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Reply With QuoteVrindavan (14-09-10)
Dear Affiliates,
We appreciate that no formal communication has been sent to the Affiliate base from DGM UK; hence there is confusion and no real clarification with regards to the administration of DGM UK.
As communicated previously and to reiterate, Asia Digital Holdings Plc (“ADH”) formally DGM PLC is the original founder of the DGM business back in 1999. In 2007, ADH Plc sold majority ownership of the UK operation to an independent management team. ADH still runs and owns 100% of DGM in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India and China.
As a representative of ADH, I would therefore like to communicate the below information pertaining to DGM UK; despite this not being our responsibility as an independent company. In addition we would like to clarify any misconceptions that might have been spread into the market place / forums regarding ADH’s involvement with DGM UK.
Once DGM UK became technically insolvent, ADH Plc CEO returned to the UK with a view of bringing about a more positive outcome. However, there was insufficient support to justify the execution of the proposed initiative - therefore administration of the UK Business was the only alternative.
dgmPro is the primary platform that served DGM UK and currently serves our business within ADH Plc. ADH Plc Independently acquired the assets from the administrators to ensure that none of our businesses were adversely affected through this administration.
At the request of some UK Affiliates and Advertisers, we were asked to keep dgmPro UK functional so all the necessary data / reporting information could be extracted, in addition to giving Advertisers and Affiliates a medium to communicate in the short term.
Please take important note that at 00:00am on the 13th August, all banners, tracking & serving for the UK territory Advertisers & those Affiliates holding a UK DGM Account will cease.
Serving, Tracking and Creative delivery for all Advertisers and Affiliates joined up with accounts in the other territories will continue to work as per normal.
If you have any further queries regarding the administration of DGM UK, please may we advise you to contact RSM Tenon (www.rsmtenon.com).
Queries regarding any of our businesses within ADH Plc, please contact the relevant market lead;
Sheenu Aggarwal,
Market: South East Asia
Email: sheenu.aggarwal@dgm-sg.com
Chris Garner
Market: Australia / New Zealand
Email: chris.garner@dgm-au.com
Poornima Rai
Market: India
Email:Poornima.Rai@dgm-india.com
Jennifer Zhang
Market: China
Email: Jennifer.Zhang@dgm-group.com
Kind Regards,
Asia Digital Holdings
Last edited by Sheenu; 12-08-10 at 11:16 AM. Reason: Grammar
Vrindavan (14-09-10)
Sheenu,
While I like you as a person, and I don't think that this is your decision, I wanted to say I can't believe the callousness of this announcement.
I find the complete disregard for the interests of the UK affiliate industry completely gobsmacking. The tragedy that is the implosion of dgm UK has now been further compounded by a shockingly late notice from a disinterested party to affiliates, less than 24 hours before it occurred, that their banners and links - and by extension, their own sites - would stop working. I spoke to affiliates this afternoon who have now had to spend the day scouring their sites for lost dgm banners and links.
What bothers them is not that they aren't making money from the links, but that the customer experience of their site is impaired. I can tell you that dgmPro was generating traffic for BT a couple of years after the campaign ended; even Vodafone was generating sales nearly a year after they left the network. Link removal is a slow and painful process; the idea that affiliates should remove them all within 12 hours of a public announcement shows a complete lack of appreciation for the hard work affiliates have put into dgm over the years.
And what is so particularly galling is that even at full tilt, UK activity accounted for less than 10% of total traffic going through the dgmPro platform, so it is not even a particular drain or cost on the platform itself, where the costs are overwhelmingly accounted for by the fixed costs of running the datacentres, servers and leased lines. There are exclusive clients of dgm like JD Williams - an account I would have thought was dear to your heart given your won it exclusively for dgm back in the day - that have not been able to add new network tracking who are going to see their affiliates pull all their links, materially damaging both the affiliate and the advertiser's affiliate activity. If there was any way that dgm PLC / Asia Digital Holdings could have burnt their UK bridges any better, I can't think of it.
This is sadly a fitting epitaph for a once-great UK business that has had any number of good people in it let down by disastrous decision after disastrous decision.
Ben Cockburn
(ex-dgm Technical Solutions Manager)
well said Ben, (just like the honda ad) I couldn't of put it better myself!.... I trully believe What comes round goes round...
Hope you have found work/sure you will, always a friendly voice and always willing to help.
Why didn't you just say "F##k You"Originally Posted by Sheenu
I just wasted 2 minutes of my life reading that garbage.
What goes around comes around. I cannot wait.
PhiltheBear (15-08-10)
I sincerely hope so.
PhiltheBear
So do I.
It not fair on all affiliates. I hope that merchants will be able to get back any payments that were made and not paid to affiliates. (It always pay's to pay with a CC sometimes.) I thought AGH was going to do a "silvertap" and take over. But it doesn't seem like they can be ar£ed.
Merchants need to start protecting themselves and affiliates. Forget the networks.
Hmm...
For all intents and purposes they have taken over... Well actually it was already theirs in the first place! But they've done it in a way that means they've "bought back" all the good bits from the administrator for virtually nothing and then jettisoned the debt leaving them back where they started but without having to pay their creditors and affiliates what they owe them!
Have any of the merchants started showing up other networks yet? I don't know what to do with all the DGM outbound links on my sites... should I be putting them through Skimlinks in the short-term and hope that new programmes are put in place soon.
BTW - Surely the best thing DGM can do to help web users is to take their tracking offline and simple route traffic for each merchant to the merchants homepage. At least that way, the web user still ends up on the website they were expecting to head to, and the merchant gets continued traffic. It is then down to the affiliates to port their links to the merchants' new networks. Ok, so this isn't great for affiliates wanting commission but at least the user experience of affiliate websites is not lost.
Also - Is there anyone who has the capacity (perhaps the networks that are taking on the DGM clients) to produce a clear spreadsheet of where the merchants have moved onto?.... A really simple sheet with all of DGM UK's clients in one column, the status of their affiliate program migration and which network the program is moving to. I'd love to do this myself but after my day job and affiliate night job, can't find the hours.
Affiliates4U ..... any chance you could do this for the good of the UK affiliate community?.... you have the network contacts so could stay on top of it. Or hows about a Google Spreadsheet or Wiki where everyone can chip in to update the merchants they are aware of.
You can view DGM merchants that are already on other networks here:
dgm - merchants available on other networks (closed and live)
For the others I'd suggest using Skimlinks until you see them appear as an affiliated merchant.
wedge (16-08-10)
Just to let you know, the JD Williams program is now live with Affiliate Window.
We hava launched with Simply Be, JD Williams, Fashion World, Marisota, Jacamo and a new commission structure!
Why did ADH holdings claim they would maintain the links and tracking ect until the 31st of October 2010? Also does anyone know if affiliates/merchants were directly informed about this or, was this only picked up by looking at forums?
Some information would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks :-)
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