Affiliate Spotlight

A monthly online feature for Target Marketing readers (also running bimonthly in Target Marketing magazine's Nuts & Bolts department), Affiliate Spotlight introduces you to a variety of players on the affiliate marketing scene. Check back monthly for the lowdown from Google Affiliate Network's Dan Chiss on the fastest-growing and top-performing affiliates around.

MSHOPPER 
Name of affiliate/URL: mShopper; www.mshopper.com
Type of publisher: Comparison Shopping centered on mobile commerce/mobile advertising
About mShopper: mShopper is a free one-stop mobile site that allows customers to shop and buy over 14 million products, from over 100 merchants/advertisers, directly from their mobile devices. Because most e-commerce sites are not designed or optimized for mobile, mShopper brings advertisers a unique solution: a branded mobile environment ("mStore"), where products are featured along with logos, taglines, and a mobile URL for quick access. Through partnerships with the top three carriers (Sprint, Verizon and AT&T), mShopper's solution ensures that consumers can properly view and shop for  products through each of the 600-plus different handsets currently in use.
mShopper also provides advertisers with promotional opportunities, by driving mobile customers to the advertiser's mStore through landing page promotions and text messaging campaigns.
Audience profile/demographics: mShopper's users skew toward young, male, tech savvy, urban business professionals. 50 percent are college graduates, and 50 have household income of $60,000 to $100,000-plus.
Top performing advertiser categories: mShopper's top performing categories include electronics, music, games, clothing, shoes, baby, toys and gifts.
Top thing mShopper needs from advertisers to drive success: Access to an advertiser's product catalog, which is integrated into the mStore environment.
Dan's Digest: Advertisers who want to leverage the emerging mobile web will find a good partner in mShopper, whose platform powers Sprint's entire mobile shopping portal. And because it works through an advertiser's existing affiliate program, mShopper provides an easy way for advertisers to participate in the mobile space without committing IT resources. 

RECYCLEBANK
Name of affiliate/URL:   RecycleBank; www.recyclebank.com
Type of publisher: Loyalty nd rewards
About RecycleBank: RecycleBank is one of the fastest-growing and influential loyalty and rewards programs, motivating people to recycle and engage in other environmentally friendly behaviors. The core business involves weighing a household's recycling cart and rewarding it with RecycleBank Points for each pound recycled. This results in exceptionally high recycling rates, heavily engaged consumers, and a unique platform where members earn points and redeem them for reward offers with more than 700 partners.