The Trusted Guide to Ad Networks and Exchanges

The Blue Book Top 20 Performance Marketing Networks and Exchanges

mThink - Posted on 17 April 2010

1 ShareASale Brian Littleton’s stellar reputation has helped to propel ShareASale to the top with our readers at a time when reputation counts for everything.
2 Commission Junction The biggest fish in the affiliate marketing pond rises in the rankings. CJ has always been popular and when many networks have been struggling to survive, size and sophistication counts even more.
3 MediaTrust A top network with impeccable credentials, MediaTrust punches above its weight due to great service, rapid growth and well-respected leadership.
4 LinkShare LinkShare’s ownership by the Japanese company Rakuten shows itself in their dedicated networks for the UK, Cand and Japan, and their strong foreign language and currency capabilities.
5 Epic Advertising Recently announced merger with Connexus, owners of Traffic Marketplace, to create one of the world’s largest private digital media companies.
6 Neverblue A Canadian network that is strong in lead-gen worldwide. Popular with high-performing affiliates.
7 Google Affiliate Network Google’s affiliate network has come on strong with our readers over the last six months as publishers seek stability, scale and support.
8 ClickBank This venerable affiliate network that specializes in digital, downloadable products is now 10 years old and still going strong. Every publisher should have a ClickBank account.
9 Clickbooth Ranked #5 on the Inc. 500 list. Clickbooth has proven itself to publishers and advertisers over the last couple of years and is now regarded as one of the industry leaders. Focuses on exclusive offers.
10 oneNetworkDirect Digital River’s oneNetworkDirect is the leader in software sales with the industry’s best network technology and offices worldwide.
11 Hydra Hydra has recently refocused on only high-performance publishers in a move to attract big brand advertisers with a quality, fraud-free offering.
12 PepperJam Kris Jones has built Pepperjam into an online marketing powerhouse offering a wide range of interactive agency services.
13 NetMargin Datran Media’s NetMargin network has excellent technology, is very strong in email and attracts good publishers with quality offers.
14 AffiliateWindow / buy.at Affiliate Windows’ parent company has recently acquired buy.at from AOL creating the biggest affiliate network in Britain.
15 CX Digital Media A two-tier network that claims to reach more unique visitors than any other US online advertising network. Like many, has recently tightened publisher application criteria.
16 MediaWhiz 30,000 publishers, 3,000 advertisers, and a claimed $100 million in publisher payments in 2007. Media Whiz is strong in email and lead-gen.
17 MaxBounty A smaller network that gets a lot of play with bigger affiliates and offers advertisers a cost-effective CPA solution.
18 Advertising.com Claim to monetize almost 2 billion impressions a day from a network that includes over 70 out of comScore’s Top 100 ad supported sites.
19 RevenueStreet A division of TheMediaCrew, RevenueStreet carries 250+ offers, lots of support and good technology.
20 Motive Interactive Motive is a premium CPA network with a well-respected, proprietary lead-gen platform that offers great tracking.
 

The New BLUE BOOK Top 20 Ranking
The first 2010 Top 20 ranking of the best performance marketing networks and exchanges comes after a tumultuous six months that have seen some networks driven to the wall and others merged, acquired, refinanced or reorganized. The overall effect has been of a “flight to quality” by many advertisers and publishers, in which reputation, trust and service have counted for more than ever.

The new Top 20 list shows this dynamic in action as bigger networks have become more popular with our readers. Affiliates are choosing larger networks because they want the confidence that they’ll get paid, merchants because they appreciate the advanced fraud prevention systems and technology in which larger networks can invest.

We extend our congratulations to ShareASale on becoming the Revenue Performance top ranked performance marketing network of 2010.

In March, 2010, Revenue Performance surveyed over 1,000 publishers, advertisers, agencies and networks. The factors identified by the vast majority of respondents reflect the value placed on trust and reputation right now. Over 80% of respondents picked tracking accuracy and trust as the most important factors when choosing a network partner, with fraud prevention running a close third

Methodology
The BLUE BOOK Top 20 ranking is not a simple list of the biggest networks. Instead, it takes into account reputation, influence, clientele, reach and scale. An important part of the ranking process was a survey of over 1,000 industry figures carried out during March, 2010. In that survey we asked an open-field first question for the respondents favorite performance marketing network or exchange so there was no suggestion bias. On a subsequent screen we provided a list of around 40 networks for additional choices that were given half the weight of the open-text responses.

In addition to the survey, we research and aggregate expert views, traffic data, measures of industry influence, reputation and as many other pieces of information as we can gather. The final result of all these deliberations is the Top 20 ranking: our view of the best performance marketing networks and exchanges in the industry.


Archives

Top 20 Archive - Winter 2009

 

 

Working With Performance Marketing Networks
The number of performance marketing networks has gone through the roof in the last year as the technology needed has become more accessible. There’s no reason not to work with several networks at once but you should bear the following points in mind;

For publishers:
  • Talk to one of the affiliate managers. They’re the people who can really make a difference to your earning capacity.

  • Examine their payment policies and check out the forums to see if there have been any payment problems.

  • Compare their offers to others in the industry. The highest paying offer isn’t always the best. Conversions are what counts.

  • Do a reputation check by talking to industry colleagues. There are lots of ways networks can rip off their affiliates, so be aware.
For advertisers:
  • The rule of thumb is that CPS gives you higher quality, CPA greater quantity. All things being equal the difference should simply depend on your conversion rate.

  • Check everything you can: applicants, lead quality, sub-IDs, ROI by publisher, etc. Don’t rely just on the network to pick up problems.

  • Look at the network’s fraud prevention systems and at the staff running them. Fraud is widely prevalent and you need a network that is alert and protecting your interests.

  • Look at where the traffic is coming from and what control you have over it. Be careful of networks that are simply acting as brokers or that are buying cheap traffic from unknown sources.

 

..
Cool List
Submitted by experienceadver... on Thu, 04/22/2010 - 10:23am.
Cool list thanks for compiling!