Google Launches an Affiliate Network – Should We Panic?
By Ben Friedman, Recruitment Executive, R.O.EYE
Google, earlier this week, launched their own affiliate network offering. DoubleClick Performics Affiliate will now be called Google Affiliate Network. Effectively Google have taken the network under their banner and will look to bring it more and more in line with their business over the coming months.
What impact will this have? This remains to be seen. Some will be worried about the dominance of Google in the search arena spreading into affiliate marketing where it will now control not only the PPC adverts that many affiliates use, the analytics software that they monitor it with, but also now the affiliate programmes that they are advertising!
In some ways this could help to monitor the black hat activities of some affiliates and monitor un-authorised brand bidding on a completely new level, if the areas of the Google empire are integrated effectively.
But, what’s to stop Google becoming an affiliate? This is a fear that has been expressed by a number of affiliates in the past. Why not place affiliate links as their search listings? I know it sounds a bit far fetched, but Microsoft have gone this way already with their Cashback site. Could we see this happen with another of the big three search engines? Or is it a conspiracy theory that will continue to be discussed half jokingly and half in mortal fear?
There are many other questions that are going to be asked in the coming weeks about what the implications of this bold step will mean: To what level will Adsense, Adwords and Analytics be incorporated? Which merchants are going to be drawn to the network due to the lure of the Google brand? Will Google follow Microsoft down the affiliate route?
We will have to wait and see. For now the only major change for all affiliates involved with the DoubleClick Performics network is the name.
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