dgm Merges with Viva9: Australia's Affiliate Marketing Monopoly

Sep 01 2012 - Campbell Phillips, Power Retail

Parent company of dgm, Digital Performance Group has just announced it is acquiring competitor Viva9 and intends to merge the two affiliate networks.

Digital Performance Group (DPG), which already owns what it claims is Australia’s largest affiliate network dgm, is now on the verge of purchasing its major competitor, Viva9. In doing so, DPG will create a single affiliate network entity, which will benefit from the decrease in competition.

The acquisition sets up dgm as a potential leader in affiliate networks, with DPG highlighting its broad scope of offerings across comparison websites, coupons and loyalty rewards schemes, cash-back sites, content and eDM databases.

“dgm and Viva9 have been the leaders in the Australian affiliate market for the past nine years and together have worked with the majority of finance, retail and telco advertisers investing marketing dollars via affiliate networks in Australia and New Zealand,” DPG’s Managing Director Chris Meehan said in a press release.

“We expect there to be stronger growth in the affiliate channels particularly with the forecast strong growth in online retail as more retailers follow the international trend to launch online properties and shift more of their marketing dollars online.”

However, the question many advertisers will now be asking is whether or not dgm will continue to offer competitive rates, given that DPG now claims ownership of Australia’s largest affiliate network. This may be less of a concern in the affiliate marketing industry, which also has to compete with other marketing channels, however it is something advertisers will be keeping a close eye on nevertheless.

As a result of the acquisition, DPG’s other subsidiary, Empowered Communications, also stands to gain from a boost to its email database in the order of 600,000 addresses. Empowered Communications will therefore have further scope to supply eDM campaigns and research briefs.

“We acknowledge the great relationships with key publishers and eDM suppliers that Viva9 has built over the years and we are looking forward to growing these relationships across a much broader customer base for the publishers to include,” Meehan said.