Top 20 Archive: December 2009
| 1 | MediaTrust | Recently named the 9th fastest growing private companyin the USA by Inc. magazine -several other networks here appear on the Inc. 500 -Peter Bordes´ MediaTrust seems to be able to do no wrong. It has a great reputation, he leads admirably and their advertisers and publishers stick around. What´s not to like? |
| 2 | ShareASale | Brian Littleton is alegend in the affiliate marketing community and his network reflects his reputation with 2,500 merchants and multiple industry awards. |
| 3 | oneNetworkDirect | Digital River´s oneNetworkDirect is the leader in software sales with the industry´s best network technology and offices worldwide. |
| 4 | Hydra Network | On the Inc. 500 list three years running, Hydra is one of the biggest CPA networks and is well regarded by everybody we know. Atop network. |
| 5 | Epic Advertising | Epic has grown remarkably and now claims 45,000+ publishers, 1,400 advertisers with coming traffic from over 200 countries. |
| 6 | CPXInteractive | Recently ranked #154 on Inc. magazine´s list of the fastest growing companies in the USA. Claims 30 billion impressions per month across 60+ countries. |
| 7 | IntegraClick/ 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. |
| 8 | Commission Junction | The biggest affiliate network in the USA. PartofValueClick. One of the Big Three. Presents the CJYou Awards every year. |
| 9 | NeverBlue | A Canadian network that is strong in lead-gen worldwide. Popular with high-performing affiliates. |
| 10 | LeadPile | Lead Pile is a lead exchange rather than a network. It finds its place in this list because of its size, growth and the simplicity it offers both buyers and sellers of leads. |
| 11 | buy.at | The affiliate marketing arm of AOL´s Advertising.com unit. Global reach. |
| 12 | LinkShare | LinkShare´s ownership by the Japanese company Rakuten shows itself in their dedicated networks for the UK, Canada and Japan, and their strong foreign language and currency capabilities. |
| 13 | Pepperjam | Kris Jones has built Pepperjam into an online marketing powerhouse offering a wide range of interactive agency services. |
| 14 | zanox | Europe´s biggest affiliate network. Part ofthe Axel Springer news/magazine media group in Germany. |
| 15 | COPEAC | Ranked #320 on the Inc. 500 list. Part of IntermarkMedia. Strong in lead-gen. Fast growing with 30,000 affiliates claimed. |
| 16 | Google Affiliate Network | Known as Doubleclick Performics prior to Google´s acquisition in 2007, the Google Affiliate Network is Google´s affiliate network. What else is there to say? |
| 17 | MarketLeverage | ACPAnetworkpopular with affiliates, Market Leverage has built itself a good reputation for result. Produces MLTV, a TV show for affiliate marketers. |
| 18 | ClickBank | This venerable affiliate network that specializes in digital, downloadable products is now10 years old and still going strong. Every publisher should have a ClickBank account. |
| 19 | Max Bounty | A smaller network that gets a lot of play with bigger affiliates and offers advertisers a cost-effective CPA solution. |
| 20 | Media Whiz | 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. |
What is The Blue Book Top 20 Ranking?
As we put this guide to ad networks and exchanges together the single biggest problem that advertisers and publishers expressed to us was the difficulty of finding and selecting good partners.
There's no shortage of ad networks and exchanges from which to choose. At last count we personally knew of well over 400 and we are reliably informed that there are a few hundred others in private beta, running as merchant networks or that are simply below the radar. Given the plethora of options, how to decide?
The Blue Book Top 20 is designed to provide some of the answers, by aggregating expert views, traffic data, measures of industry influence and as many other pieces of information as we could gather. The result has generated a lot of conversations and disagreements in our office but represents our view of the best networks and exchanges around.
Why Performance Marketing?
Rather than try and include every type of network, we chose for our launch edition to focus on performance marketing networks and exchanges.
Performance marketing has seen remarkable growth in the last couple of years, driven by VC monies that have streamed into the online advertising sector, cheaper platform software and a recession that has resulted in ad budgets leaning heavily towards the assurance of ROI that performance marketing provides.
The ease of setting up a new CPA network has led to dozens of new networks being set up, almost always by ex-employees from the big affiliate networks or by super-affiliates seeking to leverage their reputation and industry contacts into a larger more profitable business with higher margins.
How We Chose the 2009 Blue Book Top 20
To develop the first ever Blue Book ranking of the Top 20 Performance Marketing Networks we brought together both publicly and provately available data to arrive at an initial list. We then mixed in an evaluation of overall industry influence and reputation as indicated by a broad sampling of online news and social media together with opinions garnered from a variety of industry experts as well as the assessment of Blue Book staff and advisors.
2010 Top 20
