eBay Partner Network Goes Live April 1

I received an interesting email Monday morning from eBay’s Affiliate Managers regarding the establishment of the eBay Affiliate Network. In this email, they announced that eBay was launching a new affiliate platform that will go live on April 1, 2008. They also announced that eBay would no longer be running their affiliate program through Commission Junction.

Ironically, this email had the standard CJ footer stating it had been sent via the Commission Junction network. The email also pointed out that there will be 5% bonus for “traffic” tracked through the new eBay network for 1 month. Beyond noting a bonus would be available, no more details are provided.

Here’s a copy of this email:

We are excited to announce eBay’s new global affiliate platform: the eBay Partner Network.

The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction. Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform.

While CJ and ValueClick have been valuable partners to eBay throughout the years, we’ve decided to give our affiliate community a customized experience for eBay affiliates.

All the great tools and benefits of working with the eBay program will remain the same – access to the Editor Kit and affiliate API, the flexible destination tool, the great payout structure. In addition, the eBay partner network will provide several new features:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

The eBay Partner Network and Commission Junction will run in parallel for one month through this process, so please plan to complete your migration by May 1st, 2008.

You can receive an additional 5% bonus for all traffic tracked through eBay Partner Network in April 2008 (bonus applicable to traffic sent to Half.com and US, UK, Australia, Canada, Italy, India and Spain eBay sites). The sooner you migrate, the more you’ll earn! Just:

• Register with eBay Partner Network on April 1, 2008
• Confirm your registration, and obtain your new identifiers
• Update your links with your new identifiers.
• Reminder: Please plan to complete migration by May 1, 2008.

You will receive more information and step by step directions for the transition on April 1st. A special help desk to answer your questions about migration will also be available starting April 1st. You can find more details, including a list of programs that will be affected, at http://affiliates.ebay.com.

Thanks for being a valued partner. We’re excited for a successful transition, and the opportunity to grow your business through even more innovations, information and communication moving forward!

Sincerely,
eBay’s Affiliates Managers

So what does this mean for affiliates in general and Commission Junction specifically?

For affiliates (publishers), it will mean another independent program to keep up with and a lot of links to change out. Beyond that I’m not sure since very little additional information has been provided at this stage.

For Commission Junction, I suspect it means the loss of one of their largest merchants (advertisers). This reminds me of Sam Harrelson’s March 3, 2008 post about ValueClick’s 10-K Filing report where he quoted a few segments including one that noted ValueClick had an increase in transaction volumes that was “partially offset by a reduction in revenue from a large customer in this segment.” I wonder if the July 2008 report will note a similar offset due to eBay’s migration.

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