Paul Coggins of Zanox has written a piece for Netimperative on the virtues of global affiliate networks which got me thinking about which parts of the network I would actually want grown to a global scale.

Technology - yes

Account management - probably not

A few big moves have happened in the last 12 months in this market. AOL made a bid for the established pan-European Tradedoubler, Zanox moved up in the UK in a big way and Affilinet made good headway, another German backed network.

Moving from these shores outwards, Buy.at also launched in the US following Affiliate Future who continue to grow over there.

The networks claim to be following merchants in this respect, but there are few merchants who do more than just language-skin their sites, and export form the same base as the UK.

Those that do have an autonomy in each country that means that they are unlikely to choose a network in, for example, Germany, just because they use them in the UK. As for affiliates, until the anglophone world has been conquered, there is little interest in coming to grips with mainland Europe and its inhabitants many foibles.

Global networks on the other hand I believe to be a good thing. The fundamentals of tracking and consolidating payments are very scalable activities across borders, in a way that is not true of the consumer understanding of affiliates, and the supply chain and distribution skills of retailers.

As Tradedoubler have proven, good technology is very separate from your sales & account management teams which can be built up in a developing country at quite short notice as demands, and built up to understand the partnership aspects of the business.

Hopefully the moves will mean more robust technology, slicker payment processes, but not the kind of one-size fits all account management that some of the US networks seem to think will suffice in the UK, or worse, a brain drain of scarce quality network staff.

We are already seeing some of our Aussie account managers return to base to teach their counterparts what the UK already knows, but how the networks export those skills into Europe will be interesting to watch. The churn in staff at most UK networks is already at unacceptable levels, if short term European placements start appearing to pick up skills it can only get worse.