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More Signs of Performance Marketing / Affiliate Marketing Industry Consolidation

Apr 26, 2010
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MediaTrust announced today that they have Acquired Bardon Advisors, and have named Bardon’s founder, Keith Cohn, President of MediaTrust.  According to the press release:

“The acquisition includes more than 1200 owned and operated web properties and extends the platform’s reach by more than 20 million monthly unique visits and ~5 million paid searches per month.”

“Under Keith’s leadership, Bardon Advisors has quietly become an industry leader in all things cost per click – from search engine marketing to content ad networks to affiliate marketing,” said Peter Bordes, CEO of MediaTrust. “Bardon’s technology and expertise will further expand and diversify the MediaTrust platform’s existing CPA, CPL and conversion marketing offerings for brands, agencies, and affiliate publishers, as well as open the door for future performance marketing innovations.”

This acquisition by MediaTrust shows further signs that the performance marketing industry is moving into the next phase of industry growth, where fragmented businesses consolidate and clear winners in the industry emerge.

Timing and market forces might be perfect for further acquisitions in the industry.  Interest rates remain low, and capital gains rates will most likely increase the next year.

I have long thought that networks looking to grow or preserve their position in the industry should consider “locking up” distribution for top advertisers by acquiring the partners driving the most sales.  For a long time the industry has operated with the mantra that “affiliates will go where the advertisers are”, but as the affiliates have grown over time and relatively small  numbers of affiliates continue to make up the vast majority of sales for individual merchants, I believe that a shift is occurring where  “advertisers will go where the affiliates are”.  This creates an interesting new dynamic in the industry.

Love to hear your thoughts!

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing + Internet Strategy + Performance Marketing + Search Engine Marketing
  • http://www.experienceadvertising.com Evan

    Sounds great! Always good when companies are getting acquired!

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  • http://www.AffiliateProgramManagment.com Steve Bell

    Hi,

    This does show that our industry is now doing what the print media had to do along time ago. In order to grow into what this industry is changing to, many smaller IM companies will be merged, bought out, added to, closed down over the course of the next 2-3 years, we will all be part of a "next phase" IM growth. I for one am looking forward to this, we smaller IM companies need to be flexible, dynamic and best of all, can make changes easily. As compared to larger corp style business who tend to react slowly and change even slower.

    We can really make a difference here.

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