LinkShare Symposium 2008 Event Wrap Up

“The best Symposium ever!” That was the phrase often overheard at LinkShare Symposium 2008 which brought together over 650 managers and executives from the world’s leading and emerging e-commerce companies. A combination of networking and learning, LinkShare Symposium enables advertisers and publishers to strengthen relationships while obtaining key industry insights that can help drive results.

Tuesday morning’s events began with opening remarks from Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO and Founder of The Rakuten Group, who travelled from Tokyo, Japan to attend the event. Mikitani-san introduced LinkShare’s new Co-Presidents – Yaz Iida and Jonathan Levine – and shared with attendees how LinkShare is a critical part of its worldwide strategy for the future. Next Arun Bordoloi, Senior Vice President of Services at LinkShare, spoke about how LinkShare is improving the Advertiser and Publisher experiences with redesigned user interfaces, new services and new technologies that improve the customer shopping experience including LinkShare Flex Links and Easy Links.

Keynote speaker James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, roused the group’s enthusiasm with his remarks on the importance of collective intelligence explaining how diverse team of people will make better decisions than individuals or more homogenous teams . Then came the TrendWatch session, led by Patti Freeman Evans of Jupiter Research, which focused on the findings of a new study on shopping trends in the current tough economic environment. Later in the afternoon E. Kinney Zalesne, co-author of the bestselling Microtrends, illustrated the value of identifying and marketing to smaller groups of consumers with unique interests.

One of the highlights of the LinkShare Symposium is always the DealMarker session. DealMaker offers a rare opportunity for publishers and advertisers to meet face-to-face, helping to build better business relationships and discover new ways to drive revenue. At the end of DealMaker we announced the winner of the first ever LinkShare “Smart My Ride” sweepstakes! The lucky winner was Susan McNelis from DBG Loyalty. Congratulations Susan!

Accolades for Symposium 2008

“This is the 8th time I’ve come to the LinkShare Symposium and this has been the best event ever. It’s matured to be such a fantastic industry event. This is your time to come in and meet everyone you work with face-to-face. It makes it real, it makes the industry real.” – Mikey, Fabulous Savings

“We’ve been having a really fantastic time here. We are just launching right now, so all of this is new to us. This event is going to help us to create those special partnerships that will be the foundation of our online business. We are really looking forward to seeing how we grow as a result of this event.” – Judy Culpepper, Wendy Culpepper

Discovering Business Opportunities	Face-to-Face Presentations
Ready for DealMaker

Golden Link Awards Night

LinkShare Symposium 2008 ended with a night of drinks and dancing at the chic Hiro Ballroom in the Maritime Hotel. On Monday night LinkShare hosted the Fifth Annual Golden Link Awards at the Plaza Hotel to celebrate the extraordinary achievements of LinkShare partners in e-commerce. The black-tie affair was hosted by stand-up comedian Susie Essman, best known for her role on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. This year there were 14 award categories, including the newly added Technology Genius Award and the Best Integrated Lead Generation Campaign. Check out the video highlights at www.linkshare.com/symposium2008video

2008 Award Winners

Congratulations to the following companies and individuals as this year’s award finalists and winners!

Special thanks to our sponsors