I have not heard anything either although I did inform them of the multiple requests and responses to their statement.

Angel

Excellent job and very timely article. Thank you for taking time to do the follow up and post it.

Details: Hydra Media's Pop-Up Problem — Ten Examples

I continue to think this is an indefensible practice — overcharging merchants, funding spyware/adware, and reducing commissions paid to rule-following affiliates.

If you truly wish not to engage in the practice with adware popovers, please feel free to forward me your contact information and I'd be more than happy to send you my report every month of Hydra affiliates who are popping up using adware on top of our affiliate traffic. My email is Brian at ShareASale.

I definitely agree with you that it is in all of our best interest to protect against so called "black hat" techniques both in Adware, search, incentivization, etc…

I would argue that we need to go further than just eliminating what is "illegal", and greatly consider the problems that this industry could face down the road if we don't provide a clean and safe environment for advertisers. Advertiser distrust, industry regulation, etc…

You mention not having much considered the effect of adware on other affiliates. Fair enough. That's not quite what my article was about — though, to be sure, it's a crucial question and one I and others have previously considered at length.

But what about the effect on VistaPrint? Are you concerned about the fact — shown in (in my view) exemplary clarity and detail in my article — that a Hydra affiliate is claiming commission for a sale that would have happened anyway? For traffic VistaPrint was about to get for free? How is this not a scam against VistaPrint? What exactly does VistaPrint get for its payment to Hydra? Isn't this a serious worry? Surely Hydra doesn't want to receive commission without providing a genuine business benefit.

I credit Hydra's prior efforts to eliminate certain unsavory affiliate practices. Great. But as to your suggestion that adware is "not a big part of [Hydra's] business": How would you know? Suppose a Hydra affiliate 1) buys adware traffic, and 2) doesn't tell Hydra what it's doing. (We know that's common through plenty of affiliates at plenty of other CPA networks.) Then it strikes me as remarkably unlikely that Hydra would count this affiliate's traffic as adware traffic. Put another way: Hydra might not know how much adware traffic it is actually sending to advertisers. You certainly can't assume that all Hydra affiliates are telling you the truth about where their traffic comes from.

In my initial article, I mentioned that my AutoTester has observed 1,287 instsances of spyware/adware sending traffic to/through Hydra Network. (That's correct — more than twelve hundred — not a typo.) To me, that's significant. Hydra is certainly among the most prevalent CPA networks my AutoTester detects. What evidence can you offer to support your claim that Hydra's use of adware is "not [] big"? What methodology would you propose that the interested public use to assess that claim?

Ben Edelman

From Ben Edelman (aside from one mentioned in article):

Claiming Commissions on Blockbuster's Organic Traffic (http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/images/selftarg…)

Post on ABW about working with CPA Networks:

(http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?p=700247…)