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March 7, 2007

AuctionAds Beats eBay to the Affiliate Widget Punch

AuctionAds is a new ad network has been launched by ShoeMoney Media and MediaWhiz, that makes it possible to link eBay auctions directly to other Web sites. The idea being that you can put some code on your own site or blog that creates a link and includes an image of what you're trying to auction along with the latest bid information.

I recently had a chat with Jeremy Schoemaker, CEO of AuctionAds, as he was running off to the airport, and I was struck by several things. AuctionAds is looking to capitalize on the eBay affiliate program, but it's not going to make any money off it itself for at least the first six months, Schoemaker told me.

"We are solely focused on growth and building the system. Our goal is to pay out 90 percent after the six months," he said.

The eBay affiliate marketing program is undoubtedly one of the biggest in the business, so there's lots of money to share, but when I interviewed eBay's Affiliate Program Manager Lily Shen last month, she told me about eBay's similar projects for putting links on affiliate Web sites, and how they're expected within the year. So wouldn't they make the AuctionAds stuff redundant, especially before they start actually start making their 10 percent? Schoemaker says he's not worried.

"They will come out with whatever they can come out with, but I feel that we can do it better than they can. Their number one goal is to keep their back end up so people can build tools with their API. They have been working on this for five years, and they spent a lot of money on it, and they were supposed to launch two years ago but they haven't. Not that we want to bash them," he said. "It's really untapped resource, and we feel that we do it very well, and it's their system and they should be good at it, but they have been very slow in developing their system."

Schoemaker also said that he'd gotten several very interested emails from the folks he's working with inside eBay after the news about AuctionAds "advertising widget" came out on a blog post over at Tech Crunch.

"We like to think of it more as an advertising system, but it could be called an advertising widget I guess," he said.

Posted by MatthewNelson at March 7, 2007 5:07 PM

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