What sort of impact on Affiliate Brokers

[ugamis1]

What sort of impact do you see the new Adword changes having on large Affiliate brokers such as CJ? We currently do not run an affiliate program but have considered it down the line.

The two larger ones I looked at both require monthly minimums, and while they were reasonable in the grand scheme of things I was a bit curious as to the amount of traffic these sites get from affiliate ppc marketers vs. other online vehicles.

Any thoughts?

[mhhfive]

I think the new TOS is hinting that Google wants to strengthen its relationships with merchants... I don't think Google really wants to eliminate affiliate advertisers, but just make their ads less confusing so that there aren't 5 similar ads that all point to the same merchant on the same SERP.

Anyways, this is an interesting question. I wonder if a major search player will try to acquire an affiliate broker or something...