Moderated by :
Brandon Ramos, Linkshare
Amy Solomon, Linkshare
Panelists:
Robert Baer, Vice President, Online Marketing, JPMorgan Chase & Co
Connie Young Fong, Director, Marketing & Business Development, Sephora USA
Michael Jacobs, Vice President, Products, iMarketing, Ltd
Clark Stephens, Vice President Marketing - New Business, MyPoints.com
Panels are always difficult to blog, but I’ll focus on the major points of discussion. The starting point is the issue relating to trademark bidding and affiliates. They start by making people stand up and down to figure out who is on which segment (Merchant/Affiliate/TM Bidders/Non-TM bidders, etc).
Amy poses a question to the panel: “Recently Chase & Co changed their policy and started to change their policies. Why?”
Robert short response was that the cost to maintain it was too high as they have to justify the spend to higher powers in addition to the money they are already spending on branding. Michael argues that is a mistake and throwing out the baby with the bathwater. His argument is that if Search Affiliates are costing you too much - you’re not managing it properly - which I agree with.
Next question: “Is it better to see an affiliate link on the SERP or a competitor link?”
Robert says that it’s better for them (without a decent justification, imho), just to have a single ad and again, Michael rebutts him quite adequately. The ensuing verbal battle is typical of a Goliath (Chase) vs David (iMarketing) struggle, where the big companies just don’t understand online marketing and in particular, search.
Last question on this topic: “What value do Search Affiliates bring to Merchants?”
Extra links/keywords, better messaging, deeper linking - Michael puts this straight up. Robert strikes back with the fact that he claims that they have not seen a significant hit to the volumes, after putting more restrictions on their search campaigns.
Connie communicates that Sephora is happy to share their trademark terms, provided they maintain position #1 on their keywords.
Clark argues that not every merchant’s customers act the same - so each merchant needs a different set of rules, and that which works best for them.
Next topic: The Hot Buttons
Loyalty Affiliates vs New Customer Acquisition : What are merchants afraid of?
They do the same standup, audience segmentation exercise again. A nice mix of both exists. Clark starts off with the fact that loyalty sites also conduct new customer acquisition - it’s not that it’s the same customers coming back, but a new continuous stream of customers. Connie advocates that loyalty affiliates provides an indirect, unquantifiable benefit that does exist.
Clark and Connie basically agree that it’s important that the two interests are aligned carefully.
The panel is going to open up to the floor now - I’m rolling up my sleeves now 
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