David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

No, I didn't hear about it either but Affiliate Window confirmed on Friday that they had reached a mutual agreement. It's taken a year to resolve the issues that were aired in public but now they are best friends again.

So what does this mean for affiliates and merchants, and perhaps more importantly Quidco?
 
Affiliates

Nothing really. One of the biggest affiliates will have rejoined the network again pushing you down the performance ladder by a notch. The only real difference is that performance related competitions and incentives become slightly more difficult to win at - unless you've got the traffic and sales level of Quidco.

Merchants

Rather interestingly, Awin have stated:

If you’re happy to continue working with Quidco you just need to ensure that over the past year nothing has changed in your workings with cashback sites or the commission you pay.

This is quite interesting as I'm sure most programmes wuld have seen commission changes over the last year alongside changes in merchant beliefs regarding the credibility and success of cashback sites. Some have walked away from this market so it will be interesting to see whether now an affiliate the size of Quidco is a big enough carrot to return to old ways.

Quidco

The way the relationship was dissolved a year ago may have resulted in a loss of users looking for cashback on high profile mainstream retailers. That said, it may have allowed a reallocation of such potential revenue to be spread amongst smaller merchants. Only Quidco will know this in all fairness. On the other hand, it may have forced users to look at alternative cashback sites.

Here's a Google Trends chart (taken on 21/09/2009) for Quidco. Read into it what you will.



Another issue they may face is that many merchants have radically changed their stance on cashback sites over the past year. I wonder how many merchants will keep this stance now such a huge affiliate has returned?