I though the IAB remove Retailmenot.com from all UK Networks

**Top banana** · 03-08-09

Hi,

I though that retailmenot.com had been removed from all the UK affiliate networks becuase the site was not compliant with the Voucher code guidlines, is that correct?

At the moment they are dropping CJ cookies on all the CJ merchants, e.g.

retailmenot.com/view/lauraashley.com
retailmenot.com/view/argos.co.uk

is that allowed?

**Daniel Powel** · 03-08-09

Hi all,

Yes, we checked and this is correct. The situation is as such: as this publisher works globally we cannot completely expire them from the network per the IAB guidelines. The guidelines only apply to the UK. When the guidelines came into place we explained to this publisher that they would not be able to work with UK merchants. Recently, it appears they passed through the automatic and/or manual vetting process on some programmes and were accepted to work with them. Unfortunately, we cannot automatically block them from working on UK programmes, so we will have to push out further communications to our advertisers and programme managers to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Although the publisher appears to have made strides in the right direction, they still are not completely compliant with the guidelines and will accordingly be expired right away. We will encourage them to take down their tracking links immediately. From today, if you see CJ tracking on certain UK links, they are not monetised or active.

We continue to work closely with, and fully support the IAB.

If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you,
Daniel Powel

**Top banana** · 03-08-09

thanks for the reply Daniel. Do you work for CJ?

Just goes to show that they (retailmenot) are indeed a dodgy company and it was right to ban them from all UK networks.

**Mogga** · 03-08-09

Is there a list of IAB bannings?

**Daniel Powel** · 03-08-09

Hi,

I do work for CJ. I head up the account management team over here.

I have to check to see if we can share anything. I am not sure we can publically. The vast majority of publishers immediately complied.

Thank you,

Daniel Powel
Head of Account Management
dpowel@cj.com
0208 785 5825

**mattb811** · 03-08-09

Hi Diane,

As Dan says, the public naming and shaming anyone we take action against is not possible for a number of reasons.

Also, just wanted to clarify that it isn't the case that the IAB are "banning" anyone. All networks who are members of the IAB Affiliate Council have agreed a process and if any affiliate is reported and then it is agreed by the networks that the affiliate is in breach then they'll be spoken to and action will be taken. This is the decision of the networks rather than the IAB.

If anyone has any questions about how this is done, please drop me an email on matt.bailey@i-level.com.

Thanks,

Matt

**likethetruth** · 24-08-09

Hi all,

I will use my first post here to take a shot at such a controversial company as RMN / Stateless systems.

They, good for them, took advantage of the credulity of journalists in the early days and got a lot of traction from it. Paid big money to PR and yes they had a nice design.

But the bottom line of that this company specializes in content scrapping. They original business was bugmenot.com, a site that was hijacking passwords from other websites and they got sued over this countless times.

Let's face it, 99% of their codes actually do *not* work. They entered them themselves in the beginning, automatically filling their databases with whatever would attract clicks.

They keep "unreliable" coupons, why? because it;s more clicks, misleading visitors once again. they don't care, they have no privacy policy anyway and their US office is virtual as far as my informant told me, go sue them in Australia where their HQ is.

Also if only Google looked at their HTML code closely they would see how much spam there is on this site (look at the H2 tags for example).
they spent a lot of money buying links and paying PR people to convince them that they had the most coupons on the internet, which is true, but does it matter if the information is fabricated and misleading to consumers?

By the way I thought that CJ was checking on sites that keep their information updated? Are they really? To me, except for very few merchants, most codes don't work or actually never existed in the first place.
They say it's user submitted, I say it is in-house fabricated.

There are very nice communities (real ones) that have amazing value added for businesses, RMN is not one of them.

Good for them if they make so much money. Nevertheless, always remember that their core competency is to push to the limits until they get caught and say I'm sorry I will fix it.

For those who are wondering why I hate them: I don't. I find amuzing to see journalists and some affiliate networks playing their games. And the truth is that I worked for their current hosting provider and have been in contact with them personally, and I KNOW which processes are running on their servers...I'll leave you with that: impressive traffic, all of the rest is fabricated to maximize profit whatever it takes, as long as they don't get caught.
I am in a totally different business know, I am a consultant for companies with large hosting needs so I don't care, but I can tell you that if ever I have to give my opinion about adding RMN to my client's affiliates, NO WAY.

I find however, refreshing, that finally some networks have decided to ban them. They saw this one coming so now you will get Adsense all over the place on their site, including redirections to merchant pages. My guess is that visitors also ended up understanding that Google will keep sending them to RMN which has almost exclusively NON-WORKING coupons (which they count are part of their 150,000 coupons....of course, since they are fabricated in-house and often still online since 2006) Least I can say is that they are resourceful, lots of tricks in their manual.

If you like this (mostly useless) site, bless you. If you have a bit of brains, don't like to be treated as an idiot ready to be cookie stuffed, and look for real info, go elsewhere.

**Matthew Wood** · 22-09-09

missed this thread, didnt they just open up a UK specific site voucherhub or something?

**Jason** · 22-09-09

Yes indeed

It would appear so: RetailMeNot launches VoucherHub in the UK — Internet Retailing

It appears Retailmenot were CJ's Publisher of the Year last year