TradeDoubler Adware Addendum

[TD Nick]

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Hi everyone,
I know you have all been waiting some time to hear our position on Adware publishers. We have come up with the following addendum which clarifies our position. I would welcome any of your comments on this addendum. Please do feel free to contact me to discuss it at any time.
Best regards
Liz
020 7881 1417
liz.tucholski@tradedoubler.com


GENERAL INFORMATION REGARDING ADDENDUM TO THE AFFILIATE AGREEMENT

Preamble to Addendum
TradeDoubler’s Affiliate Agreement provides a set of Terms and Conditions under which all publishers must comply. This agreement enables TradeDoubler to act against any activity which is deemed to be unacceptable to our clients and our network of publishers. This Affiliate Agreement needs to be adapted in line with the dynamic nature of the online environment.

In specific relation to adware companies, (advertising supported software) TradeDoubler has investigated all information available which alleges to contravene this Affiliate Agreement. Having reviewed in detail the possible methods of earning commission which these adware publishers engage in, we have refined our Affiliate Agreement and added an Addendum for adware companies to ensure an environment of fair competition is extended to all parties.

In addition, within one month TradeDoubler will have modified its tracking solution to make it impossible for an adware provider to overwrite a publisher cookie within 24 hours of the initial click from the specific publisher website.

TradeDoubler reserves the right to update its policy as technology updates and new methods of traffic generation emerge. TradeDoubler will continue to analyse its data to ensure that the policy is up to date.

The following addendum specifically relates to adware companies and forms part of the Affiliate Agreement which already covers our position on fraudulent traffic as seen below.

"Artificial Traffic" - is a collective term for invalid Clicks, Leads and Transactions, which may originate (for example and without limitation) from automatic openings, spiders, robots, requests in e-mail or chat rooms, script generators, placing links on other websites than informed and Clicks which are not generated by a browser, Clicks which are not preceded by an active act of a Visitor who wants to reach a certain website.
The Publisher must not in any way generate or contribute to generating Artificial Traffic to Linked Websites.


Addendum to the affiliate agreement:

• TradeDoubler will not allow the first cookie to be overwritten for 24 hours where the second click has been activated by a user clicking on an advertising unit served by an adware publisher.

• No publisher may alter or interfere with a TradeDoubler tracker link to the detriment of another publisher.

• A tracker link must only be activated via a click as defined by a deliberate action on behalf of the user to visit a clearly advertised website.

• Adware publishers are not allowed to use a TradeDoubler tracker link as a trigger for serving advertising units to a user.

• Publishers are not allowed to deliver an ad unit over a TradeDoubler client’s website if the advertising unit links to that specific client.

• In order to comply with this Addendum adware publishers must provide the following information to TradeDoubler;
• A privacy policy that complies with EU directive 2002/58/EC.
• An outline explaining the process of how the company increases its user base. Should the adware publisher bundle their software with other applications they must prove that they do so clearly with explicit instructions to the user on how to install and uninstall the software.
• Evidence that they serve branded advertising units (i.e. the sender of the advertising is clearly marked).

Publishers should report any abuse of this Addendum by contacting TradeDoubler by email to publisher_abuse@tradedoubler.com.

This Addendum comes into immediate effect as from today, Wednesday 19th May 2004. TradeDoubler allows its publishers one month to ensure that they comply with this addendum.

[drivetowin]

Liz

I think the addendum is an excellent step forward.

While I, along with many others, would prefer your network to have followed the lead set by others and removed spyware merchants completely - this addendum seems to me to be a suitable compromise.

If I understand the situation correctly - even if someone knowingly has spyware installed on their PC, if they visit my site and then visit the relevant merchant within 24 hours, my account will still be credited with the sale (assuming they have not visited another 'normal' affiliate site in the meantime) even though spyware is present on the pc.

I am very encouraged by the fact that you will not allow a td link to trigger a spyware action.

Hopefully, this, together with the other actions you have proposed will make TD such a difficult environment for the spyware companies to operate in that they leave the network of their own accord.

[ianm]

Liz,

It's good to see that TD have now taken action on the problem of spyware.

However, as we've seen with another network and their 'code of conduct', unless the network takes an action on blatent breaches then it is just a load of words.

It will be interesting to see what happens if the videos at the top of this forum are recreated in late June.

Ian

[TD Nick]

Keith,
You are absolutely right. We will not allow an adware cookie to overwrite yours within 24 hours of your tracker being activated. Furthermore, they cannot use our trackers as triggers for launching any advertising. We believe this is ensuring a level playing field for all our partners, which was our goal from the beginning.
Regards
Liz

[Fraser]

Thanks Liz, could I confirm a couple of things

Publishers are not allowed to deliver an ad unit over a TradeDoubler client’s website if the advertising unit links to that specific client.

Meaning that an adware affiliate would now not be allowed to serve a Euroffice ad on the Euroffice site but that they could still launch a Dell ad on the PC World site?

TradeDoubler will not allow the first cookie to be overwritten for 24 hours

Why only 24 hours?

I assume this means TD are keen to continue to work with 180 Solutions?

[Rich]

One think it doesn't seem to protect against is the application detecting that the user has got to a merchants site and then redirecting them thru a TD link.

Also it will only have the 24 hour cover on TD cookies, so if you promote merchant X on say AF, and they are also on TD, adware would still steal you sales. So you either have to use TD or not promote that merchant.

Stopping same site popups over merchants sites is a good addition, but that seems the only benefit, but it doesn't help me directly.

[Supercod]

Right a few things from first read... what they are saying that adware can show adverts on any merchants site as long as it's not for that merchant. So they can still deflect our visitors to another site, and of course on the spyware free networks they can show adverts on there merchants sites.

So in simple terms, now that spyware has been caught out they can no longer show an adverts on the dell site to steal from dell, but it’s fine for them to show an advert for PC World on the Dell site, for example.

Are you saying that it’s ok for adware to show adverts on affiliates websites, they have not said one single thing to say adware should first check a site to see if it’s an affiliate of any network and not show any adverts on that site. So affiliates are losing out, TD win again.

“TradeDoubler will not allow the first cookie to be overwritten for 24 hours where the second click has been activated by a user clicking on an advertising unit served by an adware publisher.”

Is this working now, how is it working? Are you saying that for 24 hours if someone was interfered by a spyware program that they would not get a cookie set, but after 24 hours the cookie will change to them? Also by saying this I take it you have a list of all your spyware affiliates.

“Adware publishers are not allowed to use a TradeDoubler tracker link as a trigger for serving advertising units to a user.”

This leaves it open for spyware to show adverts on merchants on spyware free networks, so what TD are saying here is, if it’s not our merchant we don’t care so please show your adverts and send the business to us. So again affiliates lose out. And of course this reflects badly on Affiliate Marketing as a whole, because TD are now officially endorsing this activity. That by the way is banned in the state of Utah and will shortly be banned in California as well.. wonder why some of our American friends are so upset with such a great adverting method?

[loquax]

Can I ask how rigid "1 month" is actually going to be... if adware company X does not comply with your new "rules" within the next 31 days, and that company is earning TD ££££, will their account be disabled?

Or will 1 month become 6 weeks, 8 weeks or longer?

In other words, the addendum to me seems more like an awkward and reluctant shuffle to "fall closer in line" with other networks, rather than a giant leap from a company advocating "Improving Online Business" and I'm slightly concerned that when push comes to shove TD won't act against the companies involved if they don't meet the criteria described?

Perhaps you could allay these concerns?

Jason

[watcher]

"If I understand the situation correctly - even if someone knowingly has spyware installed on their PC, if they visit my site and then visit the relevant merchant within 24 hours, my account will still be credited with the sale (assuming they have not visited another 'normal' affiliate site in the meantime) even though spyware is present on the pc."

I think TD solution covers the following situation:

If a user visits a website through your affiliate link clicking through the spyware served ad will have no effect on your cookie for 24 hours. This prevents the instant hijacking of your traffic and also the hijacking of users who don't wish to buy immediately from the merchant but fancy a bit of look around other merchants and then come back to that merchant - providing they buy within 24 hrs of the original vist your cookie will be protected. However, if they come back to the merchant a couple of days later - the adware will do its thing - the user will click through it and the adware publisher gets the commission.

Thus, for adware infected users - none adware publishers get a 24 hour cookie - somewaht of an improvement on the current nanosecond cookie !

[Supercod]

This is all we wanted, was it to much to ask for? No, but reading what TD have done yes sounds like being ethical is to much to ask.

We simply want software "affiliates" not to do the following things and we wouldn't have a problem with them.

> 1) They can not display adverts on or pop adverts / merchants sites (load merchants site to set cookie) on our affiliate site.

Nope we didn't get this.

> 2) They can not be allowed to display adverts on, or behind merchant’s sites that we promote via TD or any other network.

Nope we didn't get this also.

> 3) They should never be allowed to hi-jack affiliate links or direct type in traffic to merchants.

Way hey, looks like we have 1, but then they need to enforce it, do they even know who is doing this? I doubt it very much.

> 4) They should not display adverts, or alter links for adverts placed by PPC affiliates on search engines.

Nope never got this as well.

> 5) They should be stand alone programs, or users should be allowed to use 3rd party software without having to be forced in to installing the spyware to use the programs. They should also state clearly what they will be doing and provided a method offline for fully removing and the software at any time and this process should be very clear to the consumer.

Consumers will still be forced to install the spyware if they download any 3rd party software that has it bundled, so guess what the consumer effetely has no choice to say no I don't want that.. any of you ever read the stuff that comes with any software you have ever installed, I doubt it very much.

Five simple points, that if software affiliates agree with we would not have a problem with them.

[Julie H]

supercod, lets be honest about this, did you really expect any different from somebody (?) that actually views affiliates as something they stepped in, I mean who are we to even have the audacity to challenge the mighty?? This is Affiliate Marketing after all what right do we have to comment? Anybody would think that the way we acted sometimes we were responsible for making money for these guys! c'mon now, play fair, at least we got one out of the five requests, well, partly one. They say 90% of purchases are in the first 24 hours, well quite frankly I'd like to take my chances and go for the full 100% of the cookie time set by merchants, be it session to 999999.... days. What's the point of signing up to a merchant on a long cookie period when they (TD) can only guarantee us 24 hours?

And they actually think they're doing us a favour - get real!

My day is now spent swapping all my links over to affiliate friendly networks.

Jules

[Andyc]

Yep, I will be swaping my TD links to another networks, as well.

[Reddy]

We wait with baited breath and this is what we get. Is saying 'we don't support this ****ware' too difficult?

I too will be swapping links over from TD.

But Rich makes a good point about merchants being on TD and another network. The ****ware software could overwrite (steal) the non-TD cookie (and the 24hr 'protection' wont apply). Surely merchants in support of the campaign now need to ensure that they exclusively use only 'ethical' networks.

David

[matbennett]

This doesn't seem like a great advert for TD from the merchant standpoint either. The choice between one of the listed "ethical networks" and one that will encourage people to pay people to pop up adverts over my site seems like a no-brainer to me.

At least that is one less network to talk to before our Awin contract expires.

[Wardy]

It seems that it is down to the merchants to perhaps help us here as Tradedoubler aren't.
Any merchants that are on TD and an ethical network in the interest of affiliates need to leave TD as this is the only way that are sales won't get stolen.
It no longer looks good enough for merchants to be on an ethical and unethical network, they need to dump the unethical network full stop and work with the good guys!

Would be interested in what Jess and Pitboss (and any other TD affiliate managers) have to say on the issue with this development? (Obviously I know you guys have to speak to your bosses and the like to discuss it all, but it's good to hear from you pro-active affiliate managers who understand the issue).

Cheers
Wardy