Kate Burns joins buy.at - Former Director of Google to advise leading affiliate network

Burns has over a decade of new media experience from companies including Google, Doubleclick, Altavista and Yahoo! As Director, UK, Ireland and Benelux at Google she had direct responsibility to protect and grow revenue worth 20 per cent of Google’s overall income. The first employee of Google outside the US, she developed the company’s most profitable and fastest growing region, pioneered a new sales structure that was adopted globally and built a significant team to localise and promote new products. Burns left Google to offer consultancy services to internet businesses.

Kevin Cornils, CEO of buy.at explains, ‘Kate Burns has helped develop three global organisations from start-up to successful public companies. She is passionate about the innovative use of technology and brings a strong network of relationships that she has developed across the industry to buy.at. Her credibility, enthusiasm for performance marketing and process-driven approach will support the maturation and professionalisation of buy.at’s client relationships.’

Kate Burns adds, ‘I want to help buy.at get agencies more interested in affiliate marketing and understand how they can profit from it. This is a complex channel based on relationships, delivery and technology. As Google’s first hire outside the US, I have had a unique opportunity to see a company grow from zero to billions over five and a half years. Affiliate marketing is growing very fast which brings unique challenges in educating the market and proving the business case for a channel that delivers a solid return on investment. The profile of networks has to be raised with agencies, clients and search engines and we need to ensure buy.at is aligned with the challenges clients and agencies face.’

Prior to joining Google in 2001, Burns was Pan-European Sales Director for Altavista and before that she spent three years at Doubleclick as an Account Director. Her appointment in a consultancy role follows other senior hires at buy.at including Louise Green, former Managing Director of the OMG Network, Peter Mycock, who joined as Sales Director from Experian, and Tyson Pearcey, as Affiliate Development Director, with previous experience form three other affiliate networks.

The appointment follows recent research from E-consultancy sponsored by buy.at, which reveals that 78 per cent of brands plan to increase their investment in affiliate marketing over the next two years, and 23% of UK marketers have more than doubled their investment since 2005. buy.at has experienced solid growth in the past six months with new clients wins including Match.com, Hillarys and Dial-a-Phone and was presented with an award for ‘Best Affiliate Advertising’ in April, 2007.


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About buy.at
Established in 2002, buy.at is the UK’s largest independent affiliate marketing network. buy.at drives online sales growth for 200 of the biggest brands across all sectors through its leading network of 6,000 good quality affiliates, supported by industry leading commercial and technical innovations. A pioneer of the open network, buy.at encourages merchants (advertisers) and affiliates (publishers) to communicate directly, to ensure the success of affiliate programmes. Clients include AA, Butlins, Carphone Warehouse, Capital One, Egg, John Lewis, M&S, Powergen, Sky, T-Mobile and Virgin.

buy.at has experienced 250% growth in turnover year-on-year since 2004. In March 2006, buy.at secured its future growth following a £7.3 million investment from Esprit Capital Partners. Bruce McLaren, renowned for leading Advertising.com as International CEO to a successful sale to AOL Time Warner, was appointed Chairman. Former match.com MD Kevin Cornils was recruited as CEO.

www.buy.at

Research methodology
In September 2007, E-consultancy analysed over 700 responses to its research request, which was emailed to its database. Of these 239 were UK merchants, i.e. “working in the UK for a company which sells online through the affiliate channel”.

Half of the respondents who were aware of their company’s turnover said it was in excess of £50 million per year. 78 per cent of the merchants surveyed plan to increase their investment in affiliate marketing over the next 2 years and 78 per cent have already increased their spend over the past two years. 95 per cent consider affiliate marketing to be ‘very’ or ‘quite’ cost-effective.

The full report is available from buy.at or www.e-consultancy.com

For further information please contact:
Joanna Burton
PR and marketing
T: 020 7299 8380
E: Joanna.Burton@buy.at

Anna Barry
Marketing Manager
T: 0191 222 9720
E: Anna.Barry@buy.at