For over ten years, Annalena Bauer has been exploring how affiliate marketing can create real added value and sustainable growth for brands and publishers. She has helped develop international publisher strategies, supported fashion, beauty, luxury, and retail brands in their affiliate strategies, and today, through her firm digitAL consultancy, advises companies on the further development of their affiliate programs. As an Account Director at Jellyfish, she also works at the intersection of AI in marketing, retail media, creative, and performance —which gives her insight into just how much the boundaries between these disciplines are blurring right now. At the Affiliate Conference, she’ll therefore take us on a journey to explore the question: Is affiliate marketing still just a channel—or is the industry on the verge of turning it into something much bigger?

Philipp Owner is since July 2026 Content Commerce Manager at RUHR24. According to his Media Management Degree Program to the THWS Würzburg collected he Many years of experience in digital marketing. He builds highly marketable Environments in the Range Segment on and developed They continue to do so together with their partners. Today responsible for he that Partner Management as well as Planning and Implementation by Placings in the Content Commerce Environment and retains in the process Keeping an eye on trends and developments.

Ralf Fischer is the managing partner of VerticalAds Group GmbH. Since the founding of financeAds in 2006, he has led the development of a group of specialized, vertical affiliate networks, including CommunicationAds for the telecommunications and energy sectors and RetailAds for e-commerce brands and stores. His main motivation is to inspire advertisers and publishers with the best solutions—a combination of technology and expertise. To this end, he has internationalized the VerticalAds Group’s offerings and expanded them along the customer journey, so that today the VerticalAds Group covers the entire funnel—from the first interaction with advertising material to the development of long-term customer loyalty.

Joachim Graf is a futurist and the publisher of iBusiness.de, ONEtoONE.de, and neuhandeln.de. The sites regularly feature scenario analyses of interactive and disruptive markets, as well as original consumer and industry studies and rankings of companies in various digital sectors, such as the SEO list and the performance marketing ranking.

Anja Heinicke is Head of Customer Success at easy Marketing. As a former agency team leader (Artefact) and in-house manager for global partnerships (Yazio), she has managed campaigns herself for many years. In her current role, she bridges the gap between tech and business for Germany’s largest brands, such as OTTO, MediaMarktSaturn, and Douglas.

André Koegler is one of the leading voices in affiliate and partner marketing in the German-speaking world. At impact.com, as Strategic Partnerships & Country Lead for DACH, he is responsible for the development of the German-speaking market. He is a co-founder and first chairman of the Affiliate & Partner Marketing Circle (APMC), author of “Partner Renaissance,” and a lecturer at CBS International Business School.

After Tim Lomborg joined Awin in Berlin in 2010, the Cologne native with Danish roots quickly rose to the position of Regional Managing Director, and in 2019 he took over as head of the Eastern European operations. In this role, he established the Awin brand as one of the leading affiliate networks and achieved double-digit growth by expanding long-term partnerships between advertisers and publishers. Since February 2021, he has also been responsible for the 120-member DACH team and, most recently, for Italy and Spain as well.  

I’m Marko Marić, Head of Cooperation at Kleines Kraftwerk. As a former account manager at an affiliate network, I was very fortunate to witness the rise of balcony power plants. At the same time, I saw the growth potential that affiliate marketing offers. Our customers do a lot of research, often compare options, and usually make only one purchase. That’s why content commerce is a crucial factor for us.

Jens Prehn has been active in affiliate marketing for 15 years. After starting his career on the agency side at metapeople, he switched to the advertiser side in 2017, first at C&A and now as Senior Online Performance Manager at Telefónica. His focus is on leveraging the potential of the affiliate channel beyond generating sales in the lower funnel. To achieve this, he relies on new approaches such as attributed commission models and the use of existing content partners for mid-funnel goals to demonstrate the channel’s strategic value within the company.

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Tom Rother is responsible for CJ’s business development in the DACH region, the Benelux countries, and the Middle East (MENA). Before joining CJ in 2019, he developed and managed digital marketing strategies for national and international companies such as Telefónica, Accenture, and Medion. As an experienced sales and digital marketing expert, he knows how to translate individual client needs into effective marketing solutions and sustainable partnerships.

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Marcus Seidel has been an entrepreneur for nearly 30 years and is the founder of ADCELL, one of Germany’s leading independent affiliate networks. He advocates for fair, transparent affiliate marketing and partnerships that stand the test of time. As the founder and host of the “Mittelstars” podcast, he also brings together prominent entrepreneurs and gives a voice to Germany’s small and medium-sized businesses.

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Mario Szirniks knows both sides of the affiliate business: As the developer of the Adbutler affiliate network, he built the system that compensates partners—and as the founder of Exactag, he created the attribution model that determines who gets what share. Today, he is developing multi-touch attribution and affiliate compensation for a major telecommunications provider, with the goal of ensuring that affiliates are paid for their actual contribution—not just for the last click.

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Bosko Todorovic is a co-founder of The.Amazing.New Group, a specialized full-service TikTok agency for the DACH region. He brings many years of experience in affiliate marketing, as well as in social media and performance marketing. Together with his team, he develops data-driven strategies, creator collaborations, and paid social concepts to sustainably increase reach and revenue for brands.

Julian Weiß is Head of Affiliate Marketing & Partnerships at MAI xpose360 and has been working in affiliate marketing, partner strategies, and performance-driven partnerships for about ten years. In his role, he is responsible for the strategic development of affiliate and influencer marketing programs for national and international clients. His focus is on sustainable growth, data-driven decisions, and exploring how affiliate marketing—in conjunction with content, creator models, and AI search—can contribute even more significantly to brand visibility and performance in the future.

My name is Julia, and I’ve been working in the SEO industry for 13 years now. Through my work at various agencies, I’ve been able to follow the evolution of SEO from the very beginning and experience every twist and turn in the field firsthand. What continues to drive me today is the dynamism of this field: the constant search for new approaches, the questioning of the status quo, and the shaping of a discipline that is reinventing itself—particularly with the rise of AI Search. As Head of Strategic Marketing & Communication at SISTRIX, I’m now leading the effort to rethink visibility in the digital space and consistently advance SEO work in a data-driven way. This isn’t just about tool development and metrics, but about gaining a deeper understanding of what it truly means to be visible in an ever-changing search landscape.

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Markus is the driving force behind tackling complex technological challenges in digital marketing. As CEO of easy Marketing and head of the Tracking Lab as well as the Affiliate Marketing Focus Group at BVDW e.V., he plays a key role in shaping European tracking standards. For years, enterprise brands have relied on his expertise to build tracking architectures that comply with data protection regulations and offer high availability.