http://code.google.com/apis/checkout/developer/ch…

"Linda, as soon as I heard people saying that there were tracking issues, I escalated it to the Google Checkout folks. I know they're looking to see if there's anything they can do pretty quickly to help on this issue."

I of course, asked him if the cute cartoon of him pushing Checkout that I used in my 2nd blog, helped get his attention! LOL Thanks Matt you are awesome!

Here's the ThreadWatch thread if anyone wants to catch up on the conversation over there.

Google Undermining Paypal in Their War on Affiliates
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/10494

I am not sure why any affiliate (savvy or not) would choose to actively promote a merchant on a pay per sale basis if that merchant actively diverts a significant portion of the traffic you send to non-payable channels.

Well I can tell you from a paid search perspective, we might have to. If we are sending traffic and more and more of that traffic goes through Google checkout and we don't get paid for that traffic, then our ROI's will fall, our max bid prices will fall, and eventually the merchant just won't be profitable to promote anymore.

My gut feeling tells me it's more of a merchant configuration issue with Google checkout than an affiliate network issue, I am sure Google provides a way to pass pixel tracking on the checkout landing pages. My contact at Performics indicated that this is in fact the case.

I guess I am a little more concerned with Google arbitrarily putting the Google checkout logos on our ads for merchants who support Google checkout. If they are using our dollars to promote a checkout path that we don't get compensated for, that is grossly inappropriate.

Adam

Did I authorize it, no. If it creates better click through rates, then great, if I don't get paid when they checkout, then yuck!!!!

Aside from the issue of special merchant coupons for Checkout – Checkout is a still a major affiliate leak all around as I see it. I don't necessarily trust all merchants to upload separate transactions that aren't automatically tracked. Especially this time of year when it's so busy. I know merchants who PROMISE to pay 800# commission and don't, simply because they are short staffed and the order entry people just never get around to entering the manual transactions.

(They were not purposely trying to screw affiliates – it simply was not enough of a priority for the already buried staff to do the extra work. If I screamed loud enough and long enough and threatened to OUT them some phone transactions would get entered for awhile, then fade away again. I stopped managing the program – largely for this reason.)

This is a big reason why I don't trust anything that has to be done manually after the fact. I'm sure many merchants are automated to the point that they don't even need to have staff involvement, but we all know lots of smaller merchants, that aren't very tech savvy and that are short staffed and busy. Who's to guarantee all these Checkout orders get processed and uploaded correctly?

For there to be NO leaks the process MUST be automated IMHO. Checkout does let merchants use "web beacons", could this be a possible solution? I can only find info that's written for the consumer to let them know their transaction can be tracked by the merchant. (It also tells consumers to just DELETE their cookies if they don't want the referral source to be tracked.)

Google Checkout: Buyer Help Center –
What does it mean if a seller tracks advertising campaign performance?

"What does it mean if a seller tracks advertising campaign performance?

"Google Checkout allows stores to track conversions from advertising by adding a web beacon to the Google Checkout order confirmation page. A web beacon is an electronic image (1×1 .gif) within a web page that helps a seller analyze customer traffic, and track transactions."

http://checkout.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?…

OR if the Google web beacon can't be used possibly Google would allow merchants to place a CJ tracking pixel instead???

http://www.btobonline.com/article.cms?articleId=2…

I’ll ask you this question Connie.

What does fairness have to do with big business and billions of dollars?