Commission Junction has just signed up for another year’s membership of the IAB. In fact, the contract spans all of the UK businesses meaning that, amongst other things, we retain our membership of IASH (of which Richard Sharp the MD of ValueClick Media is the current chair) and, crucially for CJ, the Affiliate Marketing Council (AMC). I wanted to talk a little bit about why we felt, despite tightening budgets across the industry, it was so important to continue to invest in the IAB.

The gathering together of affiliates, agencies, networks and merchants is old hand for the AMC. Although the faces around the table have changed over the years, the organisations represented have remained consistent. Through these collaborative efforts, excellent work such as the IAB Affiliate Marketing handbook has been delivered to a wider marketplace that does not always understand affiliates and their place in the online mix. The AMC has also allowed all its members and guests a voice in discussing issues. Such an open door policy allows discussed topics to flow freely back to the marketplace.

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After Carl White’s predictions for online marketing in 2009, Alison Guise, the General Manager for CJ Europe and Managing Director for Mediaplex, has come up with her predictions for 2009 on iMedia connection.

The year has started, and looks set to proceed, with a series of challenges and Alison talks about how true performance-based marketing alongside transparency through accurate measurement will be the keys to success in these toughening times.

Take a look here for the full article.

How will the newest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, currently in beta release, with it’s InPrivate Browsing(TM)  functionality which prevents browsers from retaining cookies, affect the affiliate marketing industry? Will purchases still be tracked and accredited to the advertiser’s affiliate programme?

Commission Junction’s Craig Battles, from our US office, has written about this on the Affiliate Summit website. Click here to take a look.

The deadline to take part in Econsultancy’s affiliate census is fast approaching. I blogged about the advertiser and agency one here. So much has changed in such a short time that it is clearly really important to give our opinion on the industry, particularly in a year when challenges will focus many a marketer’s eye on affiliate marketing.

So – for affiliates who want to take part click here. You have until the 27th January.

The blogs are full of predictions for 2009 at the moment, and they display an interesting variety of ideas which shows that nothing is a dead cert.  One thing that does remain consistent is that, in the right hands, affiliate marketing should flourish and offer many merchants an opportunity to market and sell their products when times are tight.

Carl White, the CEO of ValueClick Europe has recently given his predictions for 2009 in an article for iMedia. They are for the whole of online marketing but interesting nonetheless. Here they are.

In September E-consultancy conducted a survey into the state of affiliate marketing in the UK – what proportion it made of budgets in 2008 vs 2007.  The survey dealt with 259 merchants and 150 agencies and came up with some rather interesting and surprising information.

The first thing which struck me was this stat:

‘Merchants reported that 5 or fewer affiliates are driving 80% of their affiliate sales or sign ups’

This was particularly interesting in combination with the fact that:

‘..almost 70% of merchants are spending less than two hours per week communicating with their affiliates…’ Read the rest of this entry »