VentureBeat

eBay today announced the eBay Partner Network, a new affiliate platform launching on April 1st. The move is expected to give affiliates — and eBay — a chance to make more money.

Some of the new features that eBay lists in its announcement include:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

This new network means the previous eBay affiliate network, Commission Junction, will be phased out and eBay is asking all affiliate members to migrate their accounts to the Partner Network by May 1, 2008. eBay is offering those who jump on board with the new platform early (in April) the opportunity to earn a 5% bonus for traffic sent through this new eBay Partner Network.

What eBay is essentially doing here is cutting out the middle-man, Commision Junction, as Tech-Exposed.com notes. eBay has a huge affiliate program with 100,000+ partners, but had to give some of its income from every transaction to Commision Junction. With that company out of the picture, eBay only stands to gain more money.

This move is a massive blow to ValueClick, the parent company of Commision Junction, specializing in online ads for publishers. See our previous coverage on ValueClick here.

Amazon, which runs another large affiliate network, has also been tinkering with ways to make its users more money recently (our coverage).

ValueClick, a company that serves ads online for publishers, has agreed to acquire MeziMedia, an operator of comparison shopping sites, for $100 million in cash upfront and possibly as much $352 million, depending on whether performance milestones are met.

This continues the barrage of mergers and acquisitions in the active online ad industry. ValueClick itself has emerged as a prime takeover candidate. It is one of the largest standing targets, now that other online marketing companies have been swallowed up by industry giants. AQuantive, 24/7 Real Media and Digitas have all been sold.

Los Angeles-based MeziMedia operates Smarter.com and online coupon site CouponMountain.com. It owns sites in Spain, Germany, France and the UK, and has a development team in China. It complements ValueClick’s European comparison site PriceRunner.

MeziMedia has about 160 staffers, is profitable and generated about $40 million in revenue last year

The acquisition possibly makes it more attractive, because it brings ValueClick further into the search advertising industry, which is particularly hot.