Chris Beaumont, CMO at HubPeople, Reflects on Last Month’s Partner Conference at Google’s European HQ in Dublin
Late last month, HubPeople took its leading global partners to Dublin for the HubPeople AdVantage Summit, a two-day event to help our leading affiliates gain the edge with Google pay-per-click advertising.
The event began with an evening of networking and peer-to-peer learning in Dalkey. Located south of Dublin, Dalkey was the perfect setting for our affiliates to reconnect and enjoy the town’s charming scenery and vibrant cultural scene.
The history of Dalkey contrasted perfectly with what we had in store for the next day at Google’s cutting-edge European headquarters. Located in Silicon Docks, Google’s European headquarters is situated in the Grand Canal Dock in Dublin.
After a fun tour of the offices, it was down to business! Affiliates met with Google’s Head of Lead Generation, Account Strategists and Executives to learn about the latest tools, trends and platform developments Google had to offer to convert prospects into customers.
Specific to the online dating industry, the team at Google walked our partners through the latest developments in search ad’s, display ads, video ads and lead form extensions and how these can better help our affiliates improve their performance goals and conversion metrics.
Leading Account Strategists at Google gave HubPeople affiliates exclusive access to their market predictions, outlining the trends they are picking up within the sector and where the growth opportunities are. Echoing what we predict and are experiencing, Google estimates growth in the global online dating sector is anticipated to exceed $310 million this year alone.
Analysing their data trends, Google specialists in the online dating vertical believe the overall online dating market will grow to over $8.6 billion by 2027, a 14% increase from 2023 with over 672.4 million users and an average revenue per user (ARPU) of $13.72.
The UK, US and Australia remain firmly within Google’s top five global markets, all of which are extensively served by HubPeople’s Excite and Affinity platforms. The morning finished with a detailed understanding of Google’s sexual content policy, which will help affiliates optimise traffic generation campaigns in the adult market.
In contrast to the morning at Google, the afternoon took place in Dún Laoghaire overlooking Dublin Bay. This session commenced with Michael O’Sullivan, Owner of HubPeople, providing a detailed business overview, highlighting the successes of the new hubpeople.ai platform which has helped new and existing affiliates launch over 2,000 new brands on their platform, all with zero upfront cost as per HubPeople’s revenue share model.
Marytn Padden, Head of Product and Barry Gear, Head of Development outlined many of the recent features added to the HubPeople platform which includes a host of new landing page templates, enhanced conversion tracking, rich text edition and a deeper, easier to use, image library. We also shared several new upcoming features for the first time with our affiliates at the event.
The afternoon concluded with Serge Openko, Senior Partnership Manager, revealing the key trends and growth areas on both the Excite and Affinity platforms along with the key geographies and niches where partners are seeing double-digit growth.
The evening saw the HubPeople team invite their partners to Blackrock and one of Dublin’s most renowned culinary institutions, the Dublin Cookery School. After the initial trepidation was eased by a superb master class in cooking from their team of chefs, affiliates cooked pan-fried Seabass and chorizo, braised pork belly and cider, followed by hot chocolate mouse. With the meal being paired with excellent wines, this was the perfect way to finish this fantastic partner conference!
