The following is a paid review of the PepperjamNetwork Site that came in via ReviewMe.com. I signed up for ReviewMe sometime ago to see what it was all about, but this is the first review request that has come through.

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The PepperjamNetwork Site: (www.pepperjamnetwork.com)

I have had a chance to browse through the site and offering of Pepperjam's new affiliate network, and on the surface it sounds interesting. Certainly Pepperjam has been very visible in the affiliate world having been both a publisher and an outsourced program management company. Kris Jones has been a public and vocal member of the community,

The company was founded in 1999, and according to Inc magazine had revenues of $3.4 million in 2006 (up 460.4% from 2005) with 26 employees at the time. This earned them the 293rd spot in Inc Magazine's top 500 small growing companies.

The new affiliate network offering from Pepperjam, being billed by them as "Affiliate Marketing 2.0", after 8 years of development, aims to address two primary shortcomings of other networks, namely (1) poor, unreliable communication tools and (2) lack of affiliate transparency.

For Advertisers, the site claims:

pepperjamNETWORK is built upon the foundation of empowering advertisers to build successful publisher relationships through exceptional communication technology and enhanced brand protection through full and unfettered publisher transparency.

Great, but I have heard all this before. I haven't heard any new "network" claim to offer less communication or transparency.

So how does this new "transparency" work? As a search affiliate that primarily drives traffic directly to merchants via PPC advertising, I am happy if the merchant's know that my traffic comes from Google, Yahoo, or MSN, but I want some level of comfort that my keyword lists are being protected. I have some great concerns with merchants obtaining my hard built list of profitable keywords through analytics data and http referrer's.

So how does Peperjam's new affiliate tracking software work? If you click on Services / Affiliate Marketing / Affiliate Tracking Software, it just point's back to the home page. Apparently there are no current details on the site as to what the software tracks and how it works.

This is even more of a concern as unlike other networks, Pepperjam is an active PPC search publisher for their merchants. So now you have a "network" with clear conflicts of interest with affiliates.

I think it will be interesting to see how they do, but I won't be quick to start sending any significant traffic through their network without a better understanding on how they are tracking affiliates and how they are dealing with these clear conflicts of interest.

It will be nice, once I am activated, to have a chance to login and see what kinds of new innovations they have come up with after 8 years of development and a deep understanding of the market. The industry can always use some more innovation to really bring us into affiilate marketing 2.0.