Excite Inc. Monday launched the Excite Affiliates
Network powered by San Francisco-based SmartAge, offering affiliates credits
toward free online advertising in exchange for each page view of Excite
content.
The program allows anyone with a Web site to add elements of Excite’s
content to their own site free of charge, the company said.
Participating Web sites can add content such as Excite Web and news search
functions, headline news, sports scores and standings, stock quotes and daily
weather forecasts. These are provided to the affiliate as individual “content
modules.” Web masters can register to participate by clicking here.
Affiliates will be given an HTML line of code to add to their site and the
Excite content module, updated frequently, will be instantly viewable on the
affiliate site, the company said.
“By creating
an affiliates network, we can share with other sites what we know consumers
want. We expect this new program to extend our brand reach to potentially
millions of new
viewers,” said Joe Kraus, senior vice president and co-founder of Excite.
Excite said it tracks page views generated from the content modules on each
affiliate site and, in exchange, awards that affiliate credits toward free
online advertising. Each time a visitor to the site clicks on Excite content,
the affiliate earns a credit toward free banner ad impressions on SmartAge’s
SmartClicks network.
When an affiliate is ready to apply credits towards advertising they submit
their banner ad to the Affiliates Network, and through Excite’s relationship
with SmartAge, the banners can be targeted across the nearly 200,000
SmartClicks small business member sites.
“The free advertising component of the Affiliates Network can help small
and large sites alike grow their advertising budget without negatively
impacting
their bottom line,” Kraus said.
Financial terms of Excite’s deal with SmartAge were not disclosed.
