Japanese Ecommerce Site Rakuten to Promote Brand Awareness

Japanese ecommerce site Rakuten is working to promote awareness of its brand around the world, and on Thursday announced it was changing the logo of its Rakuten LinkShare affiliate division from "LinkShare, a Rakuten Company" to "Rakuten LinkShare."

Rakuten acquired LinkShare Corporation, a then privately held New York-based performance-based marketing firm, in 2005. In the past 3 years, Rakuten has acquired all or part of several ecommerce marketplaces around the world, including Buy.com, PriceMinister in France, Play.com in the UK, Tradoria in Germany, Rakuten Brazil, Rakuten Taiwan, Lekutian in China, TARAD in Thailand, Rakuten Belanja Online in Indonesia, in addition to Rakuten Ichiba in Japan. It also acquired ebook publisher Kobo.

The company said Rakuten LinkShare's updated logo signifies the importance of performance marketing within Rakuten as a key strategy for driving results for its clients.

Rakuten LinkShare CEO Yaz Iida said, "As Rakuten expands its global presence, the LinkShare platform will continue to drive results and create new opportunities for advertisers and publishers through increased market reach and additional services."

In addition to full-service and self-service affiliate marketing solutions, Rakuten LinkShare also offers search marketing and multi-channel lead generation services.