Affiliate networks shrink

The 2007 AffStat Affiliate Market-ing Benchmark report provides a rare glimpse into how online marketers’ affiliate programs stack up against one another. “Most affiliate programs exist in a bubble, judged to be either a good ROI or not in comparison to other programs within a company,” says author Shawn Collins, Shawn Collins Consulting. One trend suggested by this year’s report is that the number of marketers maintaining huge numbers of affiliates is dropping. 9% of respondents said they have 10,000 or more affiliates, a drop from the 14% of respondents who said so last year; 10% said they had 5,001 to 10,000 affiliates, a decrease from the 15% who said they had this number last year.