"Top affiliates" are only top because they don't give a *** about IAB guidelines?

**DanWBC** · 27-05-10

Those "guidelines" and rules hypocrisy seems to be in a full blossom in the UK affiliate sector.

Affiliate Window is now contacting us to negatively match brand after brand, while we only bid on a handful of generic 'voucher codes' keywords. Meanwhile, many VC affiliates run PPC campaigns bidding directly on brands and after years of being reported to network managers, this practice was never stopped. Same faces, same offenders.

Organic sector is in even more awful state.

Friday, 27 March 2009
Open quote Having only come into effect some two months ago, the guidelines are already a success with almost 100% compliance from the country’s leading voucher code affiliates. It’s important to note that the aim of these guidelines was not to catch people out or ‘name and shame’ those who do not immediately comply, rather the over-arching objective is to ensure merchants are more comfortable using the voucher code channel.Close quote - Matt Bailey, head of affiliate at i-level and chair of the IAB Affiliate Marketing Council
The IAB’s Affiliate Market Council (AMC) has updated its best practice guidelines on the use of online voucher codes. Since the guidelines officially came into effect on 1 January 2009, over 95% of publishers are now fully compliant, and the AMC aims to have achieved 100% compliance within the next month.

Hah!
So maybe on 1st of Feb 2009 a 100% compliance was achieved.
But on 1st of March 2009 it happily went back to almost where it was.

You don't need to look far at new VC sites (who might well do something unintentionally), look at this prolific gangsters, whom networks consider top delivering affiliates.
And why they deliver so much? Because they don't give a damn about silly guidelines and rip fellow affiliates by stuffing their cookies for non-existing and expired vouchers.

Look at voucher codes dot com, just few examples:

http://www.vouchercodes.com/vouchers/evans.htm
http://www.vouchercodes.com/vouchers/hotels.htm
http://www.vouchercodes.com/vouchers/burton.htm

Click to see the code - Expiry Date: Unknown
Or 'Expiry Date' has already expired and voucher wasn't removed or distinctively marked as expired..

And do you think customers bother to read? They instantly click to reveal and get stuffed with his cookie.. network gets percentage of sale, merchant is ripped off, fellow (if that's appropriate with such disregard) affiliates are ripped off..

IAB guidelines are for the toilet paper.

From IAB:

A valid code is defined as a code that has been legitimately issued by a merchant for your use online. This code will have an activation date and, where provided, a deactivation date. When a code has expired it must either be removed or the fact that it has expired must be clearly stated in writing, not simply by listing the expiry date.

Sad...

**dc000000** · 27-05-10

Don't get hung up on the iAB - it's a talking shop for back-strokers.

Voucher abuse is sanctioned by the merchants involved - not the networks. It's a simple exercise - do a deal with the abusers for a fraction of a percent they pay to genuine affiliates and get the equivalent of virtually free advertising across the net.

Find other ways to make money because this crap isn't going to stop any time soon

**DanWBC** · 28-05-10

Originally Posted by dc000000

Voucher abuse is sanctioned by the merchants involved - not the networks. It's a simple exercise - do a deal with the abusers for a fraction of a percent they pay to genuine affiliates and get the equivalent of virtually free advertising across the net.

I doubt that. From what you say, networks must be also acting in this scheme as a middle men, but why would they do this for 'a fraction of a percent'?
I see no reason for merchants to participate in any schemes of affiliates displaying expired codes (when there are no working codes) and then pay for that. Kinda absurd.

**dc000000** · 28-05-10

Originally Posted by DanWBC

I doubt that. From what you say, networks must be also acting in this scheme as a middle men, but why would they do this for 'a fraction of a percent'?
I see no reason for merchants to participate in any schemes of affiliates displaying expired codes (when there are no working codes) and then pay for that. Kinda absurd.

Maybe you are right - a bunch of failed mobile phone salesmen are shafting the biggest names in retailing and have been for at least 4 years. Does that sound more plausible to you?

**Barry** · 29-05-10

I agree with most of your points in your starting post, the PPC arena is still a bit of a nightmare. From what I can see from the lack of clean up is that networks are only working reactively on this. (and they do react very well imo) ie they only inform affiliates to place negatives in their campaigns on the request of the merchant, they are not going out their way to protect merchants if the merchant doesn't care, know, or simply has no idea whats going on. Brand protection costs money and many merchants cant afford it, many merchants dont have the department to care about it as I said or dont care, - I imagine that some merchants could have an online ad agency thats only interested in sales attributed to their department so dont give a ****, no-one at head office is going to know what they are on about when it comes to the interwebby thing.

It all depends on whether you want to risk it and deal with the fallout, it is still possible to still run things aggressively in affiliate marketing, make alot of money then become too big for the industry to lose.

If you were a member of just one or two programs on an affiliate network and you broke the rules you probably be kicked off the network if your a money maker for loads, you'll probably only be risking a warning of removal from the program you broke the rules from.

If you want to help merchants there is no harm if you find a store being abused by PPC, contact them via their form and suggest they run an extra keyword (brand + voucher code) in their google adwords account linking to a page on their site with a signup form to their email list in return for bigger discounts they put out in the affiliate channel. If every store did this though - it would wipe tens of millions out the affiliate marketing arena.

I suggest you risk what you feel comfortable with when it comes to 'interpreting' T&C's of programs, I am not particularly into bending rules as I am a stress head - many people thrive of bending them to breaking point and make money from it. Its valid to raise the point, but dont get stressed.

Ta

Baz

**DanWBC** · 30-05-10

Originally Posted by Barry

I agree with most of your points in your starting post, the PPC arena is still a bit of a nightmare. From what I can see from the lack of clean up is that networks are only working reactively on this. (and they do react very well imo) ie they only inform affiliates to place negatives in their campaigns on the request of the merchant, they are not going out their way to protect merchants if the merchant doesn't care

Agree with that from my experience. Even after networks were notified of some brand abusers, nothing changed because merchant seems doesn't care.
But network also doesn't care to educate merchant about 'black hat' bidding practices, because network: a) doesn't have to do this b) is better, when it doesn't have to do this.

It all depends on whether you want to risk it and deal with the fallout, it is still possible to still run things aggressively in affiliate marketing, make alot of money then become too big for the industry to lose.

That's the problem. And I am not sure with voucher code sites, which are in dozens. If it's not offending affiliate, it will be another voucher code site anyway. What network has to lose by removing a constant offender, where there will be no drop in network revenues? Perhaps the affiliate sends traffic from other sites, but still it doesn't permit network to be a hypocrite if they care about their image.

I suggest you risk what you feel comfortable with when it comes to 'interpreting' T&C's of programs, I am not particularly into bending rules as I am a stress head - many people thrive of bending them to breaking point and make money from it. Its valid to raise the point, but dont get stressed.

Well said.

**dougs** · 01-06-10

We do a huge amount of volume in the voucher code space and we do negative match on all brands even if they don't say so in their t's and c's. But the occasional time when something goes wrong and we appear for a brand name the networks in question have been onto us with 24 hours....notably CJ and AW, in over a year this has happened 3 times, but in each case they contacted us almost immediately.

The issue is simple many merchants it is not against their t's and c's as they don't understand or have the time to understand......hence it gets abused in ppc.

Doug