AFFILIATE NETWORKS
(Click on the column headers to change sorting order.)
| Rank | Agency | Turnover from this specialism | Year to | Previous year | UK staff |
Founded in UK |
Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Affiliate Window | £43,004,757 | 12/09 | £33,314,944 | 100 | 2000 | Axel Springer/PubliGroupe (50.1%) |
| 2 | AffiliateFuture | £14,800,000 | 10/09 | £13,370,000 | 41 | 2002 | Progressive Digital Media |
| 3 | dgm | £8,200,624 | 12/08 | £11,516,000 | 30 | 1999 | Asian Digital Holdings (49%) |
| 4 | Webgains | £6,959,796 | 12/09 | £5,612,413 | 32 | 2005 | Ad Pepper Media |
| 5 | R.O.Eye | £6,132,546 | 10/09 | £5,678,952 | 16 | 2004 | independent |
These agencies were unable to supply UK Turnover figures
| Agency | UK staff |
Founded in UK |
Owner | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Affilinet UK | 13 | 2005 | AdLink Group | ||||
| Commission Junction | 45 | 1998 | ValueClick | ||||
| LinkShare | 25 | 2006 | Rakuten | ||||
| TradeDoubler | 102 | 2000 | independent |
Sector overview
Performance-based marketing weathered the economic storm of the last year, with the sector seeing increased investment in brands, agencies and platforms. From a network perspective there was some consolidation. In August, DigitalWindow, parent company of affiliate network AffiliateWindow, sold a majority stake to a German-Swiss joint venture between Axel Springer and PubliGroupe (which already owns German affiliate network Zanox) for an undisclosed sum. More recently, DigitalWindow itself was on the acquisition trail, buying Perfiliate, of which the Buy.at network is a part, just two years after it became part of the AOL family Meanwhile affiliate veterans and Commission Junction co-founders Per Pettersen and Todd Crawford launched Impact Radius, a multi-channel performance marketing platform, to help encourage take-up of the model in offline media.
But one of the key trends of the year was traditional media agencies muscling in on the network space. WalkerMedia, BLM Quantum andMedia Contacts have all launched own-brand affiliate networks in the last year, while OMD Group created its first head of affiliates role as the Omnicom-owned media agency looks to boost its affiliate credentials. Elsewhere Karen Millen, JJB Sports, WHSmith and Ocado were brands that boosted their affiliate marketing activity over the last 12 months.
One of the major stories of the year was Ebay launching a quality based payment model across its affiliate network as part of major changes to end the last-click-wins model. Affiliates are now being paid based on an algorithmic scoring model, Quality Click Pricing, which assesses the quality of traffic a third-party sends to all Ebay sites worldwide. The rollout was made in consultation with network R.O.Eye and was seen by the industry as reflecting the underlying demand in the affiliate sector for traffic quality to be recognised alongside volume.
However, there have been examples of when affiliate marketing isn't always the best channel. A study by Orange saw it reduce its investment by 25% because affiliates were cannibalising online sales.
The sector has always been one to seek out new opportunities, so the next year is likely to see the performance model taken even further by brands. Twitter is an obvious key performance-based channel and it's already being used by some. In November, Amazon announced It would be using Twitter to allow members of its Amazon Associates affiliate programme to make money from sharing product links on the site. Likewise, last month music service mFlow launched, encouraging users to recommend music in return for a 20% commission if someone buys.