One thing affilinet will be launching very shortly is an iPhone app for affiliates. This will enable a great deal of functionality from an iPhone.

Still some distance to go in terms of tracking mobile devices etc but a start in the right direction for merging mobile and online technology in the affiliate space.

I have considered doing this but as you say the tricky part is the tracking. It looks to me like It would have to be a custom tracking platform. That would require a large investment in technology (and promotion to retailers) but it is technically possible.

Of course the risk is that after all the cash investment and hard work put in, Apple reject it when you submit to the App Store. Who knows, they may well be planning their own ‘iShop’.

Today, outside of the niches it requires more substantial investment and this will only intensify in the coming months as merchants continue to look for value add.

Mobile & Affiliate Marketing does have such great potential but only when traffic can be monetised! - bit of a catch 22 methinks!

We’ve seen a slowing down in the number of new affiliates and the amount of innovation from affiliates in the last few years. One factor that I think contributes to this is the fact that the modern day online entrepreneur is focussing on app development and the like rather than creating affiliate sites as they may have done a few years ago.

There does seem to be an increasing move from merchants to play in this field, the announcement from Tesco last week being an example.

However, as you quite rightly say, the big challenge for the affiliate marketing industry is how to track and therefore monetise this activity. It would seem to make sense to all parties to pay app developers on a CPA basis but standard affiliate tracking wouldn’t be able to handle that.

Hopefully some of the affiliate networks will be looking into possibilities…