As for the conferences, they generally do not bring any added value. You never feel as though you received that “golden nugget”. Therefore, they are a waste of time.

Although the content is good they tend to be geared more the education of advertisers.

The expo part of the shows tends to be lighter, it’s more a bolt on to the education program and most search affiliates think they know it all anyway.

I’ve not many any search affiliates who use the expensive analytics/reporting tools generally on show at SES/SMX, outsource paid search to agencies who exhibit (the likes of efficient frontier), but the real reason might be that the networking and parties are not the same as an affiliate summit/adtech/pubcon.

I’d also be interested to see the demographic of the affiliate base, any European affiliate worth his salt would include a4uexpo in there and it wasn’t on the list.

It might have been useful if the “other” categories had not been so big.

I also found it interesting that only 60% found trade shows to be of value. That might be a by-product of 75% of the respondents being newbies.

It would have been interesting to see what % of respondents were full-time affiliates.

Interesting report nonetheless.

“I am truly humbled by that! (and also off to raise our ad rates).”

Way to go !