January has been a busy month for the Global Personals and WhiteLabelDating.com teams, as they spent two weeks on both sides of the USA to attend some of the dating industry’s leading events. Read on for a full rundown of what we got up to.
First stop, Las Vegas
The self-billed ‘Entertainment Capital of the World’ played host to three successive trade shows this January and despite unseasonal freezing temperatures, a warm welcome awaited the team at each event.
Affiliate Summit West
Affiliate Summit West (ASW) is a must attend event, regularly attracting over 5,000 affiliate marketers. The premiere affiliate trade show takes place twice a year.
This year, ASW was held at Caesars Palace Hotel and provided Global Personals’ Affiliate Manager Chris Georghiou and Acquisitions Manager Wacek Warszawa, plenty of networking opportunities for meeting some new faces and sourcing new business opportunities. The event played host to a diverse array of exhibitors and thousands of attendees from all levels of the industry, both from the US and Internationally.
The summit was exceptionally well-organised, with a really accessible and useful structure of seminars and networking events. Hotly discussed topics on the agenda included making the jump from affiliate to advertiser, publisher segmentation and the challenges facing affiliate marketers in 2013, as well as looking to what the future holds for the affiliate marketing industry.
We’d like to thank the organisers for putting together such a fantastic event. See you in August for ASW’s New York summit!
iDate Vegas
Following on from ASW was iDate Vegas, held at Harrah’s Casino.
Representatives from both Global Personals and WhiteLabelDating.com were in attendance, with around 400 delegates spanning the online dating and matchmaking industries.
This was a great opportunity to meet up with new and existing partners, interact with suppliers and network with other dating industry representatives.
iDate Vegas played host to a comprehensive and diverse bill of speakers, who spoke on a vast array of topics. Highlights included an insightful session from Google’s Tom Simon and his team, who delved into the fast-growth of consumer multi-screen adoption and the impact of this on the dating sector; an interview with eHarmony’s founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, who shared his reasoning for buying back stock, making a lot of personnel changes and resuming control of the consumer dating giant.
Next stop… Miami
After seven long days (and nights) in Vegas, the team took an overnight flight across the USA to a warmer and sunnier Miami for the first Online Dating Summit in the USA.
Online Dating Summit Miami
Online Dating Summit Miami (ODS) was held at the Westin Diplomat Hotel on Miami beach. Any thoughts of relaxing in the sun were soon banished, as we embarked on a whirlwind 48 hours of topical seminars, meetings and speed-networking.
Whilst the overall attendance level was less than organisers hoped for, the consensus from all attendees was that the conference adhered to ‘quality over quantity’.
The high-quality of senior representatives who attended the conference, alongside the informative content and new business opportunities, led many to comment that this was among the best dating conferences they’d been to. It was great to see that the event attracted CEOs from the world’s leading dating companies, the majority of whom contributed largely to the panel discussions, giving valuable insights into exactly what makes their businesses tick.
WhiteLabelDating.com Senior Partner Manager Gary Taylor, moderated the much-talked about Mobile panel, which included representatives from Match.com, POF, Meet Moi and eHarmony. Operations Director, Matthew Pitt, had a busy few days at ODS, speaking on a number of panels including:
- The background and evolution of the Australian dating market
- Using a White Label site versus building your own
- Dealing with scammers and chargebacks
- Online dating in the United Kingdom
Matthew also moderated the CEO panel session, ‘Online Dating State of the Nation’, which some commented was the highlight of the show, featuring Markus Frind of POF, Liz Wasserman of Mate1, Mark Semaan of RedHotPie, Alex Harrington of MeetMoi, Dave Heysen of Oasis and Cliff Lerner of SNAP Interactive.
Credit should also go to David Evans at Online Dating Insider, for an exceptional keynote highlighting some interesting points about online dating’s transition from the original forays of a 1966 start-up to a multi-billion dollar industry.
Watch this space for our full key insights report, coming soon.
It’s been a hectic but highly productive month and planning is already in the process for our next round of events in March and April. Keep an eye on the blog for more details!