Should affiliate networks run affiliate websites?

[KieronD]

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Question for everybody....

Suppose you operate a website promoting credit cards, i.e. you compare credit cards, the latest offers etc etc.

You are doing your daily check on Google to see who your competition is and you find a new site that you haven't seen before, advertising via Adwords. So you visit the site and have a look round, and it's a credit card comparison site. However you notice that the only affiliate links on the site belong to affiliate network x. Intrigued; you do a whois and find that the domain name for the website is actually owned by affiliate network x., i.e. they are the legal registrant of the domain.

Hmmm, so an affiliate network who obviously has very sensitive information on merchants, conversion rate, epc etc etc. is now in effect competing against you.

I am very, very interested in everybody's thoughts on this. The reason being is that this situation isn't hyperthetical. To the best of my knowledge everything I wrote above is correct apart from the site I mention promoting credit cards, they are actually promoting another product. However the circumstances are exactly the same. Has anyone come across this before? Is this ethical?

Cheers!

Kieron

[Mogga]

Well some networks run stuff that seems to go against affiliates...

like SEO for merchants.


I suspect its not good for affiliates at all.

[Rich]

This has been known about for a while and I'm surprised it hasn't had more focus in the past. Affiliates have to trust the networks, so I guess the general feeling was that they wouldn't risk abusing that trust, but if (say) TD were sharing advanced stats with (say) kelkoo, I'm sure people would have been more vocal - just to make it clear, I'm not trying to imply anything.

It came up in the past when hidden text was found on DGM's pages (one of the networks that offers seo services), like on the ukaffiliates index page, which pointed to sites promoting affiliate programs - though it seems these sites have now been taken down.

I think a network using PPC to promote one of their own sites is quite worrying as they will have a lot of data from affiliates to know what converts with what keywords.

[drivetowin]

Most of the networks or their employees do it in some form or another - although some networks are more guilty than others..... - its probably not right but there is probably very little that can be done about it

[Lee_Owen]

I might be wrong but don't DGM run that cheeky monkey website? I'm sure there's others around.

To be honest I think merchants should stick to being merchants, networks be networks and affiliates affiliates, but we all know networks are also affiliates, affiliates also turn their affiliation into a merchant and merchants like to also be affiliates.

[KieronD]

Originally posted by kbudden
Most of the networks or their employees do it in some form or another

Yes I know but this is the biggest and most in your face example I've seen of it so far.

Just to clarify, this is a very popular market that the network is trying to grab a piece of the pie of. What's more, they look to be paying some quite serious money to Google Adwords to market it. On top of that, the whois results actually state the affiliate network as the legal registrant of the domain, so they don't look to be hiding it at all. One point though, there is no mention of the affiliate network anywhere on the actual site itself.

I would say this differs quite a lot from networks offering SEO services or suchlike. Personally I'm quite shocked, anybody else?

Kieron

[Mogga]

I spose it depends if the merchant knows about it and whether they care.

[watcher]

It doesn't shock me as much as finding a merchant providing hidden text links to another affiliates website.

[loquax]

I might be wrong but don't DGM run that cheeky monkey website?

They did - but it now redirects to dgm

Jason

[KieronD]

Just to clarify things, this isn't a member of staff setting up an affiliate site in his/her spare time. That I can live with. This is a network creating a site to promote their merchants only.

Kieron

[mibut]

If memory serves me right, this has been brought up twice before.
First time on the old board when someone from DGM was copying someone elses site and the last time about 6 months ago.
Myself I am against the networks and employees doing this but there were plenty who didnt see a problem (not talking about copying sites).
As they have access to stats, which websites are doing well etc it is quite easy for them to have a head start on the majority of affiliates.

[Green2K]

What is the URL? I know the rules of the forum prevent affiliate URL's being mentioned (rightly so) but this sounds more like an affiliate network URL... Thefore possibly rules could be bent?

Additionally, this sounds important enough for affiliates to know the full story!

Green2K.

[KieronD]

If Matt or one of the mods say it's OK to publish the URL then I will. Otherwise I'll just have to see how it pans out when the network respond (hopefully tomorrow).

Cheers!

Kieron

[trafficbroker]

so an affiliate network who obviously has very sensitive information on merchants, conversion rate, epc etc etc. is now in effect competing against you.

In my opinion it is completely unethical for a network to compete with their affiliates. They have incredibly valuable information on keyword epc. Most inteligent people can write a decent ad and put together a sound bidding strategy so this information gives them an unfair advantage.

I see a parallel with this and insider dealing on stocks and shares. The affiliate industry has very little regulation at the moment and there is no way this will be allowed in the future once more regulation comes into play.

As for network staff being able to run affiliate sites, again, this can't be allowed if they are privvy to this type of information. Can Google staff run affiliate campaigns? Of course they can't! It should be in their contract that this is not allowed.

UKOffer - I admire the discreet nature you have approached this topic. I know of networks that run PPC campaigns for themselves. If I ever found out that this was having a direct impact on my cost/position on Google I'd have no hesitation in naming and shaming them.

Cheers,
Neil

[Rich]

Posting the URL might be a bit dodgy, though I think it would be classed as valuable info to the board, and it might mean Kieron giving away the market he's looking at which wouldn't really be fair. I can't see a problem with posting which network it is, but its fair to give them time to respond first - it's down to Kieron.

It doesn't shock me as much as finding a merchant providing hidden text links to another affiliates website.

I have come accross that too, but I think its fair for them to reward their affiliates in that way if they wish - they don't have to treat everyone equally. Checking earlier, the DGM hidden pages, which looked like they were there to increase link popularity, used to link to some affiliate's sites.

Its the PPC side of this site thats the concern. A network, or their employee, creating a site isn't a big concern as any data they can get access to isn't of great value as its just down to who can get the traffic. But the reason I don't do much PPC is the time involved in finding out what words convert into what sales, data that a network has masses of.