JupiterResearch: Online affiliate marketing spending will continue to grow

New York—Online marketers will spend $2.1 billion this year on affiliate marketing fees, with U.S. online affiliate marketing spending reaching $3.3 billion by 2012, according to JupiterResearch’s “U.S. Online Affiliate Marketing Forecast, 2007-2012.”

According to the research firm, affiliate marketing remains a highly attractive endeavor because it is performance-based, presents low risk and requires low initial investment.

Because affiliate marketing is intertwined closely with the search engine marketing industry, Google is the one wild card that might affect the overall growth of the industry, JupiterResearch said in the report. Google’s dominance over SEM forces affiliates to be sensitive to Google’s Quality Score, which prevents lower-quality affiliates from buying paid search, it said.

—Carol Krol