The merger - acquisition - IPO mania in the affiliate marketing sector seems to be heating up. Last week I blogged about an Tale of an Affiliate IPO - Affiliate Site 1.9 BILLION Valuation. This week a well known affiliate marketing company gets snapped up by ValueClick (VCLK).

It was announced today that ValueClick will be acquiring MeziMedia for up to 352 Million! Mezimedia owns the following super affiliate sites: Coupon Mountain, a well known coupon directory, Smarter.com a shopping comparison site and MoreRebates.com. According to Reuters: “In 2006, MeziMedia was profitable and had revenue of about $40 million.”

Even though the goal of the average one-man-shop affiliate site owner is probably not to grow the company so huge that it gets acquired or goes public, it certainly legitimizes our industry to know that the affiliate model can scale to this level. I love reporting on affiliate marketing companies that make it big and get acquired.

The PepperJam Blog has more insight on the story and speculates about other affiliate marketing companies that are ripe for takeover.