ReveNews
Al Qaeda Grows by Adding Affiliates
Imagine my shock this morning as I brought the LA Times in and read the headline at the top of the front page. Al Qaeda grows by adding affiliates: The network aims to broaden its reach...
I've been known to shy away from having my company called an affiliate. We're a publisher which uses affiliate marketing as a monetization tool. Now this! How am I supposed to deal with a racist terrorist organization joining the industry?!?
The article didn't mention anyone I know so I thought I should make some calls. But who would know? I thought maybe the OPMs might be managing the Al Qaeda affiliate program. In many ways there is a great fit but Al Qaeda likes to disperse authority so I didn't think the likes of Brook Schaaf, Jamie Birch, Peter Fig or Linda Woods would fit in the corporate culture of Al Qaeda.
With that ruled out, I turned to figure out the network. I didn't want to disturb Steve, Tom or Stuart on a Sunday. While Al Qaeda hates the US, it hates any country which is not ruled by Islamic law. That meant that it didn't have to be a European network. In fact, Al Qaeda seems to prefer to use American technology and always aims for the biggest. That meant CJ, Linkshare or Performics. Performics seemed like a good fit as Al Qaeda tries to keep its operatives separated and with little information. Certainly we do see Al Qaeda trying to influence the broader movement and to control some of these affiliates in a more direct way," said a senior... official. Who wouldn't?
But I had to rule out both Performics and Linkshare due to their location. If Al Qaeda succeeds at hitting Chicago or New York, their network may go down. That left CJ. Santa Barbara is close enough to LA yet far enough to remain safe in an attack. But while I saw merchants from other networks at CJU last week, I didn't see merchants of distruction from a terrorist network there. So I have no answer and the LA Times didn't provide one. The LA Times did mention the network working from Pakistan. I haven't heard of Valueclick, Rakuten or Doubleclick increasing their presence in Pakistan so maybe Al Qaeda is launching an independent network.
I could tell that Al Qaeda is making a move into our industry as the LA Times went on that a resurgent Al Qaeda is trying to expand its network by executing corporate-style takeovers... Does Al Qaeda buy one of the networks or is it the next Schoolpop / TrafficStrategies / Mezimedia? Again, the senior official: "... all of the things that would make an affiliate a subsidiary.",/i>
A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution said "Absolutely, we should be alarmed about this. They are creating franchises and buying franchises, offering expertise, networks, money."
Then I thought about who would attend conferences. Imagine Osama bin Laden as the keynote speaker at Affiliate Summit. Many pundits said that his tape earlier this month showed that he is becoming irrelevant. If that's the case, does that make affiliate marketing irrelevant or is Al Qaeda using an affiliate network to increase its relevance?
I next wondered if Al Qaeda would use datafeeds. Of course, it would be silly for Al Qaeda to broadcast its terror inventory but with the state of most datafeeds, Al Qaeda could succeed at disseminating misinformation.
The good news and bad news for Revenews bloggers: In a few days, you can Google your name plus Al Qaeda and this page will be in the SERPs.
[Note: The author is opposed to terrorism. Nothing above is intended to portray affiliates, merchants or affiliate networks as terrorists or terrorist organizations. All quotes are from a single article (the same title as this one) in the LA Times on Sunday, September 16, 2007. The title simply was too good to pass up.]
Already pikcing up the homepage for everyone except you and I David, just like you planned.
Muhahaha
It shows ones more how much more work is needed to educate people outside the industry about affiliate marketing.
I have not read the article in the L.A. Times, but I am sure that they had no wrong intentions and did simply not know any better.
While your post is funny and cynic (my kind of humor hehe) is it saddening at the same time.
I often thought that the media/government use of the term affiliate network when refering to Al Qaeda might give affiliate marketers a bad rap or at least confuse the public about the affiliate industry. After all, internet marketers are NOT exactly the same as guerilla/terroist fighters, even if both congregate in "networks". Once again, words get in the way...
"It shows ones more how much more work is needed to educate people outside the industry about affiliate marketing."
? What's that even have to do with affiliate marketing? Affiliate has many different meanings so it was not an incorrect usage on their part.
David,
Did you consider Zanox - maybe out of their Turkish office? Check out their mascot and decide:
Brad, Turkey has not been known to harbor nor fund terrorists. Maybe if Zanox had an office in Riyadh.
Jonathan, thank you for making my point. Affiliate doesn't mean much. It was silly a few years ago when search engines and some merchants tried to get people to put (aff) in the description of search listings. Aff meant less than affiliate which means nothing to the average consumer / searcher. This is why I am a publisher and not an affiliate.
I don't think that this article maligns affiliate marketing. It merely revels in the confusion of the term.
I wanted to change the name but everyone told me it was a bad idea.
We do not manage Al Qaeda as an affiliate in any of our programs.
Brook, I was pondering whether you were managing Al Qaeda's affiliate program.
Al Qaeda is a merchant of terror, not an affiliate. The question you should be asking is whether Al Qaeda's affiliates are in any of the programs you manage.
Generally affiliates are in bed with a lot of people but maybe Al Qaeda has only trademark bidders and typosquatters (six of which I removed from various programs tonight) so we don't have relationships with them.
I sure hope there will be follow-ups to this post with whimsical confusion about whether affiliates of MLB teams and television networks are related to affiliate marketing.
Guaranteed lulz for all.
I wasn't expecting much by the title of it, but this is a great post David. I loved reading it. Also, thank you for correcting Brad on his false assumption about Turkey.