Performics Adds New Views and More Transparency

Transparency is great, but be careful. It can be taken too far. As a search publisher, they main asset of our business is our keyword list and our ability to create, launch and manage these large keyword lists. We don't want our converting keywords exposed and used for internal campaigns and our partner's marketing agencies.

We have this issue with Share-a-sale, and have asked Brian to limit the exposure just to terms that need to be monitored for compliance issues.

I am all for transparency to enforce policies, but we need to be sure that our converting keyword lists are not exposed.

Many search marketers are starting to implement their own redirect servers to strip out referrer information, and we may have to go the same route, but it really should have to be that way.

Adam

Claims of transparency are the new claims of being parasite-free.

It ain't breakthrough technology to allow publishers to choose to let their email be broadcast (under some conditions).

Bump up that transparency claim to extend data and tracking info to folks like Kellie Stevens and Ben Edelman, then I'll be loudly cheering your transparency.

Performics, why don't you share with us why transparency is so important? What is the purpose of increasing transparency?

Pat,

We made this information available because our advertisers and publishers asked us to do so. Our advertisers want to be able to get in touch with their publishers and to recruit new publishers. Our publishers want to hear from the direct advertisers that we have been adding at an increasing rate to our network (we do most of the recruiting on behalf of our managed advertisers, although some do their own and our new tools will help them).

We wanted to do so in a way that was fair to both advertisers and publishers. I'm not claiming to be making any breakthrough innovation here (read my original post), just responding to my customer's requests.

Larry

Larry,

The title of your post on the Performics Official Blog is "Publishers Spoke, We Listened."

You must have taken some liberty in that title considering that it is strikingly similar to one of the marketing campaigns launched by Pepperjam Network to extraordinary success just six weeks ago: "Affiliates have Spoken. Pepperjam Listened."

I took the liberty to run some reports and I note here that Pepperjam Network has generated over 365,000 banner views on various content Web sites for our "Affiliates Have Spoken. Pepperjam Listened" campaign since launching PJN on 1/15/08. In addition, we created 250 T-Shirts with the same slogan and many of us were wearing those same T-shirts last week at Affiliate Summit – you were there – right?

I'm totally assuming your title was just a coincidence, but since one of our affiliates e-mailed me about it, and several Pepperjam employees mentioned it, I thought I would go on record at least calling it out. FYI: It took a dozen people from our creative team, including myself several weeks to come up with our various marketing efforts for the launch of Pepperjam Network (PJN), including (1) Affiliate Marketing is Evolving. Introducing PJN. (2) Affiliates Have Spoken. Pepperjam Listened. Introducing PJN, (3) The Rumors are True. A Network by Affiliates for Affiliates. Introducing PJN, and (4) On 1-15-08, Everything Changed. Join the Affiliate Revolution. Introducing PJN.

I've already delivered props to you over on Scott Jangro's blog about stepping up for your advertisers to provide more info about your affiliates.

I repeat that sentiment here.

Congrats to Performics for stepping up to the plate.

As for the title of your post – small beans, but you guys are more creative than your title would suggest.

Kris Jones

Pepperjam Network

Thinking Forward

I was at the Summit, although I can't say that I remember any of your t-shirts; Vegas can be a distracting place. I'm not saying I never saw it but let's just say that neither of us are going to get a trademark on the "[You] spoke, [we] listened" motto – http://tinyurl.com/yom86a

Once again, thanks for the accolades. It's always nice to hear positive things from our customers

Larry

Larry & Kris, you two should do some celebrity boxing thing, for charity, at the next Affiliate Summit. I'd pay a few hundred to watch. Super big fluffy gloves and some decent headgear, maybe even those big Sumo suits for full body padding, so nobody gets anything hurt but their feelings.

Larry, I did go back and reread your blog, and you're right, you didn't claim this was meant to increase transparency – this feature does aid communication, but communication and transparency aren't the same things, as you (and Kris) know. It was Sam that lumped the t word in here, so I take back criticism aimed at you that was in error (you did not claim it increased transparency) – however, I now have transparency questions left on the table for you… but I've got the flu in a bad way, and I'm off to nap, day dreaming (and fever sweating) about you and Kris in Sumo suits…

Not really sure why transparency is such a bad word or how it is not synonymous with increased communication in a network setting.

Whatever… I'm just going to stop blogging about the networks.

This industry can be so short-sighted and petty sometimes.

Sam

Pat – I am so in for the "celebrity" sumo thing.

Larry – we applied for the trademark "Affiliates Have Spoken. Pepperjam Listened." I'm sure you can switch out Pepperjam with Performics if you wish, but you would be a few days late and a dollar short.

Sam – I tend to agree with you that communication and transparency overlap quite a bit. You can not easily correct one without the other. As for you not blogging about networks, that would be very unfortunate since you are a leading voice in this industry.

Kris

As we near the inevitable "flattening" of our industry, advertisers will demand direct contact to publishers in an attempt to control exposure and placement of their clients assets to increase the quality of leads and minimize fraud. The middle men (networks)will become extinct if they do not account for transparency and a) stop re-brokering offers and b)fail to land direct to agency / advertiser relationships.

[...] is a summary of the dialogue between Larry Adams from Performics and myself at the Revenews Blog and the Performics [...]

"Not really sure why transparency is such a bad word or how it is not synonymous with increased communication in a network setting."

Communication is connecting people, using tools or information, where the single most important outcome is an exchange of information.

Transparency is knowing who and what entities are.

Transparency can enable better communications. It can also enable better recruiting. It can improve reporting segmentation, market analysis, trend spotting and management and many others things.

One of the biggest problems we have is hoards of crapola affiliates, with a criminal mindset (Calcanis again), who can hide with anonymity and continue to perpetuate the same nasty stuff on everyone else within a network, and certainly across networks. Making matters worse, Sub-affiliate ID networks can cross-publish "offers" bringing sets of anonymous, unindentifiable criminal mindset thugs into a cleaner space, and nobody knows it's happening – becuase there's no transparency.

If you go to the pepperjam home page, in the advertisers box, you'll see this:

"pepperjamNETWORK is built upon the foundation of empowering advertisers to build successful publisher relationships through exceptional communication technology and enhanced brand protection through full and unfettered publisher transparency."

This is a claim, and one with important basis. PJ knows all about the shenanigans going on in affiliate marketing, and they are marketing themselves based on exactly this point (among others).

This is no small matter. If all networks genuinely had "full and unfettered publisher transparency", brands would be protected because when a cheater go outed, everyone would know who and what they are.

Unfortunately, today, this is more a claim that a fact.

And it can only improve through discussion.

So let's discuss it a little more.

PJam, who exactly has this full and unfettered access to a publishers information? Do people like Kellie Stevens or Ben Edelman get access so they may more effectively scale the impact of their research for the benefit of your advertisers?

"Whatever… I’m just going to stop blogging about the networks."

Sam, I beg you to retract that. You've started a meaningful discussion, Kris and Larry know it. Unfortunately for us all, they also know that there are no other networks with real transparency, so they'd be opening themseleves up to lost affiliate info (as an example) if they were the only network that actually was transparent.

And Sam, the keynote garbage pile is a result of a lack of transparency by the networks, yet they claim it – you're so on topic and on point I could cry. So don't stop believin', hold on to that feeling.

And Larry, no pot shots at PJ on transparency or you'll motivate me to fire up my test lab and show you're in exactly the same boat here.

Truth of transparency is this – if a network finds cheaters and boots them, the need for transparency is largely gone. ShareASale protects their advertisers brands and boots bad guys and the advertiser never hears a peep – they don't care – do you need to know who and what every entity is when you're not be shot. kicked, scraped, shoved, punched and poked? No, people are mostly too busy for that. If it gets serious, a court order can provide all the transparency you'll ever need. Beyond that, we don't need it if policing is truly effective.

Jason C says it's a swamp. I agree and assert it's cause, beyond bad apple affiliates exiosting, is bad policing and almost no transparency by the networks.

When the G dust settles, no way they will allow the status quo – so I hope that G-DC-PFX is soon going to be forced to police much better and to be more transparent, all good for the industry.

Further, others may want to think about the police-or-be-transparent argument I make… as a site owner, I don't know the people whose ads show up in my AdSense block, buty I know G's watching them like hawks and surely knows who they are…

So Larry, Kris, either of you want to claim you're highly transparent or highly clean/policed or both?

Can a lowly little affiliate guy like me, trying to make enough money to feed his family, manage to find the time and techniques to find cheaters inside your network from here, at my little rinky dink desk, sitting completely outside your network, just observing reams of logs data and other complex road signs?

You both know I can, so let's not argue that point. To your credit, both of your groups are doing more than ever, but you're not even close to claiming "brands are protected"…

What are you doing to help convert the swamp into fertile, arable cropland?

"This industry can be so short-sighted and petty sometimes."

I'll wear that label if it helps everyone else move forward towards the truth.

Pat,

I'd bet dollars to Donuts that you'd be blown away by the amount of time and money we invest in keeping our network clean. It’s not perfect, but I'm pretty confident we've got the one of the best systems around for keeping track and getting rid of the bad guys.

We haven't been very public about our methods or practices, but just because you don't see them doesn't mean they don't exist; nor for that matter does finding one of our tracking codes in one of your (or Kellie's or Ben's) tests. It's next to impossible to prevent every bad actor from entering a network. We are extremely vigilant in screening our new publishers and detecting the bad actors that slip through when they do crawl out of the woodwork. I assure you that once we find someone breaking the rules, we eliminate the problem quickly and quietly.

I'm reluctant to publicize our methods since I feel it will reduce their efficacy, but maybe the time has come…I'll keep you posted.

Larry

Larry, if I am to accept your assurances as reliably accurate and meaningful, I need to understand why the vigilant screening and aggressive policing that you say you do, still leave your network in such poor showing when compared to others?

If you've got a great system and are doing well at policing things, we can both agree that some new scumbag can (and will) show up now and then and make your policing look bad. So an outsider like me, catching one occassional bad guy, is really no judge of things… but what if I could continually find them? Would you say then that your screening and policing is still effective?

Pat,

I assume you are making this insinuation ("…your network in such poor showing when compared to others") is based on Kellie's report from a year ago.

I have two things to say in response. First, Kellie's numbers for our network were overstated because in the past our servers redirected regardless of whether an affiliate had been previously deactivated. Many of the incidents she found were links owned by affiliates we had already caught and deactivated. We've discussed that issue directly with Kellie and have altered the behavior of our servers as a result so that links from deactivated publishers no longer redirect. In the past the server would stop dropping cookies and no commissions were earned, but the traffic still went through giving the impression to Kellie and other researchers/industry observers that these were live affiliates in our network. Despite this change in technology, we continue to find links from deactivated publishers in spyware apps months after deactivation, either because the affiliate did a long term buy they can't get out of or they are unaware of their deactivation.

Second, I'd welcome your help in rooting out bad guys. If you want to spend time looking for our tracking links in adware/spyware, be our guest. If you find anyone, send us the links (and logs and video if you have it) and we'll take care of the problem.

Larry

Performics and Pepperjam Spoke, Wiseaff Listened!…

I am not sure if you missed some of the back and forth between Larry Adams of Performics and Kris Jones of Pepperjam over the title of Larry Adam’s Blog Post: Publishers Spoke, We Listened. Apparently Kris felt the blog title was a little to similar t…