Affiliate marketing network, Linkshare, has acquired a US-based ‘lead generation’ company, TrafficStrategies.com with plans to incorporate the latter’s expertise into its own lead generation offerings. In many ways, it looks the acquisition is akin to a major network acquiring the capabilities of an ‘affiliate’/publisher, which is what many of the independent lead generation companies are. Not entirely surprising considering that top performing affiliates seem to be equipped with better skills and proprietary systems than some of the companies and networks they generate leads and sales for.
While the above news might be welcomed by merchants/ advertisers that could leverage the ‘complementary’ strenghts of the two companies, earlier this week week Linkshare announced something of interest to affiliates.The company introduced a new web services offering for affiliates, called Automated LinkGenerator. According to the announcement, “this new tool does not replace Merchandiser (LinkShare’s datafeed), but will be helpful for getting direct links from merchants that do not offer Merchandiser feeds.”
The M&A activity in the online advertising space has likely peaked for the immediate future (though a question about the future of ValueClick or Commission Junction is never far away)— the intense activity of the past two months is going to be tough to beat anyway. The next few months may see some more consolidation, but I suspect the focus will now shift on product and service enhancements targeted at end users rather than market capitalisation and P/E.


Linkshare acquires lead generation company, TrafficStrategies.com - Read More...