Are all network fees justifiable?

Working for an agency that offers affiliate management I tend to be having quite a few programs come in. Rather than have a special deal with any particular network we look at each campaign on a case-by-case basis and try and decide where we feel our client will get the best exposure.

One of the things that really grates me in this industry is how different the setup fees and monthly fees can be, lets look at an example..

I have a program which has a budget set aside for commission of around £10k per month – it’s a recruitment company who are doing some really cool things online once their site is re-development and re-branded next month.   As part of this campaign we are looking to build a widget that will integrate with the network tracking.  The client, as well as spending hundreds of thousands of pounds online in their initial three month re-launch is also spending just as much (or even more) offline.

I find a network where we can integrate our widget fairly easily, start talking to the business development guy about costs and am informed that their setup fee is a rather hefty £5,000 – this is probably the second largest in the industry.

Interestingly this same network refused to take on a program I was working with just over a year ago which turned out to be a huge success, they later said that they realised they were wrong to reject it at the time but their fee structure means they are likely to make the same mistake again

Have networks really forgotten what they are there for?  Personally (perhaps incorrectly?) I have always seen a network as a facilitator, something that is there to offer a robust / trusted tracking solution and handle the payment to a large affiliate base.  So why are these fee’s so high?

On another scale, we’ve launched a number of campaigns on another network recently that have all gone really well where the setup fee is just £500 – a much more realistic amount considering they are getting paid rather well with their override.

Obviously there are different levels of service offered by networks but it always tends to stager me that the costing structure can be so different.