Affiliate Leaders Summit Adds SEO and Discovery Track for Lisbon 2026
The Affiliate Leaders Summit has locked in a Content & Discovery track for 2026. It closes three days of stage programming in Lisbon, and it takes a hard look at search visibility, paid acquisition, and how audiences actually find affiliate brands. The track runs Thursday, 1 October. Before it comes Platforms & Performance on Tuesday, 29 September, then Future of Affiliate Strategy on Wednesday, 30 September.
The summit takes place 29 September to 1 October 2026 at Lisbon's Feira Internacional de Lisboa and MEO Arena. Organisers expect 10,000 industry professionals across networking, exhibition and education. VIP Pass holders get into the Content & Discovery track; affiliates and regulators may qualify for a complimentary pass.
Speakers include SEO specialists, affiliate operators and performance marketers. Sessions tackle recovering content pulled from search results, splitting budget between organic and paid, and getting ready for shifts in how people discover businesses online.
Rasmus Sojmark, Founder and CEO of SBC, framed the track around a frustration operators know well. "When you've spent years building an audience, it's frustrating to see the approaches you've relied on start to lose ground," he said. "You're still creating content and investing in your business, but getting people to find you is becoming a different challenge." Attendees should leave Lisbon knowing where to put their money next, he added. "What needs changing? What still works? And what can you stop worrying about? Those are the questions we're bringing experienced people together to tackle."
First up is a problem most affiliates know too well: copyright complaints piling up until a site vanishes from results. In Trapped by the System: How DMCA Stacking Creates an Endless Loop, SEO consultant Ivana Flynn examines how overlapping takedown notices knock legitimate sites out of Google, and what operators can do to get affected pages indexed again once restrictions lift.
Then the focus turns to what still works. Stewart Vickers, the SEO consultant and YouTuber known as SEO Jesus, presents Gaming the Algorithm: The SEO Loopholes Still Working. He picks apart gaps in how search engines rank and surface content, the tactics teams are running right now, and how long those openings are likely to stay open.
Paid search's growing share of the results page drives the mid-track panel, SEO vs Paid: The 2026 Power Shift. Can Affiliates Survive Without Paying to Play? Sander Delabie (CEO & Founder, Clovio), Heitor Fonseca (Director of Marketing, F5 Media), Julia Logan (Head of SEO, AICT Media) and Jonathan Olsson (CMO, Match2One) join moderator Russell Yershon (Founder, Connectingbrands). They work through when SEO spend makes sense, when paid is worth the money, and how running both together brings in customers without gutting margin.
The closing session looks past the current cycle. What to Expect and How to Prepare for SEO in 2027: The Good, the Bad and the Crazy brings together Udit Bali (Founder, AdHook Media), Ivana Flynn and Stewart Vickers. They assess preparation for next year, covering AI-powered answer tools and the routes people take to find businesses outside Google.
For affiliates weighing where the next euro of acquisition budget goes, the track lands on the practical questions: complaint recovery, which loopholes still pay, and the point at which paid traffic stops being optional.