LinkShare Announces Keynote Speakers for LinkShare Symposium West 2011

LinkShare today announced the lineup of keynote speakers, networking sessions and events for LinkShare Symposium West 2011. The annual conference attracts a growing number of today’s most successful publishers and online retailers who are dedicated to growing their business through performance marketing. The event is an opportunity for advertisers and publishers to meet face-to-face and is a forum for learning about and discussing the latest industry trends in online marketing.

The event is being held at the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco on January 19-20, 2011 and coincides with LinkShare’s 15^th anniversary as the longest running performance-marketing network in the industry. This year’s theme is "Performance Marketing Redefined,” and will spotlight how innovation among advertisers and publishers in the LinkShare Network is driving online sales to new heights.

As a key part of the event, the "DealMaker” networking sessions enable advertisers and publishers to meet face-to-face to strengthen strategic partnerships and create more profitable promotional opportunities.

"LinkShare’s Symposium events have a measurable impact on our business,” said Craig O’Neill, director of sales, Savings.com. "It’s important for us to have the opportunity to meet advertisers face-to-face to plan strategies that will drive sales and we easily see an uplift of 20 percent or more in the months following the event. I strongly recommend LinkShare Symposium to any publisher looking to grow their business.”

Featured keynote speakers for LinkShare Symposium West 2011 include:

Vanessa Fox, an expert in understanding customer acquisition, will share her perspectives on organic search and how it relates to the performance marketing channel. Fox is also an expert in online marketing and user experience at ninebyblue.com and provides authoritative search-friendly design patterns for developers at janeandrobot.com. She’s also an entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners, contributing editor at Search Engine Land, and host of the weekly podcast "Office Hours.” She previously created Google’s Webmaster Central, which provides both tools and community to help website owners improve their sites to gain more customers from search and was instrumental in the sitemaps.org alliance of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search. She was named one of Seattle’s 2008 top 25 innovators and entrepreneurs. Her book, "Marketing in the Age of Google,” provides a blueprint for incorporating search strategy into organizations of all levels.

Kevin Lindsay, director of conversion marketing, Adobe
In this session, attendees will learn about best practices for increasing conversion by testing and analyzing the online behavior. Topics covered include how to create more personalized online experiences; targeting specific customer segments with relevant messages; combine attitudinal data with analytics to better understand behavior and how to leverage merchandising strategies to sell products.

As part of the two-day event, attendees can participate in LinkShare University, which is being held on January 19. The LinkShare University program is led by LinkShare and industry experts who facilitate training sessions designed to help advertisers and publishers maximize their online revenue in the LinkShare network.

"LinkShare Symposium West directly contributes to the success of our advertisers and publishers in the LinkShare Network,” said Yaz Iida, chief executive officer of LinkShare. "The enthusiasm, innovation and networking that will be on display throughout the day, is a great way to celebrate LinkShare’s 15^th anniversary.”

The event will close with an after party at AT&T Park, which is home of the 2010 World Series Champions, the San Francisco Giants. View the complete agenda.

About LinkShare Corporation

LinkShare Corporation provides ecommerce businesses with a vast, high quality pay per action marketing network, along with expert consultative services and patented technology. LinkShare's cost-efficient pay per action (PPA) affiliate, search and lead generation campaigns acquire new customers, increase revenue and drive results. LinkShare clients are Fortune 500 and prominent companies doing business online, including J.C. Penney, 1-800-Flowers.com, American Express and Avon Products. LinkShare was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in New York City, with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, London and Tokyo. LinkShare is the performance marketing network for Rakuten, one of the world’s largest Internet service companies. For more information, please visit: www.linkshare.com.

About Rakuten

Headquartered in Tokyo, Rakuten is one of the world's largest and most comprehensive Internet service companies, providing leading services in ecommerce, portal & media, travel, financial services, and professional sports. Rakuten focuses on new business development and increasing its scope in order to improve and diversify service offerings. Rakuten is a publicly traded company in Japan (JASDAQ: 4755).