TradeDoubler goes public... .how about stock options for affiliates (seriously)?
Earlier this week, TradeDoubler successfully completed its IPO in a Swedish stock exchange. The company has taken rapid strides since starting out in 2000 and going public in five years, having recorded over 62.3m Swedish Kroner in profits last year. Traffic Junction has had a good partnership with TradeDoubler and we are glad to see the company grow.
This really seems to be a reasonably good time for the networks-- just look at what we have been hearing from ValueClick, LinkShare, Zanox, and now TradeDoubler in the past couple of months. As I have alluded to in the past, all these augur well for us affiliates.
If I have one complaint with the TradeDoubler IPO, it is that there didn't seem to be a lot of information easily available (or if it were indeed available, I may have been looking at the wrong places, though I wouldn't want to believe that), apart from the news that the company was going public. It would have been interesting to know details of the TradeDoubler's plans with the capital being raised with the public offer, because I'm sure that will have some bearing on us affiliates in the not too distant future. Is the company expanding geographically? What product and technology development plans does it have? What will be its marketing strategy and advertiser acquisition targets?
I understand that all of these would not be explicitly stated, but I'm sure that we'd have been able to piece togetether the information. Anyway, one of the advantages of TradeDoubler going public is that we can now expect to hear more details from the company more often, as its strives to fulfill its disclosure obligations.
Lastly, what can affiliates aspire to gain from a network going public? Obviously, we would expect that as a network embarks on its expansion and growth path, affiliates will benefit by being able to promote more profitable products.
Also (and I say this quite seriously), if employees of companies are awarded performance-related stock options and stock grants, how about the affiliate networks rewarding its top affiliates with a similar incentive? That would make affiliates much stronger stakeholders, with a lot more to lose for non-performance. Win-Win option, isn't it?
Until next time,
Ben Flux
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home