176 New Posts Today

[BFleming]

it seems that pepperjam has been sold to gsi

http://www.gsicommerce.com/index.php/en/article/887/

[markwelch]

[Kevin]

mmm. Popcorn and Pepper Jam.

[Haiko de Poel, Jr.]

Not logical, totally superfluous.

[Zeus]

I don't know what to think. I don't see the "synergy" between the two. I've never been impressed by GSI Commerce. Two shady operations working together, for what?

[CathyM]

My guess - GSI manages some large retailers such as Toys R Us. They probably want to move them off of Linkshare and get a piece of the network action, they need a network platform to do this.

[Haiko de Poel, Jr.]

Right Cathy, but they could gave gotten off the shelf network software and even saved on the extra "baggage".

[KGP]

is there a list of merchants GSI manages and on which network they are currently "flying"?

[loxly]

Doesn't make sense to me.

[snappy]

Oh how silly.....seems GSI probably thought pepperjam is a A+++++ network and they want to become a super network so they purchased it LOL?!?
I do question my laugh because I never earned a single penny from either.

[davidh]

Pepperjam folks are always on top of things and it's always easy to get questions answered and problems taken care of.

GSI's history of "program management" is rife with problems like distribution of datafeeds that are outdated by 2 years and other sundry results of apathy on the part of the company/staff.

We're getting closer and closer to the day where affiliates will have to have their own tracking platforms to promote merchants on a private contractor basis.

[Joshua]

Interesting. When I was at GSI Interactive's HQ in King of Prussia towards the beginning of the year, I heard some employees tell me how a number of Pepperjam employees had interviewed there and were looking to jump ship from Pepperjam... At the time, the few employees I talked to about affiliate networks didn't seem to have much regard for Pepperjam.

Not sure what this will do for GSI, since their stubbornness has left them running Linkshare-only affiliate programs since that's what their automated systems were designed to work with. What's going to happen to any existing advertisers on PJ where GSI competes with them by running competitors' web operations? I'm sure as hell that if I was a merchant, and the company that ran my competitor's store and affiliate program had access to all of my affiliate data, that I'd run.

Anyone know the financial terms involved? Since GSI is publicly traded, you'd think something would be posted about the transaction details.

[Joshua]

The press release mentions the Pepperjam has 48 employees, but their Inc 500 profile (referencing 2008 numbers, I believe) says that they had 105 employees. What happened to the other 57? An article in late 2007 had Kris referencing over 100 employees. Are these other employees not part of the deal, or did they disappear in the ~2 years since those figures were mentioned?

[Trust]

Layoffs accounting for some of them -

http://www.timesleader.com/business/...1-26-2009.html

http://www.twilightpad.com/messageBoardPost.html?messageBoardPostId=1628

[Rollerblader]

Originally Posted by snappy

Oh how silly.....seems GSI probably thought pepperjam is a A+++++ network and they want to become a super network so they purchased it LOL?!?
I do question my laugh because I never earned a single penny from either.

Not a jab at anyone....but first you need to pass "Super Network Certification Classes"....sorry couldn't resist.

[Haiko de Poel, Jr.]

GSI's take on it - http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=123699

[markwelch]

I noticed, in the second sentence of GSI's announcement (also here), that GSI says it "has acquired certain assets of the Pepperjam affiliate marketing network and full service interactive agency...." This raises an obvious query: which assets are they buying?

Given the significant difference in "employee count" between earlier PJ claims and the current announcements (not explained by an earlier announcement of only 15 layoffs), I wonder if PJ will separately retain (or spin off) some of its business operations and employees?

I don't know much about GSI. Perhaps that's because (as others have mentioned) GSI apparently manages merchant programs only through LinkShare, which I choose not to work with. I've also refused to work with PepperJam, so this transition doesn't appear likely to affect me. (The only reference I see in my email archive regarding GSI Commerce/GSI Interactive is the announcement from GSI's Larissa Buch in January that GNC was moving its program from GAN to LS.)

My "general impression" has been that PepperJam is perceived more as a lower-cost affiliate solution, while GSI Commerce is perceived as being more high-end. If that perception is accurate, merchants and publishers (affiliates) should worry about the potential for sudden changes (adverse for merchants), like those that happened at Kowabunga (Inuvo) after it was acquired.

Given CJ's hostile reaction to the PepperJam network launch, I also wonder whether this acquisition might impact LinkShare's relationship with GSI.

[Joshua]

Originally Posted by markwelch

My "general impression" has been that PepperJam is perceived more as a lower-cost affiliate solution, while GSI Commerce is perceived as being more high-end. If that perception is accurate, merchants and publishers (affiliates) should worry about the potential for sudden changes (adverse for merchants), like those that happened at Kowabunga (Inuvo) after it was acquired.

Given CJ's hostile reaction to the PepperJam network launch, I also wonder whether this acquisition might impact LinkShare's relationship with GSI.

You can't really compare GSI to Pepperjam, since GSI Interactive only does work for clients for GSI Commerce. GSI designs and runs online presences for a large number of brands, and for most of them handles their own inventory and runs everything from their distribution centers. This is especially evident in a number of the sports stores they manage online, where the inventory mostly overlaps between the brands. GSI interactive runs affiliate, search, media, site design & testing, comparison shopping datafeeds, user experience research and similar functions for GSI commerce clients who choose that route.


And Mark, it looks like I beat you to that last point by 5 minutes in my question posed to GSI at http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=123699 .

[MichaelColey]

Originally Posted by Joshua

You can't really compare GSI to Pepperjam, since GSI Interactive only does work for clients for GSI Commerce.

I disagree. With the purchase of pj, GSI has entered the affiliate network business. I wouldn't expect any of the networks to be friendly to that move.

[Chuck Hamrick]

My guess is that Pepperjam merging their affiliate network into GSI but will remain as an agency focused on paid search and affiliate program management. Of course they still operate as a super affiliate.

[rblahter3]

Pepperjam has a good site layout for ad programs. We will see what big old GSI does.