Archives for April 2013

Yesterday, Google announced that they were going to retire the Google Affiliate Network.

The final closure date has not been announced, but they said, “We’ll continue to support our customers as we wind down the product over the next few months.”

That leaves lots of affiliates in a position where they will need to change out links on their affiliate sites.

This can be an awesome task for any affiliates who have been pasting the affiliate code as is from the Google Affiliate Network advertisers.

But it won’t be so bad for any affiliates who have been using redirects for their affiliate links.

I started redirecting my affiliate links a good ten years or so ago – first through meta redirects, then via an .htaccess file, before I moved on to using a WordPress plugin called Pretty Link.

Additionally, I use the Custom Short Domain option on bitly, which is a free service that enables me to use my own domain to make redirect links. I use both aff.bz and affsum.it there.

Another option for affiliates using Google Affiliate Network is to get on board with Skimlinks.

Skimlinks has announced they are “releasing a full toolset to enable GAN publishers to switch advertiser links simply and easily.”

J.J. Hirschle, Head of Google Affiliate Network, has announced that the Google Affiliate Network will be closing.

Here is the announcement that was posted earlier today…

Our goal with Google Affiliate Network has been to help advertisers and publishers improve their performance across the affiliate ecosystem. Cost-per-action (CPA) marketing has rapidly evolved in the last few years, and we’ve invested significantly in CPA tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer. We’re constantly evaluating our products to ensure that we’re focused on the services that will have the biggest impact for our advertisers and publishers.

To that end, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving great results for clients.

We’ll continue to support our customers as we wind down the product over the next few months. And there are other products that can help you achieve your goals. Affiliate publishers can continue to earn AdSense revenue through the AdSense network. And marketers can take advantage of other CPA-oriented Google tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer to drive valuable online sales and conversions. These areas are growing rapidly and we’re continuing to invest heavily in them.

Thanks for your support of our affiliate product, and we look forward to helping you grow your business in the future.

This is a very interesting and surprising development. I’ll add in any updates here as they are shared.

Update on Wednesday, April 17, 2013

I received this as an affiliate with the Google Affiliate Network with the subject: An update on Google Affiliate Network

Important updates for Google Affiliate Network publishers and advertisers

Our goal with Google Affiliate Network has been to help advertisers and publishers improve their performance across the affiliate ecosystem. Cost-per-action (CPA) marketing has rapidly evolved in the last few years, and we constantly evaluate our products to ensure that we’re focused on the services that will have the biggest impact for our advertisers and publishers. To that end, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire the Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving great results for clients.

Publishers can continue to earn revenue through the AdSense network. And marketers can take advantage of other CPA-oriented Google tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer to drive valuable online sales and conversions. These areas are growing rapidly and we continue to invest significantly in them.

We’ll continue to support our customers as we wind down the product over the next few months. While we will no longer be adding new product functionality, we will maintain the platform during the transition period. We plan to disable publisher relationships from advertiser programs on July 31, 2013. Publisher payments will be disbursed for network activity generated through this date. We will continue to make certain functionality available through October 31, 2013 for retrieving reports, reconciling orders, and processing payments.

A huge thanks to all our advertisers, publishers and the team that has worked tirelessly on Google Affiliate Network over the past few years. We look forward to helping you grow your business in the future.

If you have any questions, please contact us.

Sincerely,
The Google Affiliate Network Team

tl;dr Affiliates need to run their reports and have links changed out by July 31, 2013.