinese market.

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

Cyber Monday comes to France – finally! Cyber Monday has been one of the most successful internet events in the US for more than ten years. For one week, and on a website created just for the occasion, the big players of e-commerce will offer exclusive Christmas deals to French consumers. Created to serve as a “great deal gallery”, the Cyber Monday website will present the best Christmas products of each e-merchant as well as the special offers for their users - such as exclusivity, discounts, coupons, free delivery and much more. Cyber Monday will kick-off on Monday, 24 November, and runs until 30 November. Last but not least, there will be a big party on Monday, 1 December, in Paris!

So what do we have to do with Cyber Monday? Well, first of all, zanox France is an official sponsor of the event. But we do more than just that: zanox is dedicated to this project, so we manage several commercial, fun and festive activities. We also promote the website within the e-merchants’ network and help them participating in the project. And of course, we are organising some very nice surprises for the party guests on 1 December…

And for all our French-speaking users out there, here is a little fun video on Cyber Monday. Enjoy and hope to see you at the party!

It’s all about interactive communication: The IAB Forum, organised by the Interactive Advertising Bureau Italy, took place in Milan in its sixth edition. It demonstrated once more that online advertising is essential for almost all companies, and is able to serve as a business accelerator.

zanox, as a traditional exhibitor, has noticed a special spirit this year – with many merchants and publishers knowing exactly what they want and looking for collaborations. After two days and countless meetings with our partners – some of which included a beer or two – we collected more than 450 business cards and distributed more than 800 of our own.

We were really enthusiastic about being part of the IAB Forum 2008 and look forward to the upcoming zanox events. And for everybody who missed the chance to drop by our bright 30 square meter stand in our traditional colours black and orange, we took some nice pics of the IAB Forum 2008. Enjoy!

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.

On 24th October 2008 the zanox GAP Campus hosted another great event: the zanox Web Services Contest Finale – Night of Innovations 2008.

More than 200 people – contest participants and supporters, investors, online marketers, web 2.0 fans and zanoxees – excitingly awaited the announcement of the winners. Servtag, Webtrekk and triboo were the lucky ones!

In a relaxed atmosphere people talked not only about the 3 winning teams but enjoyed drinks and snacks along with the ‘RoboCup’, a live soccer performance by Freie Universität robots.

For more details on the top 10 contest teams and the contest itself visit our Web Services blog.

Here some impressions from the event:

Join us for a night of innovation and networking at the zanox GAP Campus on 24th October 2008 starting at 19:30h.

Celebrate the winners of the 1 Million Euro Web Services contest together with investors, innovators and opinion leaders from the web 2.0 and online marketing scene. Learn more about the latest applications and watch robots play soccer.

For more information and registration click here.

We just received a note from one of our partners on how he uses the zanox Beach Towel – this one even made it to Hong Kong. Have a look!

‘I just wanted to drop you a quick note to thank you for the beautiful zanox beach towels.

Today in Hong Kong and China is the National Day public holiday and in many other parts of Asia its Eid al-Fitr (think I have the spelling right?).

We took the opportunity today to head to the beach with the kids and some friends. The Zanox beach towels got their first outing today. Here is a quick piccie of it in action.’

If you would like to show the world how you use the zanox Beach Towel please send an email to Alexandra Lilienthal at zanox Marketing.

The readers of the popular webzine deutsche-startups.de and a professional jury consisting of journalists and internet experts appointed Lars Hinrichs of Xing.com to be the most important German internet entrepreneur – for now. Lars started his business networking platform in 2003 and went public in 2006. Congratulations to Hamburg from the zanox HQs!

No surprise to us and the zanox community, our CEO and co-founder Thomas Hessler, was also voted into the top ten and came in sixth in the overall ranking. In the category “Success” Thomas has even been ranked second by the jury.
Thanks to Alex and Christina from deutsche-startups – we are looking forward to next year’s ranking.

In the zanox tradition employees participated in an internal prediction game for this year’s soccer championship. 67 zanoxees from Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Shanghai, New York, Italy and others cheered and hoped for their favourite team to win the UEFA Euro 2008.

Even though the German team only came in second place a German zanoxee succeeded! Andreas Vogel from the Berlin Sales Department is the lucky winner of a great and fun beer tab. Sebastian Wallroth from the Berlin Monetization 2.0 team – organiser of the prediction game – handed over the prize and was the first to congratulate Andreas.

Look out for Andreas’ next party!