Why I’m Still Flying to Affiliate Grand Slam in Rome After a Decade in This Industry

Next week I’m in Rome for Affiliate Grand Slam, which runs from 2 to 5 November at Fiera Roma. Before every big conference I ask myself the same question: why do I still bother? Most of the people I’ll see in Rome are one message away. I talk to partners on calls every day. There’s a CRM, there are WhatsApp groups, there’s LinkedIn.

It’s a fair question, and the answer has changed for me over the years.

The real work doesn’t happen on stage

I’ve spent around ten years building revenue in affiliate and performance marketing, across more than 20 countries. In that time I can’t remember a single deal that started in a keynote. The conversations that actually move revenue happen in a corridor at four in the afternoon, when everyone is tired enough to be honest.

That’s when a partner tells you the real reason they left their last platform. It’s when an affiliate manager admits their numbers don’t match the advertiser’s, and nobody has wanted to say it out loud. You rarely get that on a scheduled video call with an agenda. You get it standing next to someone in a coffee queue.

Why this year’s Affiliate Grand Slam feels different

I’ve been to Affiliate Grand Slam before, including Malta in 2022 when it ran alongside SiGMA Europe, and a lot has changed since then. This edition feels like something of a reset. Earlier this year the organisers repositioned it as a multi-vertical affiliate and performance marketing conference, and Rome is the flagship. It also shares Fiera Roma with SiGMA World and AIBC the same week, so iGaming operators, mainstream affiliates, networks, app marketers and ad tech will all be walking the same halls.

That mix matters to me because it’s how our business works now. Trackier began in performance marketing infrastructure, Apptrove lives in mobile attribution, and Affnook is an affiliate network. Ten years ago those would have been separate rooms at separate events. Today the same client often needs all three, and the same affiliate might run traffic across gaming, fintech and apps in a single month. An event that reflects that reality is worth the flight.

The conversations I expect to have

Attribution will come up in almost every meeting. Last-click is losing credibility, especially with brands spending across apps, web and affiliates at the same time, and everyone I speak to has a slightly different version of the truth in their dashboard. I wrote about multi-touch versus last-click earlier this year, and my honest view hasn’t changed. Most teams don’t need a perfect model. They need one model that the advertiser, the affiliate and the finance team all agree to trust. Getting there is a commercial problem as much as a technical one.

Fraud is the second. Click flooding, fake installs, incentivised traffic dressed up as organic. None of it has gone away. It has just become better at looking normal. I think the platforms and networks that win the next few years will be the ones that can show a partner exactly why a conversion was rejected, instead of simply rejecting it. Transparency builds more trust than a clean-looking report ever will.

The third is quieter, but it’s the one I care about most. A lot of good affiliates are tired. Payment terms keep stretching, programmes get cut without warning, and the best publishers are getting much choosier about who they work with. If you run an affiliate programme, Rome is a good week to listen to them rather than pitch at them. The brands that treat affiliates as partners, not as a line item, are the ones those affiliates will still want to work with next year.

How I plan a conference week now

I learned the hard way that turning up without a plan means four days of collecting business cards you never look at again. These days I book most of my meetings before I land, but I keep a good part of each day open for conversations I didn’t plan. Some of the best ones are the ones nobody scheduled.

Every evening I write a couple of lines about each meaningful conversation while I still remember who said what and what I promised. Then the follow-up goes out within a week. If it doesn’t go out within a week, in my experience it never goes out at all, and the whole trip becomes a very expensive networking holiday.

I also try to sit in on at least a couple of sessions outside my own lane. A few of the most useful ideas I’ve brought home from events came from talks I walked into almost by accident.

If you’ll be in Rome

I land in Rome on the evening of 1 November, and from 3 to 5 November we’re exhibiting at Affiliate Grand Slam at Fiera Roma, so you’ll find me at our stand most of the day. If you’re an affiliate, an advertiser trying to make sense of your attribution, an app marketer, or you simply want to argue about whether last-click is finally dead, send me a message on LinkedIn and let’s find twenty minutes. The coffee in Rome is better than anywhere else, so at least that part of the meeting is guaranteed to be good.

And if you can’t make it, I’ll write up what I actually heard once I’m back. Not the press-release version. The corridor version.

If you run affiliate or partner programmes, this is the world we build for at Trackier, and for iGaming at Affnook. My team will be at our stand all week and is happy to show you how it works.