I watched the Google I/O session about the use of the Google Affiliate network and automating the use of affiliate links to monetize your web site. This new technology will change how affiliate publishers work together. It will be a central source for affiliate publishers to manage all of their advertising programs instead of having to join each affiliate program individually and using separate systems for each one. The program is available to anyone and has the functionality to automate many processes that are only found in larger affiliate networks.
Google's drive for furthering in this direction is because it expands on their already successful AdWords and AdSense revenue streams. At first it seems like the Google Affiliate Network would be competing for the same space on affiliate publishers websites. This however, is not the case. Affiliate ads are basically a part of the content of a website. While the New York Times website may generate income by impressions on each page, comparison sites and sites like TrialPay benefit from affiliate conversions instead of impressions or click based advertising due to the ecommerce nature of the website. I believe this system has potential to be successful and useful for both affiliate publishers and advertisers. It has build in advanced tracking features and automated ad management. For publishers it offers several different ways to incentivise the consumer through Promotional offers (coupon codes), Comparison ads, and Loyalty (% cash back) ads.
The real value in the Google Affiliate Network is the baked in automation. With embedded Javascript in a publishers page, the affiliate network will automatically serve up ads based on categories and other parameters you have indicated through the Affiliate Network. It basically eliminates the need to edit any hard code once it has been implemented and allows everything to be managed from the Affiliate Network interface.
