Six of us just spent four days in Rome at Affiliate Grand Slam, and the moment that said the most happened off the show floor. Our private rooftop cocktail evening filled all 100 places and left another 500 people on the waitlist. Here’s what we saw, who we met, and where we’re headed next.
Why AGS Rome
Affiliate Grand Slam (AGS) took over Fiera Roma from November 2–5, marking the event’s return as Europe’s flagship multi-vertical affiliate conference. Powered by SiGMA and held alongside SiGMA World and AIBC, AGS brought together more than 5,000 verified affiliates and over 250 exhibitors from across the performance marketing world.
AGS is built for the people who drive online sales: affiliates, media buyers, networks, brands and the tools that support them. Every affiliate is vetted before they’re approved, and the agenda covers ecommerce, nutra, finance, dating, lead gen, SaaS and more, with gambling kept to its own separate show. Google, Meta, TikTok and Snapchat all sent teams, putting the biggest traffic platforms on the same floor as the affiliates who buy from them.
For JVZoo, that made AGS the right room to be in. It’s where the vendors and affiliates who build on our marketplace go to find their next partner, and where we could meet the European sellers and affiliates we want to bring onto JVZoo next.
The Team Behind the Booth
Six members of the JVZoo team made the trip to Rome, from leadership to the people our users talk to every day, all pictured in the booth photo above:
Laura CasselmanCEO
Simon HarriesCo-owner
Jessica StricklandVice President of Operations
Thorsten MeierChief Operating Officer
Steve ThomasClient Success Manager
Natalie MaasBusiness Development Manager
“My highlight was our cocktail party: getting to meet our users, our partners and future partners, with the whole city of Rome below us.”
— Laura Casselman, CEO
“Connecting with friends and clients was great, but the best part was watching current clients introduce us to their friends and partners and tell them to work with us. The number of referrals we received was amazing to witness.”
— Simon Harries, Co-owner
“The energy on the show floor at Fiera Roma was incredible, but what impressed me most was the response to our own client event on the rooftop. We hit our 100-person capacity and had to turn people away. That speaks volumes about the reputation JVZoo has built.”
— Thorsten Meier, Chief Operating Officer
“I have a whole new level of respect for Simon and his team. Seeing the hours they put in firsthand, networking all day, then dinners and after-parties, then catching up on regular work until 3 AM and doing it all again the next morning, gave me a new appreciation for their dedication.”
— Jessica Strickland, Vice President of Operations
“The biggest takeaway was that partnerships are built in person. Sitting down with partners in Rome turned good working relationships into stronger, more committed ones, and we left with clearer plans and more trust on both sides.”
— Steve Thomas, Client Success Manager
“Hands down, my highlight was our intimate JVZoo event. The setting couldn’t have been more perfect, but what really made it special were the meaningful, in-depth conversations. When the event was supposed to end, nobody wanted to leave, and I think that says everything about the connections being made in that room.”
— Natalie Maas, Business Development Manager
Partnerships Are Built in Person
The best part of any event isn’t the booth. It’s the people. Over four days in Rome, the team met existing users, longtime partners and plenty of people who had only known JVZoo by name until now.
Thorsten saw strong interest from both existing and potential partners in working more closely with JVZoo:
“It’s one thing to talk about brand recognition internally. Experiencing that level of enthusiasm and trust firsthand is something entirely different. It reinforced how much potential we have to build on our existing relationships and create new ones.”
Laura heard the same thing from almost everyone she spoke to:
“Everyone is now aware of JVZoo, and the one thing that kept being said is that JVZoo has the best team: not only nice, but extremely helpful.”
Some of the best moments were putting faces to names. Jessica finally met Monika from Pronto, a fulfillment company JVZoo is currently integrating with:
“Being able to connect in person and strengthen that relationship was definitely a highlight.”
And it wasn’t just existing partners. Steve came home with a pipeline of new ones:
“We met businesses, both emerging and established, that we hadn’t worked with before, and we left Rome with a pipeline of partners we’re excited to build with.”
Some of those new connections moved fast. Natalie met a nutra vendor team JVZoo had never worked with before. A conversation at our booth turned into a deeper discussion at theirs about a potential partnership, and then into a dinner invitation that same evening:
“We had never met before, but that connection gave us the opportunity to continue building what I hope will be a lasting relationship.”
Simon saw that trust turn into action, with a wave of requests for private, face-to-face meetings:
“People wanted to go deeper face to face and have us help manage their whole affiliate infrastructure. More people want to diversify, but our partners and clients want to work closely with us. The fact that they trust us with 100% of their business makes me proud of what we’re building.”
That’s the part that doesn’t show up on a booth banner. Affiliates and vendors grow on JVZoo because there are real people behind the platform who answer questions, solve problems and help them scale. Rome reminded us how much that matters.
Where Affiliate Marketing Is Headed
Between the sessions, the booth conversations and the rooftop, four themes kept coming up.
1. AI is speeding everything up. AI came up in almost every conversation. Teams are using it to make decisions and run tests faster on day-to-day work, moving from idea to execution quicker than ever. It’s also changing how buyers find offers, as more people get recommendations from AI answers instead of search results.
What this means for JVZoo users: Speed is now an advantage. Vendors who launch and test quickly, and affiliates who use AI to find winning angles faster, will pull ahead.
2. Diversification is the new safety net. Affiliates and sellers are expanding into new verticals and traffic sources to build more resilient businesses, instead of depending on one offer, one niche or one ad platform. Simon heard the same thing: people want to diversify both the offers they run and where they run them, and trust in the big advertising platforms is low right now.
What this means for JVZoo users: Don’t put everything on a single traffic source or niche. JVZoo’s marketplace spans digital products, supplements and ecom tools, so affiliates can branch into new verticals without leaving the platform.
3. The next growth market is often a new country. Selling across borders was a recurring theme, including a session on taking an offer that works at home into Europe. Speakers stressed that translation isn’t enough: payment methods, local taxes and how trust is built all change by country, and a clunky checkout loses the sale no matter how good the ad is.
What this means for JVZoo users: Thorsten heard this theme throughout Rome: “Rome was a strong validation of our strategy to expand into DACH and Europe as well as Latin America. The demand and opportunities are clearly there.” Natalie heard it too: vendors and affiliates are already finding success in Europe, and there was a lot of talk about room for continued growth and new partnerships in the EU. For vendors and affiliates, that means more chances to sell beyond their traditional markets through JVZoo.
4. The lines between industries are blurring. There’s a clear drive toward convergence, as affiliate, creator and performance marketing increasingly overlap.
What this means for JVZoo users: As Steve put it: “That’s exactly where JVZoo sits, bringing sellers and affiliates together across digital products, supplements and ecom tools, and giving them one marketplace to grow, diversify and partner across all of it.”
Our Invite-Only Rooftop Evening
AGS is big and loud, and the best conversations rarely happen in a booth. So on Tuesday, November 3, we took over a private rooftop above the city for Cocktails Above the Eternal City, a three-hour evening with the operators, vendors and affiliates actually moving volume right now.
There were no stages and no pitches, just real conversations with people who are building, scaling and looking for their next partner, with Rome laid out below. All 100 places filled, and 500 more people were on the waitlist.
Why invite-only? Keeping the room small means every conversation counts. Priority goes to active JVZoo users and partners, and everyone else is reviewed as space allows. Want a seat at the next one? Request your spot early. It’s in Bangkok, and the details are below.
Where We’ll Be Next
Rome showed us how far JVZoo has come, and how much room there is to grow. As Thorsten put it: “JVZoo has an incredibly strong foundation, a respected name in the industry, and significant untapped potential internationally. Now it’s about turning that momentum into growth.”
Want to be part of what comes next?
Sources
- SiGMA: Affiliate Grand Slam reclaims the spotlight with launch in Rome
- Affiverse: Affiliate Grand Slam, Europe’s top multi-vertical affiliate event
- AffNinja: Affiliate Grand Slam 2026 Rome (pre-event attendance estimates)
- CPV Lab: Affiliate Grand Slam Rome guide
- Vibelets: Affiliate Grand Slam Rome 2026
- Daniel Stanica: Affiliate Grand Slam 2026
- Digistore24: Iulia Enasel on scaling globally at AGS Rome
