Affiliate Marketing is Booming - 52 Merchants Join Linkshare

[Linda Buquet]

The soft retail climate doesn’t appear to be affecting e-commerce in the U.S., as one company is finding out. LinkShare recruited 52 new advertisers in the first-quarter, up significantly from 30 in 4Q 2007. The company’s lead generation service was a key driver, as LinkShare explains in a news release out today.

Analysts estimate U.S. online advertising revenues will rise between 15% and 19% in 2008. In a recent survey by Jupiter Research and LinkShare, that growth will be fueled by improving multichannel initiatives, better merchandising, more customized offerings, and increasingly sophisticated marketing, such as pay-per-action marketing.

Here are portions of the LinkShare Press Release Olena just sent me.

NEW YORK – April 16, 2008 – LinkShare, a leading pay-per-action marketing network, announced the addition of 52 new advertisers to its network for the first-quarter of 2008.

The new customers outpace LinkShare’s fourth-quarter number of 30 new customers and represent some of the fastest-growing markets in e-commerce, including financial services, real estate, dating, home services, business services, education and insurance.

“Our new customers join a global network of advertisers and publishers that rely on LinkShare to simplify online marketing to reach millions of consumers every day,” said Arun Bordoloi, Senior Vice President, LinkShare Corporation. “We are becoming the network of choice for search, lead generation and affiliate marketing among both the Internet Retailer 500 and small to mid-sized businesses, demonstrating that our pay per action model is a key differentiator at every level.”

“One of our fastest growing programs, LinkShare Lead Advantage, is growing quickly because it delivers high quality, targeted leads to advertisers on a cost per action basis. That’s particularly powerful in a soft retail climate.”

Joining the LinkShare Lead Advantage network are several companies that include notable advertisers such as infoUSA, NetQuote, Apartments.com, Relocation.com, and Insurance.com.

The Press Release also features some Linkshare customer insights including: what’s working for such price-sensitive goods as computers (from CompUSA.com) and insurance (from Insurance.com) as well as Handango’s views about the mobile market.