Affiliate Networks tighten up with new found confidence.

In the past couple of weeks just about every affiliate network that we work with has sent over renewal forms or additional contractual language pertaining to acceptable practices and conditions outlining how publishers must perform.

While I certainly agree that there needs to be more policing on just how publishers generate their traffic, this trend is a little shocking because it shows that affiliate networks can now afford to stand on their own.

Two years ago networks were cold calling publishers begging for overage traffic and performance metrics. Today their starting to call the shots more and more. The danger here is that publishers (Extravagant Media included) like to call the shots. The general attitude is that it's our traffic, we own it, we can send it to your competitor because their offers are just as good and they don't hassle us. It's definitely a balancing act right now where the affiliate networks are putting in controls because they can afford to or perhaps it has something to do with Elliot Spitzer, and now they cannot afford not to.

Extravagant Media would like to extend a warm welcome to Erik Mikkelsaar, our newest team member and campaign manager.

In the news here are the latest interesting headlines.

Spitzer Takes Aim at Direct Revenue
Just months after declaring it has wiped its hands clean of its nefarious adware practices, Direct Revenue is now facing the wrath for past misdeeds thanks to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Just like his previous actions against similar firms like Intermix, Spitzer is alleging that DR surreptitiously installed millions of pop-up ad programs on consumers computers. Full article here

Ginette Degner On Oreck and Affiliate Ownership
Ginette Degner of Service Brokers recently appeared on WordTalkRadio.com's eMarketing Talk Show to tell of Oreck.com's affiliate marketing horror story during Hurricane Katrina. In doing so she drew clear lines between networks that build walls between advertisers and their affiliates and those that do not. Full article here

Think Partnership Acquires Litmus Media and Closes Sale of $26.5 Million of Convertible Preferred Stock
Thursday April 6, 9:03 am ET
Litmus Media's unique click fraud prevention and abandoned shopping cart re-marketing technologies promise to maximize value to advertising clients. Full Article Here

2007 Online Technology Ad Spending to Hit $2.8 Billion
A new report released by eMarketer yesterday, called "Technology Marketing: Customer Driven Convergence," estimates that the computing category will spend $2.8 billion on online advertising of computing (hardware and software) products in 2007 - representing 16 percent of all online ads for next year Full article here