Performance marketing — using one internet site to recommend another to its visitors.

What is Affiliate marketing? The concept of revenue sharing, paying commission for referred business, predates that of affiliate marketing and the Internet. The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream ecommerce happened almost four years after the World Wide Web was born in November 1994, when CDNow launched its BuyWeb program to sell music.

Affiliate marketing was used on the internet by the adult industry before CDNow launched their BuyWeb program. Amazon.com launched its associate program in July 1996. Amazon associates would place banner or text links on their site for individual books or link directly to the Amazon’s home page.

Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling and retail sectors.[8] The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance and travel sectors. Hot on the heels of these are the entertainment (particularly gaming) and internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors. Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from B2B (business to business) marketers and advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their mix.[