• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 11, 2003

In a surprise move, ValueClick late Friday announced a deal that further consolidates the field of online affiliate marketing services. In a deal valued at $58 million in cash and stock, ValueClick said it was acquiring Commission Junction, an affiliate marketing technology provider that would complement ValueClick's existing Be Free affiliate marketing unit.

Be Free powers the affiliate marketing programs of more than 200 online and multichannel retailers, including Best Buy, CitiFinancial, Staples and Travelocity. ValueClick said it wants to combine Commission Junction and Be Free. Commission Junction's clients include MSN, eBay, Overture and Quicken Loans through its CJ Vantage affiliate program. Other clients internationally include Expedia, Marbles and Marks and Spencer.

While implications of the deal were unclear, shares of publicly traded ValueClick fell 1.5% to close at $9.30 on Friday, prior to an announcement of the deal.

Still, at least two observers thought the consolidation play was a good move for ValueClick and one that likely would put pressure on other market leaders to step up their own positions in the online affiliate marketplace.

"In my opinion, this is a good move," wrote scraps10021 on the Yahoo Finance message board. "[Commission Junction] always touted the 'network of affiliates' concept versus Be Free was a more private label approach. This puts LinkShare on notice, due to the fact that many of the same revenue producing affiliates use all the providers."

"CJ's technology gets high markets from what I hear," the user added.

"I think it's a good move," added techstockshopper. "CJ is a really large player in the affiliate market world. The CJ interface is great. I feel this saved me the trouble of buying CJ stock when it went public. $58 million sounds like a great value.

Affiliate marketing has been identified by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org as one of the most effective methods of enabling online retail commerce, a $95 billion industry that is expected to grow to approximately $230 billion by 2008, noted ValueClick, citing Forrester Research data.