Brian Littleton of ShareASale posted an entertaining look back at the affiliate marketing industry with his Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Moments for this Decade.
It’s a fun look back at significant happenings for affiliate marketers over the years.
It’s humbling to see all of the mentions of Affiliate Summit in there, and hard to believe the first Affiliate Summit was over six years ago already.
Back in 2003, we maxed out at 200 people. As we close in on Affiliate Summit West 2010, the 14th Affiliate Summit, we’re expecting 4,000.
One of the key moments Brian mentioned was when then LinkShare Chairman Stephen Messer delivered a lunchtime talk at the first Affiliate Summit to took place in Las Vegas back in 2005.
Stephen Messer discussed how Google was a competitor/threat to affiliate programs. Many in the audience scoffed, and Messer turned out to be spot on. David Lewis wrote about the Messer talk at the time on ReveNews.
And here is a shot of my partner, Missy Ward, with Brian Littleton from that same show.
One milestone I would have added to the list was the Performance Marketing Summit on adware, which tool place back in 2002 at the Yale Club in NYC.
At this meeting, networks, merchants, and affiliates got together to work on industry practices and policies regarding the use of adware.