07 Jul 10 Canadian Tire closes their online affiliate program – will CanadianTire.ca survive ?
Well, less than 18 months after Canadian Tire essentially closed their online store, they’ve now officially announced the demise of their affiliate program. The affiliate program was initially designed for webmasters to make a commission on sales generated by driving visitors to the CT online store to make purchases. Once the online store was essentially closed, the affiliate program languished on – albeit it was pretty much to reward webmasters who sent visitors that bought CT gift cards; which are one of the few products they now sell online.
I ran campaigns on several client sites pointing traffic to the Canadian Tire site, and I’m also (like any real Canadian) a big fan of Canadian Tire, so I’m a bit saddened to see them backing away even further from the online world as far as eCommerce goes. Perhaps they just figured out that their core clientele preferred the fun of shopping in their bricks and mortar outlets. That, or the prohibitive cost of offering reasonable shipping rates given the weight and volume of most products they sell outweighed the expanded marketplace.
Here’s the official news we received:
Dear Robin Majumdar,
Please be advised that Canadian Tire has decided to discontinue their affiliate program. We would like to thank you for all of your hard work and dedication over the years to the Canadian Tire affiliate program. As of JULY 31st 2010 activity will no longer be tracked through Linkshare for the Canadian Tire affiliate program and the Canadian Tire affiliate agreement with you will expire.
PLEASE REMOVE ALL CANADIAN TIRE CREATIVE supplied through Linkshare including text links, banners, data feeds, or any other type of Linkshare link for the Canadian Tire affiliate program by July 31st 2010. After this date, links will no longer track or land on their intended landing pages.
Canadian Tire will not be transitioning their affiliate program to another network. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you,
Tim Mueller (Linkshare) and The Canadian Tire Affiliate Team
Note the final quote about not transition to another network (from Linkshare) which pretty much drives a nail into the online venture for Canadian Tire – for now. The question that remains… how much longer will CanadianTire.ca. continue to exist – and in what form?
Tags: affiliate programs, Canadian Tire, LinkShare, Monetization
03 Jun 09 Official : Microsoft to close Office Live Affiliate Program
OK, so admittedly, I haven’t been maintaining the site over the last few weeks (check the right sidebar for my Twitter activity tho’)… regardless, just got a note from Adrienne Erreca of Commission Junction that pretty much confirms that Microsoft will be ending the affiliate program for Office Live.
I don’t think that MSFT is unhappy with the affiliate model, rather it’s most probably a rebranding strategy (Bing it, you’ll see)…
Office Live was pretty much MSFT’s first foray into SaaS cloud computing targeting small and medium businesses that were (for the most part) already exploring online tools like Google Docs.
Did anyone make any coin referring visitors to Microsoft Office Live? They’re paying $1 per registration for their service – but only until June 30th!
Here’s the official news:
From: Microsoft Office Live [mailto:owner-membermessaging@mx6.cj.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 8:31 PM
Subject: Microsoft Office Live affiliate program to close 6/30/09Robin Majumdar,
We’re writing to let you know that the Microsoft Office Live Small Business affiliate program will be closing 6/30/09.
We appreciate all of the time and effort that you put into promoting the program and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly at aerreca@cj.com or 805.730.8377.
Sincerely,
The Microsoft Office Live Affiliate Team
Adrienne Erreca | Sr. Program Manager
Commission Junction | a Valueclick Company
Tags: Adrienne Erreca, affiliate programs, Microsoft Office Live, Monetization, Web 2.0
13 Jan 09 US Search affiliate program leaves LinkShare for Commission Junction
I’ve been keeping track of advertisers who manage their affiliate programs through the various networks such as Google Affiliate Network, Commission Junction and LinkShare amongst others and we just received official notice from Amy Harrin that the venerable online background investigation company US Search is moving from Linkshare to Commission Junction effective January 15th… (this Thursday!)… Amy is the dedicated affiliate manager at US Search.
US Search is pretty one of the top tier online services to do background checks (from about $5 per search, depending how much detail you are looking for) on people – it’s pretty popular amongst people wanting to check out potential dates on the online social networking and dating sites.
We manage programs under both CJ and LinkShare and I highly prefer CJ – for the unique and simple reason that the user interface on Linkshare (parent company Rakuten) is consistenly sluggish and slow and a bit too annoying to easily navigate. That being said, Linkshare has a very high quality roster of advertisers and you simply cannot ignore them in your monetization strategy. Just be ready to sit waiting for report updates (in Flash) to generate. It’s not that CJ is that much better – but faster enough to merit more frequent visits to check on performance reports.
So US Search will be live on CJ as of January 15th – here’s the official notice all US Search Linkshare partners received:
(more…)
Tags: affiliate programs, Amy Harrin, Commission Junction, LinkShare, Monetization, US Search
20 Sep 08 AIG Direct suspends their affiliate program on Commission Junction … temporarily …hopefully
AIG Direct suspends their affiliate program on Commission Junction … temporarily …hopefully
Received this early Friday morning from Dan Fink, Affiliate Directory for AIG – AIGdirect.com – which is run through the Commission Junction affiliate network.
It sure has been a tough week for the financial sector – including AIG, as I briefly noted in that 7 figure government bail-out package for AIG. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Fink is mentioning that the affiliate program suspension is only for the next 7 days…
Tags: affiliate programs, AIG Insurance bailout, Marketing, Monetization
