We kick off each Monday with a roundup of industry news, reports and insights of interest to performance and digital marketers. Here are a few recent items to peruse while you start your day.

Pinterest lifts affiliate link ban, rolls out network

As Media Post Search Marketing Daily reports, Pinterest brought affiliate marketing back after banning it more than a year ago to prevent link abuse. The decision will likely draw marketers back to Pinterest and increase user participation. Visual-driven social networks like Instagram continue to gain popularity and “the move to bring back revenue sharing through an affiliate network creates one of several signals that Pinterest remains serious in growing the company worldwide.”

U.K. travelers say booking sites are one of their most important channels for trip research and booking

Travel site Skift shares five charts from an Expedia Media Solutions / comScore survey that shows how UK travelers plan trips online – important info for businesses in the travel sector. One interesting highlight: “U.K. travelers’ booking-site usage declines the closer they get to transacting, when hotel and airline websites become more top-of-mind. However, online travel agencies like Expedia.com and Booking.com remain one of the most utilized online channels for booking travel.” The survey also shows that U.K. travelers prefer to book through mobile browsers instead of mobile apps.

Don’t let a fixation on data let you lose sight of what’s truly important

Marketing Land columnist Scott Rayden warns marketers to not let a fixation on data let them lose sight of what’s truly important: connecting with customers. Data-driven marketing is a reality for any modern marketing department, as it should be. But Rayden believes that the scales can tip too far to the data side – especially with performance marketing – and lead to campaigns that fail to reach consumers on an emotional level. He advises us not to forget that consumers are in control and push marketing no longer works – sage advice for all advertisers and agencies today.

Behind The In-App Programmatic Opportunity

In AdExchanger’s Data-Driven Thinking Column, Janis Zech, COO and Co-founder of of Fyber talks about the growth in mobile programmatic. He posits: “To deliver real results for advertisers and revenue for mobile developers and publishers, look for the emergence of truly device-agnostic or cross-platform DMPs in the next 12 to 24 months. We may actually see even more innovative multichannel attribution companies merging with or becoming DMPs themselves because of their proficiency in working with data.”