Excite Launches Affiliates Network

Excite Inc. Monday launched the Excite Affiliates Network powered by San Francisco-based SmartAge, offering affiliates credits toward free online advertising in exchange for each page view of Excite content.

The program allows anyone with a Web site to add elements of Excite’s content to their own site free of charge, the company said.

Participating Web sites can add content such as Excite Web and news search functions, headline news, sports scores and standings, stock quotes and daily weather forecasts. These are provided to the affiliate as individual “content modules.” Web masters can register to participate by clicking here.

Affiliates will be given an HTML line of code to add to their site and the Excite content module, updated frequently, will be instantly viewable on the affiliate site, the company said.

“By creating an affiliates network, we can share with other sites what we know consumers want. We expect this new program to extend our brand reach to potentially millions of new viewers,” said Joe Kraus, senior vice president and co-founder of Excite.

Excite said it tracks page views generated from the content modules on each affiliate site and, in exchange, awards that affiliate credits toward free online advertising. Each time a visitor to the site clicks on Excite content, the affiliate earns a credit toward free banner ad impressions on SmartAge’s SmartClicks network.

When an affiliate is ready to apply credits towards advertising they submit their banner ad to the Affiliates Network, and through Excite’s relationship with SmartAge, the banners can be targeted across the nearly 200,000 SmartClicks small business member sites.

“The free advertising component of the Affiliates Network can help small and large sites alike grow their advertising budget without negatively impacting their bottom line,” Kraus said.

Financial terms of Excite’s deal with SmartAge were not disclosed.