Google to close Affiliate Network later this year

In an email to users, Google has announced that it will be closing its Affiliate Network service later this year. Partner relationships will close at the end of July, but certain functionality will remain live until the end of October 2013.

Commission Junction is offering the following to those affected by Google’s move:

Hello Publisher Groups,

With the sudden news of Google Affiliate Network closing down, we here at the Publisher Development Publisher Groups team thought we’d make a one-off email to assist you.  Attached is the list of the 199 Google Affiliate Network accounts that are also on Commission Junction.  We anticipate new launches to occur over the next few months, so keep an eye on your monthly newsletters from us for exciting announcements!

If you are not joined or are declined from the programs on this list on CJ, we’d be happy to reach out to them.  Just email us back with which advertisers you need to get in.

We feel the quicker you switch the links, the better chance that you will not run into any issues.

Google’s Email below:

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