February 20, 2007
Tremors in Affiliate Marketing
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Circuit City has been live on Performics for a few weeks now, but I’m not certain that they’d previously stated that their CJ and Be Free program would be shutting down.
Please be aware, the Circuit City Affiliate Programs on BFAST and CJ end today. This means that effective tomorrow, 2/21/07, you will no longer receive credit or commission for any new sales* referred through your BFAST / reporting.net or CJ links. To continue working with Circuit City please contact a member of the Circuit City Affiliate team [names and phone numbers omitted].
Merchants switch networks all the time, but this is one of those that make you say, “holy shit”. Or at least that’s what I said. Circuit City had a vibrant program for many years at Be Free. No matter how you slice it, this is a big loss.
The days are winding down on the BFAST platform. What other big moves are in store?
I am working with Performics on their new AffiliateDirect product and they are trying to get one of my CJ programs to switch completely to AffiliateDirect. Same issues I am sure Circuit City is involved with only a much larger scale than my client. Good catch.
What other big moves are in store? Barnes & Noble, apparently.
From their affiliate page:
“Please note: We are currently migrating to a new Affiliate Network platform, and we are unable to accept applications for new Affiliates at this time. The online application will be available on March 1, 2007.”
Was Barnes & Noble the first BeFree merchant?
BTW, picked this up from my Google alert for “Performics.” Good work!
my first befree program was #50. i started negotiating the deal when they had 10 merchants, barnes & noble being one of them. like you i do believe that befree was written for them and then befree was allowed to market at as a separate tool for other merchants.
>> Was Barnes & Noble the first BeFree merchant?
Yes. The initial BFAST was pretty much designed based on BN.com’s specifications.
So Scott - what do you think the future has in store for CJ? Do you think it is on its way out, or will they turn it around?
It would be a shame to <strike>not be able to go to Santa Barbara for CJU</strike> see CJ disappear.
I wouldn’t say I’m at all concerned about the future of CJU (and the company that hosts it).
These defectors are primarily old BeFree clients who were used to a certain type of program, certain program management features, and perhaps service that they’re just not getting from the CJ platform. And remember, BF was not really a network, so merchants there ‘owned’ their affiliates. CJ and BF are two ends of that spectrum, and some merchants would be much more comfortable heading over to LS or Perfomics than to jump into a total network model.
Given the ultimatum of moving over to CJ or moving out, some are choosing to move out, as expected.
[...] Even more than CircuitCity, this shows that some major shifts are happening in the US Affiliate Marketing landscape. As I mentioned previously, Commission Junction is shuttering up the Be Free platform and not giving some of the old school merchants reasonable functionality replacement in the CJ platform. So off they go to the competition. This is another major loss for CJ and gain for Performics. [...]
B&N will be moving to Performics, according to a blog entry today at Performics.