ReveNews
Once Again, Merchants Paying Commissions on Organic Traffic
I remember when I first go into affiliate marketing and discovered the old CJ forums that blew up and grew into Abestweb, and then when adware and spyware started overwriting affiliate cookies like there was no tomorrow, we tried and tried to tell merchants that they were paying commissions on sales they shouldn’t be, as well as stealing web based affiliate commissions. Even with video evidence of an adware app overwriting cookies while coming from one of my sites, the merchant at Befree said that it must have been a mistake because the networks said it was all good, and everything was working fine. Needless to say, that merchant is no longer receiving traffic from me.
Well, for the most part, adware doesn’t normally overwrite affiliate cookies anymore, at least “not on purpose” if you listen to the networks and adware guys, although there are plenty of bad actors out there who may still be getting away with it. So, why isn’t adware gone away? If companies like Zango are not stealing commissions and are not being forced on anyone’s pc’s anymore, how are they still raking it in? Because they can still overwrite type in traffic with no problems.
It’s like this. Future customer one is researching a product, and ends up going through a couple different reviews, possibly clicking on a few affiliate links, setting cookies, etc, with the last cookie set, usually, being the affiliate who will earn the commission should this visitor come back and purchase something. The next week, after doing their research and feeling that they have found the best place to buy their item, they type in merchantname.com to go buy it. If Zango is running on this computer, it will see that the user is visiting a product on that site and redirect the user through their affiliate link, which of course, overwrites the original cookie, and gives them the commission should they buy or signup for something. But, even if no affiliate cookie is set, the merchant will pay out a commission on a sale that he would’ve received anyway, because, they redirected that user through their affiliate link, setting the cookie for Zango. A lot of adware programs, just drop the user back on the homepage again, or most used to, and might end up causing the merchant to loose a sale if the user gets fed up with their website. Heck they were just on the product page of the item they wanted and now they have to find it again.
Ben Edelman has done some recent work on just these types of scenarios in his post today called Spyware Still Cheating Merchants and Legitimate Affiliates, and he profiles some spyware and merchant sites that these scenarios are indeed happening on. Of course Zango is one, they just filed a laughable lawsuit, in my opinion, against PCTools that said they are removing Zango without the users knowledge. Isn’t this funny, since they were always being caught installing 180solutions and Zango without user permission and made it very hard to remove them without a special program. As Jack Sparrow would say, “Funny ol World idn’t it?”
Netflix and Blockbuster sure need to check out Ben’s article, as it could save them some big money, and some of us here could probably very easily help them find an affiliate manager with their best interest’s at heart, or even a better network to use. Linkshare and Performics are certainly a couple of the big networks, but there are some I would trust with my dollars a whole lot more.
Added: Check out the kinds of campaigns they are running to get visitors, they advertise on sites like vegas.napkinnights.com, with pictures of hot young females, with ads such as this one, View image Jessica Alba exposed, or any number of other stars. (I just grabbed a screen shot, the ads are easy to find if you want to see the whole thing.) These are the users that they are getting to install their adware, do you merchants who advertise with Zango think the young gentleman who install it are going to be buying anything from your website anytime soon? Or is the adware ending up on parents pc’s and they popup on them when they shop online? If this is your online advertising strategy, good luck in the future….
I was told directly by Kellie Bougher (sp?) of Linkshare about a year ago that Linkshare only forbids overwriting affiliate links. They are complicit with any action that doesn’t involve an affiliate link. By their actions, we know that other networks have a similar, yet unwritten, policy.
Merchants are paying millions of dollars in unnecessary fees and commissions.
Hiring AffiliateFairPlay.com and/or buying Ben’s software (if it becomes available for sale) could be the best investment a merchant could make.
This is why we recommend to our clients that they generally not use software.
I think it’s normal for companies like zango to monetize their own audience from adware. They give free products to users to set up their affiliate links…so what is the problem with that?
What free products? Games and videos that you can get for free elsewhere? Then they cost the merchants more money to be in their program by popping over traffic that was headed their way anyway. Let alone the grief with popups and system lockups that occur, what do they add of value? I’ve added an image they use to advertise above, I wonder if Miss Jessica Alba approved this campaign? Or any of the others they are using.
Sam, an affiliate relationship is a partnership between the merchant and an affiliate bringing them buyers. The merchants are being ignorantly stolen from by paying somebody because they can set a cookie for somebody who is already on the merchant’s site.
Insightful article Jimmy. The only thing about it I would change is the “Once again” part. This goes on day in and day out and has not stopped or even slowed down that I am aware of in years.
The only thing that has slowed is the number of forced installs through security holes.
Amazingly enough, I just got an invitation from Performics to join their Blockbuster program ROTFLOL!!!! How timely is that?
Scott
No doubt it’s a concern, but I don’t see any difference when a business AKA Merchant
uses affiliates to drive traffic, jump starts the business, learns from best affiliates (mostly search affiliates) and then shuts down the program. Oh wait, it’s not stealing.. It’s a business decision..
Just read May 18, 2007 - Adam Viener article.. SO TRUE..
Just like Google believes that click fraud should be a self regulating problem so is the relationships between ad networks
Good right up Jimmy. I’m wondering though…did anyone think this kind of thing had stopped? It’s good to put reminders out there, but hopefully people aren’t thinking anything has changed.
In the study I did a fews ago, looking specifically at just Zango pop-ups, my testing resulted showed that a whooping 63% (or 192 pop-ups) of all pop-ups received involved forced clicks of affiliate links. We also found that 37% (113 pop-ups) showed the same site as the end user was already viewing, or now being called “super-targeting”. Not all of those were related to affiliate links however. Still 37% is somewhat of a damning figure IMO. It certainly doesn’t go to shore up any arguements of end-user value, that is for sure.
As an independent affiliate promoting merchant products this really pisses me off. I spent time and money promoting products only to find out that traffic is essentially being stolen by these scumware companies. How widespread do you all this this problem is? 1% of all traffic? 10%? 25%?
I’ve read Ben Edelman stuff. Very eye opening…Thanks
Kellie,
You are abosolutely correct, I wasn’t trying to say it had changed, just that ONCE AGAIN someone is caught overwriting commissions and not providing the value the networks always said they were, by bringing in new customers, etc.