• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 22, 2009

PartnerCentric has signed an agreement with eBay to help support the auction site's more than 100,000 affiliates. The Internet marketing agency will work with about a dozen eBay employees on the U.S. team, who focus on top accounts such as EarthLink and AT&T.

EBay brought the U.S. program in house last April in an effort to gain more control and better support. PartnerCentric will focus on ways to increase quality traffic, and provide search engine optimization (SEO) tips to companies, as well as develop case studies and best practices.

Advertisers have begun to realize that papering ads across the Web is not the smartest way to invest dollars, according to William Martin-Gill, director of Internet marketing at eBay. "Consumers are starting to get tired of the leaderboard ads and they are tuning them out," he said. "Click-through rates for us and many in the industry are sub-1%. That means for every 100 impressions shown, less than one person clicks on a banner ad."

Expanding on the program, PartnerCentric will oversee a blogger series where writers offer information on relevant topics such as SEO. Wil Reynolds, founder of Philadelphia-based Seer Interactive and SEO guru, becomes the first guest to post.

EBay also plans to launch several tools and upgrades for the eBay Partner Network Platform on May 1. A new link generator tool will allow more options for search results. It will allow people to target the pages they send traffic. Martin-Gill said it aims to help companies improve conversions on publishers' sites.

Later this year, the link generator tool will allow publishers to take advantage of higher conversion rates through automatic landing page optimization. "The product fee is good for shopping comparison sites and grouping from different merchants," he said. "It's just something not previously available through the eBay network."

Publishers can link their eBay.com and eBay Partner Network account for improved customer service across platforms.

The decision builds on the successful partnership with R.O.Eye launched last year to help manage the program in the U.K.

EBay on Wednesday reported that first-quarter net income fell to $357 million, or 28 cents per share, from $460 million, or 34 cents per share in the year-ago quarter. The San Jose-based auction Web site said revenue for the period ending in March fell to $2.02 billion from $2.19 billion. Excluding special items, eBay said earnings for the quarter were 39 cents a share.

Although the company posted a drop in profits, the results topped Wall Street estimates. Analysts had estimated eBay would post earnings excluding special items of 33 cents per share, on $1.94 billion in revenue, according to data from Thomson Reuters.