LinkShare May Be Affiliate Network of Choice in China as Baidu forms Joint Venture with Rakuten
One of the benefits of having a strong parent company is the ability to reap the opportunities being tied to such an organization can provide. As a parent company, Rakuten is certainly no slouch, boasting Japan’s largest internet shopping mall, the Rakuten Ichiba, with over 60 million registered users and $2.7 billion in US dollars in sales in 2008.
Like its distant second competitor Google, Baidu has been searching for ways to expand its profitability. Thus the appeal of tapping Rakuten’s infrastructure to create a ready-made proven ecommerce model custom built for China.
As Kentaro Hyakuno, Senior Executive Officer of Rakuten, put it, “Baidu, with its vast reach and deep user loyalty, is the perfect complement to Rakuten’s extensive experience in the online B2C sector.”
The mall, which at an estimated cost of at least the equivalent of $50 million in US dollars will be the largest of its kind in China, is scheduled to launch in the latter half of 2010 with Rakuten owning 51% and Baidu owning 49% of the venture.
The timing of this news coincides with LinkShare Symposium West which starts tomorrow, January 28 in San Francisco. With the launch of the Google Affiliate Network, LinkShare’s market space has been slipping. Being able to leverage its strong affiliate relationships in Q4 of 2010 to help back the launch of such a mall is definitely just what the doctor ordered. Conversely this has the potential of making LinkShare more appealing to US advertisers who are eager to find inroads to a Chinese audience.
According to Mark Kirschner, Chief Marketing Officer for LinkShare, the opportunity is real as “LinkShare is the affiliate marketing platform of choice for Rakuten, so everywhere they go, we go with them.”
It will be interesting to see what announcements LinkShare has in store for the industry at Symposium.
