Action Referral Occurrences

[Qui Gon Jinn]

These are merchants with an Action Referral Occurrences of ONLY ONCE.

It is not a reflection of how good or bad an EPC is for a program, but realistically all merchants Should have this set for UNLIMITED.

Action Referral Occurrences, this is the number of times an advertiser will pay a commission within the *same* cookie period (ranging from 1 time to unlimited).

Here’s where there is room for confusion.

Many affiliates are make the false assumption that they earn commissions for "all" the sales during the active cookie period. Whereby the cookie gets erased after the first purchase and you don't get commission on subsequent sales if they go on to purchase further items or services within that origianl cookie duration.

However, this is now metered by the 'Action Referral Occurrence' setting. Sometimes it is just an oversight by a merchant but it can basically make you feel short changed.

Certainly if your program is designed to pay for customer acquisition then it's not so much of a problem. For example With Credit Cards & Betting, however there could quite easily be more than one person in a household who could apply, hence some other programs in the same category do offer unlimited. Look at Ebay for example now there could quite easily be 2 adults in a household who register, yet they are only set for 1 time only.

But if an merchant is selling their program as an ongoing revenue share for referred customers then they should ensure their action referral occurrence reflects this with appropriate unlimited occurrences.

Ideally these merchants listed below should change it to UNLIMITED. Action Referral Occurrences is often overlooked by affiliates so if you have a good relationship with the affiliate manager of any of these programs, it may be an idea to encourage them to change it..

As a suggestion to forum members politely email merchants you work with & explain that their terms of '1 time' sales against long cookie periods weakened their offer to the point that they may not be promoted to their full potential.

Barclaycard.co.uk
BBC Shop (UK & Europe)
Beneficial Card
Betfair.com
BetHiLo
Capital One UK
Citibank Banking
Confetti.co.uk
Create Card, new from Lloyds TSB
DatingDirect.com
Easyodds
Ebay UK
EnglishHall.com
Essentialtravel.co.uk
Eurobet.com
First Direct
Goodhealth Worldwide
Homechoice
HotMat - Free Mouse Pads
Index
Laithwaites (And reducing commission)
Laura Ashley
Littlewoods Home Shopping
Loans.co.uk
LX Direct
Marbles.com
Marks and Spencer
O2
Pixagogo
RaceBook.com
Regal Partners
Small Island Trader
Sport.e.com
Sporting Index
Sportingbet
Surpriseyourwoman
The Kids Window
The Origins Network
vBulletin
Virgin Net
Virility Health
WRC (UK)

[Darren]

A fundamental issue and a very valuable post, Paul.

I don't do much on CJ, but those merchants I do work with, I will contact them as you suggest.

I would encourage all other affiliates to do the same.

Do we have any clarification from other networks about this issue? I recall there being discussion about a financial merchant on Tradedoubler some time ago, not paying on visitors who'd already visited their website, etc.

In your opinion, is there potential for this issue to apply with other networks not currently declaring this?

[drivetowin]

Great post - of course for some of these merchants you can sidestep the issue by changing network

confetti.co.uk are now on AF (and are closing their CJ programme anyway)

BBC Shop, Index, LX Direct, Littlewoods Home Shopping and Marks and Spencer are on Buy.at

[Qui Gon Jinn]

It's not my intention to see links being swapped as we are not sure whether the same applys on other networks or not, on CJ the deal is more transparent on this topic of ARO

On TD newer merchants have this called "Recurring events" , I don't think older programs within the network have this information available but I have have only checked a few. However TD should update this information across all merchants.

It might be better to check with other networks first to see whether the same is a happening there or not, yet this is not communicated with the affiliate.

I just hope it's not opening a can of worms and we see it may be wider spread than anticipated.

The first course would be to look at programs on multiple networks and ascertain the actual deal structure on each network, in terms of Action Referral Occurence or Recurring Events.