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I called this in 2009. URL shorteners are the gift that keep on giving.

> We hope the shortener never decides to add interstitials or otherwise "monetize" the link with ads, but we have no guarantee.

http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners

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Its the easiest way to monetize them. I'm really surprised it took this long. One of the interesting things to look at is CTR and affiliate payout, you may find that only 30 - 40% of the affiliate links "stick" only because so many people between where the link is and the vendor end up trying to stomp on the affiliate tie in.

It is an affiliate eat affiliate world out there.

Sometimes I wonder if you are just a ramblebot that looks for keywords and finds a semi-relevant story.

Seeing that he is a member of the watson group at IBM, it just might be true ;)

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