eBiz News: Ticketmaster Offers Affiliate Program

This week in e-commerce news, Ticketmaster launches an affiliate program, LinkShare unveils a sales tracking tool and Intuit buys Homestead.

Ticketmaster is jumping on the widget-affiliate bandwagon, which is good news for those who want to make money by helping promote the company's events. Consumers and organizations can register to become Ticketmaster affiliates at its affiliate page and begin earning commissions for online ticket sales that originate via links from their Web sites.

Front Row Affiliate Program
Registered affiliates will receive access to use Ticketmaster's new EventEngine widget, to create and post a customized Ticketmaster event marketing engine on their Web site to alert visitors and friends about upcoming events and link them to Ticketmaster.com and TicketWeb.com to purchase tickets. Ticketmaster affiliates will also have access to Ticketmaster search buttons, banners and link engines.

Ticketmaster is the first primary [original sale] ticketing company in the United States to offer an affiliate program, according to the company. The Ticketmaster affiliate program and EventEngine widget were developed in association with buy at, Inc., an international affiliate network. The company will provide Ticketmaster with affiliate support, tracking, reporting and payment services.

Tracking Ka-Ching
In other e-commerce news, LinkShare this week announced the launch of its new Web Services sales tracking technology that will give advertisers enhanced security and real-time transaction data.

"Our new Web Services tracking technology can be used to track any kind of transaction from any kind of creative on the wired Web or the mobile web," Steve Denton, president of LinkShare said in a statement.

Unlike pixel or other tracking technologies dependent on browsers and cookies, this tracking solution allows advertisers to utilize a Web Service to push transaction-level data to LinkShare in real time instead of batch mode, according to the company. Advertisers then receive a unique ID to verify the transaction. The unique ID makes this a fully verifiable and reliable enterprise-level tracking solution.

The Web Services tracking can integrate into an advertiser's order confirmation page, so there is no need to install any special software behind the firewall. To get started, LinkShare provides an API and sample code, and uses standard Web protocols to simplify integration into the order process, according to the company. LinkShare also offers enhanced security features on its Web Services tracking tool, including private cryptographic keys to identify and verify partners.

Intuit Comes Homestead for the Holidays
Finally, this week Intuit sealed a deal to acquire Homestead. Technologies Inc. for $170 million. "This acquisition supports our growth strategy in small business by addressing an underserved need, and continues Intuit's move beyond financial management solutions into helping small businesses solve other important problems," says Brad Smith, senior vice president of Intuit's small business group. "Homestead helps us solve one of small businesses' highest priorities — attracting customers — by helping them succeed on the Web."

After the transaction is complete, Homestead will become part of Intuit's small business group. After the close, Homestead CEO Justin Kitch will join Intuit's small business group leadership team, and will manage the Homestead team as currently organized.

For more on the "history" of the deal and what the prolific Kitch has to say on the deal, visit his blog.

Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.

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