A long time in the making, Commission Junction announced at CJU that their first web services APIs are now available.

Web Services allows developers to programmatically access the Commission Junction application server and perform tasks that would otherwise require logging in through their account manager interface. Amazon and eBay have been very successful with their own web services APIs in the past several years, and this is a strong move for CJ to reach a new community of publishers.

The initial features in CJ's offering is as follows:

For Advertisers 1. Publisher Lookup - advertisers can integrate a publisher lookup tool into their own internal processes 2. Branded Signup - advertisers can completely customize their own signup process, for seamless integration with their own affiliate information pages on their websites. Check out Ebay's branded signup page, using this tool. 3. Branded Login - to complete the branded experience, advertisers can offer a branded login page.

For Publishers 1. Product Catalog Access - look up product data using a variety of search criteria such as keyword search, model id, UPC, etc. 2. Link Search Functionality - look up advertiser links based on advertiser status and link type and retrieve link code. 3. Advertiser Search Functionality - search for advertisers

This is a great first step in opening up the back-end to publishers who rely on automation to optimize their activities. More features are promised in the future, including access to reporting data. Priorities on additional features probably rely on popularity of the services.

Support will be provided primarily through a community forum, also available now through the CJ web services site. Also a good model that follows the lead of other large web services offerings like Ebay and Amazon.

Check out the web services pages on CJ's site.