LinkShare U.S. Press Releases

LinkShare Mobile Platform Testing Paves Way for Affiliate Sales and New Partnerships

New York -- August 17, 2010 --

At Affiliate Summit East, LinkShare today announced its commitment to accelerate mobile commerce (m-commerce) in the online performance marketing channel. As the first US affiliate marketing network to fully embrace m-commerce, LinkShare has tested, validated and ensured its tracking technology works across multiple mobile devices and platforms.

Recognizing the growing opportunities in the m-commerce market, LinkShare has recently completed extensive testing of its tracking technology on leading smartphone platforms including the Apple iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Palm.  The results of LinkShare’s latest mobile testing demonstrate the company’s ability to enable advertisers and publishers to extend their partnerships across any connected platform using LinkShare technology. LinkShare has confirmed that transactions are successfully being tracked for a long list of advertisers including ShopNBC and drugstore.com (see the complete list).

By 2015, it’s estimated that shoppers from around the world will spend approximately $119 billion on goods and services bought through their mobile phones.   Further validating the market opportunity, technology industry analysts at Forrester Research, Inc. found that on average, retailers surveyed reported that their mobile browsers are generating 2.8 percent of overall site traffic and two percent of Web revenue.   In the same report, Forrester found that “affiliate marketing surfaced as a strong customer acquisition tool.”   

For example, drugstore.com tested LinkShare’s m-commerce tracking capabilities to ensure that its mobile publishers are receiving credit for sales to consumers who are purchasing health, beauty, skincare, and a full range of other products directly from their mobile devices.  “We appreciate LinkShare’s leadership in recognizing that mobile represents an important source of traffic and revenue for affiliates in its performance marketing network,” said Michelle Brown, affiliate marketing manager, drugstore.com. “LinkShare’s mobile testing initiative proves that the company is working to create additional partnership opportunities that will help drugstore.com take full advantage of changes in consumer buying behavior in the direction of mobile commerce.”

As mobile device adoption continues to increase, the combination of performance marketing and mobile commerce represents a natural, complementary evolution as advertisers look for additional ways to drive traffic to their mobile sites and as publishers create new sites, applications and business models designed for mobile commerce.

“Mobile commerce is one of the most exciting and fastest growing sectors in eCommerce, and as the information engine for all five of the top mobile scanning applications, TheFind is seeing a dramatic shift in consumer behavior,” said Ramneek Bhasin, vice president, mobile at TheFind.  “By partnering with LinkShare, we see great opportunities in mobile commerce through better tracking combined with compelling benefits for consumers  and increased monetization for merchandisers.”

Every day, mobile publishers with differentiated business models are joining the LinkShare Network while advertisers continue to make additional investments in their mobile sites. Recent examples include Navit, a subsidiary of Paxfire, as well as Scanbuy, Sccope, and Skava.

“LinkShare’s foray into US mobile commerce is driven by three converging factors.  First is the increasing focus on mobile commerce among advertisers and publishers in the growing LinkShare network.  Second is the overall mobile industry growth with more than one billion mobile connections anticipated by 2012 , and third is our embrace of mobile publishers in the LinkShare Network by ensuring that our tracking technology is working across platforms, devices and applications,” said Yaz Iida, CEO, LinkShare.

“Our commitment to testing demonstrates our belief in the almost limitless possibilities to create new partnerships and new sources of revenue for our advertisers and publishers.”

About LinkShare Corporation
LinkShare Corporation provides ecommerce businesses with a vast, high quality pay per action marketing network, along with expert consultative services and patented technology. LinkShare's cost-efficient pay per action (PPA) affiliate, search and lead generation campaigns acquire new customers, increase revenue and drive results. LinkShare clients are Fortune 500 and prominent companies doing business online, including J.C. Penney, 1-800-Flowers.com, American Express and Avon Products. LinkShare was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in New York City, with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, London and Tokyo.  For more information, please visit: www.linkshare.com.

About Rakuten
Headquartered in Tokyo, Rakuten is one of the world's largest and most comprehensive Internet service companies, providing leading services in e-commerce, portal & media, travel, financial services, and professional sports. Rakuten focuses on new business development and increasing its scope in order to improve and diversify service offerings. Rakuten is a publicly traded company in Japan (JASDAQ: 4755).


Media Contacts:

Mark Kirschner
LinkShare
646-943-8359
mkirschner@linkshare.com

Kathy Keating
Blanc & Otus
617-451-7355
kkeating@blancandotus.com

 
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