| I've spent the last couple of weeks interviewing lots of people in the industry about various issues. One topic that always comes up in the discussion is the economy and how it's impacting everyone's business. When I spoke with LinkShare Co-president, Jonathan Levine, he noted that in world where advertisers are uncertain about where their dollars will be more effective, they are looking to lower their risk as much as possible. He says advertisers are looking to publishers to take more of the risk and advertisers (especially those using comparison shopping engines) are using more CPA instead of CPC. "That puts advertisers in the driver's seat," Levine says. ShareASale Founder and CEO, Brian Littleton says that the profile of affiliate marketing is increasing because of the economic conditions. He expects more retailers to look at affiliate marketing to fill in the gaps during the downturn. "That's been the strong point of affiliate marketing since the beginning." Both of these folks and most others I've chatted with recently are upbeat about performance marketing space. You'll be able to read the entire interviews with these network executives and others in the January edition of Revenue, which will be focused on the networks and include merchant features and affiliate profiles. Lisa Picarille
Editor-in-Chief | 
