According to an email blast sent by Audrey Breheney, Epic fka Azoogle is celebrating reaching 50,000 publishers. Not only are they mentioning this fact, but claiming to be the first affiliate network to reach 50,000 publishers. While we agree that this is a great feat and thank them for this, there is a significant problem with this celebration: It just doesn’t seem to be true!
Several network owners noted to me that they have rejected over the years at least that many applications and have far more than 50,000 publishers registered in their system. They were curious how Azoogle.. sorry, Epic Direct came to conclude that they were the first network with 50,000 publishers.
Eric Grindley, Integraclick’s General Counsel, the Parent Company of Clickbooth commented to Performance Marketing Insider that, “We definitely congratulate Epic on this achievement. We remember how exciting it was when we exceeded 50,000 publishers in the end of 2009, and we wish them the same growth with their future endeavors as we’ve seen with ours.”
JP Suave of CPA Network MaxBounty noted, that since they started, they have received over 91,000 applications to be publishers, but are a high quality network that doesn’t approve all their applications.
Some other networks similarly noted the same in response to queries, questioning why anyone would WANT 50,000 publishers in the first place, since there can’t be 50,000 quality publishers out there. They also pointed out that it would be almost impossible to monitor and service 50,000 publishers .
To note, while the number of publishers of Commission Junction is not known, most people I spoke to say that they are sure that it is far over 50,000 and most likely beat the 100,000 mark years ago. Similarly, it is reported that Affiliate.com, owned by the famed Scott Richter has been over 50,000 publishers for a while.
Even stranger is the claim that Azoogle/Epic Direct has been around for almost 12 years. According to the Founder Alex Zhardanovsky in an Interview here, the network was founded in July of 2002. That would make it coming on 10 years, not 12. Not that that makes a different in Epic’s huge and growing success however.
