ValueClick (VCLK) announced today the aquisition of MeziMedia, which includes Super Affiliate websites Coupon Mountain and Smarter.com for $100 million in cash and up to an additional $252 million in performance-based bonuses. That’s a lot of cabbage.

Coupon Mountain is a very familar name in the affiliate marketing space having started somewhere back in the late 1990’s. In fact, Coupon Mountain is one of the first big players that I can remember back when I started in 1999.

ValueClick’s acquisition comes after the recent acquisition of Traffic Strategies by Linkshare, Commission Junction’s (a ValueClick company) chief rival.

What does this mean for super affiliates?

First, it is a testament that being an affiliate marketer is a legitimate business. Besides the potential of multi-million dollar buyout opportunity, affiliate marketing has immense profit potential with the ability to take those profits and create a much larger, scalable business. For instance, it’s amazing to think that I started Pepperjam as a solo affiliate marketer just seven (7) years ago and used those profits to create one of the fastest growing companies in the United States with nearly 100 employees. Without affiliate marketing there would be no Pepperjam.

Second, super affiliates aren’t just work-from-home serial entrepreneurs. Yes, the industry is made up of a lot of 9 to 5′ers who’ve had the pleasure of quitting their day jobs, but some of the biggest players are large corporations such as Upromise, Ravenwood Marketing, Clicks2Customers, eBates, and FatWallet, among dozens others. In the early days these companies would send 1 or 2 representatives a piece to industry conferences such as Affiliate Summit. Now, these same corporations send teams of people. Also, a number of these companies have taken on venture capital and / or have been acquired for millions of dollars by even larger corporations.

Third, this means that more acquisitions are on the horizon. I would say the following affiliate marketing companies have the best shot at an acquisition within the next 12 - 18 months: Clicks2Customers, Quit Your Day Job, Affiliate Summit, Shoemoney Media, and FatWallet. Of course there are other players that may get acquired or take on large rounds of venture capital financing, which is a precursor to being acquired, but these are just a few names I would be willing to invest in!

Congratulations to our friends at MeziMedia - it’s been a pleasure working with you over the years and we look forward to continuing our relationship with you as part of the ValueClick brand.

Other affiliate bloggers discussing this story include:

Shawn Collins
Lisa Picarille

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 12:23 pm and is filed under search-engine marketing, affiliate marketing, internet marketing, new marketing technology, affiliate summit, social media optimization, search engine optimization, mezi media, traffic strategies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.