JohnOBrien.com

AOL have announced that they have acquired the independent UK affiliate network buy.at which will now operate as a stand alone business of Advertising.com, which is a part of AOL’s Platform-A organization.

Buy.at believes the planned investment will allow them to continue its growth in staff, technology and infrastructure to maintain and even grow its offerings of products and services.

“Advertising.com and buy.at will be able to expand their advertiser offerings, driving more revenue opportunities for affiliate publishers who specialise in both e-commerce websites and retail focused content. This will help to generate sales for advertisers and increased revenue for publishers. Publishers will be able to work with Advertising.com and buy.at across several product lines, earning revenue for inventory across their display, video, mobile, and affiliate channels”

Buy.at has offices in London & Newcastle in the UK and New York in the U.S. They employ around 70 people and offer affiliate marketing in both the UK and the U.S. with over 200 leading businesses as its clients including 3 Mobile, The AA, Argos, BT, Carphone Warehouse, E.ON, HMV, John Lewis, Littlewoods, M&S, MBNA, o2, Sky, Tesco & Viirgin Media.

Advertising.com also has operations in the U.S. and ten other countries including nine in Europe.

For more details see the buy.at press release here.

Commission Monster one of Australia’s leading affiliate networks is set to launch in the UK this week and are offering UK affiliates a deal hard to beat with no network commissions charged on their affiliate programs, meaning the affiliate will get 100% of the commission they earn.

The normal affiliate commission rate for the big existing UK networks is around 30% with the affiliate marketer only getting 70% so this could be a great opportunity for affiliates if Commission Monster get some decent merchants onboard.

“We already have advertisers / merchants who want to run global offers in the UK, and we also have some affiliates we already work with in Europe and the UK, but we want more!  We want to prove to UK and European-based networks that we are a great network to work with, so we are going to rebate all of our commission earned”

I wish them the best of luck as the UK will be a hard marketplace to enter and have registered my interest on their sign-up page here