Here's the email I got from G a few hours ago...

Hello,

Thank you for participating in the AdSense Referrals program.
We’re writing to let you know that we will be retiring the AdSense
Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate
your patience during this transition and here are some alternative
options to consider:

* Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of
DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now
operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting
users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense
Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers
to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on
advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For
further details, please visit:
www.g00gle.c0m/ads/affiliatenetwork.
* AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense
for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the
referral ad units with standard AFC ad units.


If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google
products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals
code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August.
We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is
retired:

* Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a
moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last
week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your
ad space.
* Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create
and save all reports related to the referrals program on your
desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign
information


Why is this happening?
We're constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing
and supporting features which drive the best monetization results
for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing
features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most
effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring
the AdSense Referrals program. If you have any additional
questions, please visit our Help Center:
http://www.g00gle.c0m/adsense/suppor...py?topic=14882

Sincerely.

The Google AdSense Team

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service
announcement to update you about the retirement of an AdSense
feature.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Is this a good news for affiliate marketer/network/manager.. ?

Got the email, too... it's good I didn't invest any time in promoting this

I don't really promote referrals heavily, but have made a few surprise bucks here and there...

Just be sure to remove any links that you may have published before the end of August so you're not wasting site space.

.

Originally Posted by todaydvd

Is this a good news for affiliate marketer/network/manager.. ?

Whether or not it is good news to you depends upon if you are promoting referrals or not, and if so, how profitably.

Otherwise, it's just news...

.

Could lead to some more competition in AM.. I know if all I did was promote adsense article sites then I would have no choice, but to step in AM or some other type of system..

I wouldn't worry though..

finaly happy they are removing it