I'll definitely check out the partnermaker link.

I'd be happy to talk with you any time about this topic and participate in an interview or even in a larger round-table discussion.

Your questions are not lost on me and I trust not on network executives who I know read these threads.

A handful of us (Wayne Porter, Lee Gientke, Amanda Watlington, Sam Harrelson) discussed this a bit here (http://www.thepartnermaker.com/weekly_insight/index.php?id=3). You may find some of Sam and Wayne's comments to be interesting given how the debate was so free-flowing.

Also, I would enjoy spending 15 minutes with you on the phone some time soon if you would be up for a quick audio interview on the subject. Perhaps we might pull in 1 or 2 others who have concerns such as yours. Maybe even an affiliate who is in a position to make such a leap (to CPC)??? I would even welcome a network to discuss this if they were forward-thinking enough to join.

Wouldn't it be cool if you stood up at the Summit and asked Chris Henger of Performics about his views on this concern?

He's speaking on the panel "Ask the Experts: Thought Shapers and Influencers"

This is exactly the kind of dialogue that strengthens our industry and makes blogs like Revenews truly valuable.

I have worked for public companies in the past that owned numerous subsidiaries and individual operating units, and I understand how and why sister companies often struggle to find effective ways to work together on seemingly obvious fronts.

As far as having previously contacted Keycode regarding your content syndication needs, we operate out of a small and tight office and I am sure I would have seen your e-mail if we received it. I would be very interested to know if you still have a copy of the original request for information. In any event, we would love to see if we can meet your upcoming needs.

I would also be happy to recommend some of the other competitive coupon syndication services out there, like David Lewis’ anycoupons service and others, so that you can get a good base of qualified options to choose from.

I never intended to mean that I support the position that says business or affiliate marketing in general should be "fair". I personally like fairness especially in business, but I know it rarely exists as a valid consideration for many in modern business strategy.

Business at all levels is highly competitive and clearly not fair. But, when certain business aspects prove themselves to be unfair, there are repercussions from those who are negatively affected – some appropriate some not. By pointing out and debating seemingly unfair practices, change can occur before over reactions take place.

I guess that is what I was trying to accomplish here.

You're point about the necessity of raising the perception from "affiliate" to "publisher" is excellent and worthy of creating a new post dedicated to just this topic.

It seems as if raising the affiliate publisher perception should be among the highest priorities of the Networks. If not, one could imagine the unfairness level rising to such a degree that quality publishers would have no choice but to "graduate" to a CPC based model outside of network tracking out of sheer necessity to survive. Bizrate, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, even PriceRunner all seem to have found a way to become "more legitimate" by becoming "direct relationship" worthy ad channels by doing this. Maybe this is just a natural progression once a publisher reaches a certain size audience. Is Fatwallet ready to make a switch?

All I know is that if this switch was made by even the top 10% affiliate publishers in general, it would be devastating to the Networks as a whole. I hope it doesn't have to come to that. Like I said – definitely worth debating.

Bargainbetty + MSN
CouponCabin + Yahoo
??? + Google

These are all business arrangements conceptualized and executed upon by people — some more creative and capable than others.

It's dog eat dog and anyone who has a CJ, Linkshare, Performics, etc. link on their site will continue to earn certain treatment… for being considered an "affiliate". Unfortunately this word brings with it a "junior leagues" connotation.

IMO, affiliates need to earn "publisher" (hat tip to CJ who tried to polish their network via this word so as to attract VCLK's attention) status.

This entire topic revolves around this central issue — affiliates being treated a certain way due to their association with an "affiliate network" — a network that can use the word "publisher" all it wants but in the end cannot control how advertisers view them.

"Shopping comparison engine" beats out "affiliate".

Web sites using pure CPA MUST rise above "affiliate" status.

First of all thanks for a great blog. I represent PriceRunner as General Manager of the business unit. PriceRunner is wholly owned by ValueClick Inc. which also owns companies like Commission Junction and ValueClick Media.

At PriceRunner we list offers from different affiliate networks and we have a great relationship with all of them. Among them is of course also Commission Junction.

I think that it's important that I give a little overview on how we work with CPA offers on PriceRunner. We have CPA offers in two sections of the site:

1. Comparison Shopping Section (Price Listings)

2. Coupon Section

PriceRunner is like many other comparison shopping sites based on CPC so it's only in very rare cases we list CPA offers in our price listings. We do work directly with the affiliate companies to receive product feeds from these merchants. PriceRunner abides by the same terms and conditions as any other company working with the affiliate network. At no time has PriceRunner received any special consideration or treatment from CJ.

We do in come cases work with different tiers – but that's simply because PriceRunner like any company can qualify by sending more and better traffic.

The coupon section on PriceRunner is operated by a 3rd party provider. The company providing us with the service is SavingsWatch (LoyaltyVentures). SavingsWatch is hosting the service and 100% responsible for the day-by-day operation. PriceRunner is NOT working with CJ on our coupon section and it's highly possible that CJ is not aware of this relationship – simply because PriceRunner have had no contact with CJ about this section. All communication regarding the coupon section and the affiliate networks is handled by the 3rd party provider.

It could seam strange that PriceRunner is not working with CJ on this – but it's simply because coupons is not our focus on we do not have the resources to operate a section like this.

We started the coupon section 10 months ago and it's still running in a beta mode. I think we can do a lot of things to improve the section – so for our 2007 Roadmap we have planned to do a complete redesign. Once again we are not going to work directly with any affiliate networks. We are currently evaluating different providers so any coupon providers are welcome to contact me directly. I remember contacting KeyCode.com a while ago but I never received a response (maybe I send the mail to the wrong person – I will see if I can find the mail) – but I would love to talk to you about your syndication services.

In regards to the CJU conference which I also attended – I do remember that PriceRunner was mentioned. But PriceRunner was mentioned in the connection with other ValueClick companies and can't connect it to any special treatment. Commission Junction and PriceRunner are owned by the same company so it's natural that they will be mentioned in the same company presentations. I do recall one session about online shopping where different representative presented their solutions. Comparison Shopping was presented by Pronto.com a competitor to PriceRunner.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions about PriceRunner.com

Best regards

Martin Andersen

GM, PriceRunner.com

LoyaltyVentures/TopMoxie/SavingsWatch/TopRebates are all the same company. SavingsWatch and TopRebates are their own affiliate sites (coupon and rebate). If you go http://www.loyaltyventures.com and http://www.topmoxie.com you'll see basically the same site. TopMoxie provides rebate reminder software for other incentive sites. They do the adware for UPromise, Ebates, iGive, Care2 to name a few. They also have the adware on their own affiliate web sites.

The ntwk18.com domain is a used for redirects and tracking of their own affiliate sites and the web sites they provide syndication to. They run all syndicated traffic through the same aff IDs. Since they also have to track users via the sub id parameter because of the rebate end of things, they first track their syndication partner through the ntw18.com domain, then redirect the aff link.

The person you spoke with a CJ may not have been aware Kurt of the situation. I'll grant that much. But now way does CJ itself not know that TopMoxie is running stuff on PriceRunner. I can't believe that one. It's been there. It may well have been a prior agreement. Maybe archive.org would shed some light on it. Regardless of the when and why, it's the current situation and it's not new. I've been monitoring it for months now (maybe a year?) just to be sure the adware part doesn't show up there also.

The technical tracking aside…it's definitely an affiliate (TopMoxie) on the *coupon* part of PriceRunner and it's definitely affiliate links. And yep Todd those types of outside deals do happen like the BizRate. But that's not the case here, while TopMoxie may have brokered some hybrid deals with some of the merchants. But all those links track through Affiliate Network links.

"It brings up some very interesting questions about affiliate networks (or the companies that own them) using affiliate supplied content on their destination sites."

Totally agree. And that was really my point. It does bring up both interesting and important questions. And not just with ValueClick in this age of company acquisition.

This type of action will only occur more and more in the future. If you don't see the writing on the wall than you are WAY behind the curve. I saw it 3 years ago.

It seems all the coupon offers resolve through http://www.ntwk18.com, which takes you to http://www.loyaltyventures.com/. The site lists three partners – ValueClick, LinkShare and Performics.

Many deals are done outside of affiliate marketing channels and special promotions and unique commission structures (CPA, CPC, CPM, Hybrid) are not out of the norm. Typically these deals are done by other people not responsible for the affiliate program.