New Merchant: Top Offer

**Kirsten** · 05-08-05

Top Offer is a new search service designed to make the internet that bit easier. Visitors simply have to click on a link displayed on the landing page and the action is complete!

We have 3 programs on offer:

Home Insurance: £1.25 cpc*
Life Insurance: £1.25 cpc*
Car Insurance: £1.15 cpc*
(*CPC = based on a double click, visitors must click on a link shown on the landing page)

Please get in touch if you have any questions or wish to join this program.

Enjoy the weekend!

**Rich** · 05-08-05

This seems an odd program to me.

Firstly they are just showing a page that shows the top 5 Overture results. For Life insurance the top 5 bids currently range from £6.33 to £10, but they are paying out £1.25.

Secondly, the number one link has a title above it of 'Best Offer. Click below for more information.' I would have thought this would be against FSA rules as you can't give advice or recommendation on general insurance products.

Finally, as the links are straight redirects via overture, there is no place to include the call back/tracking code. To get round this the tracking is opened in a new window. Unfortunately this window appears to be blocked by both IE & firefox on default settings.

**Shane** · 05-08-05

incentivised clicks on an overture feed !?

I take it they have the all clear from overture to market / direct traffic to the feed on this basis ?

Overture pride themselves (annoyingly so at times) on the quality and integrity of their results and who gets to play with a feed so letting someone open the doors to traffic in this way seems an unusual step.

sorry to be negative but it does seem out of character for overture,

who is involved in Top offer ?

**Kirsten** · 08-08-05

This campaign is being offered to all affiliates who may not be in a position to work with the likes of Overture directly. The people behind Top Offer have considerable experience in the industry and have been using this model for some time; liasing frequently with their providers to ensure that all parties are happy with the results. They are looking into whether the landing page is in keeping with FSA regulations and will be removing the 'Best Offer'.

Affiliates must apply to join this campaign so the client can control the quality and they will not allow a mass of incentivised, poor quality clicks. Ultimately it is up to you, the affiliates if you wish to run this campaign and your comments are appreciated and acted upon. Webgains does all it can to ensure that their campaigns are of a high quality and beneficial to the affiliates.

**Rich** · 08-08-05

What about the tracking? I've just tested it again in IE and it didn't work, but it does work for the first click from Firefox. The reason I thought it didn't work in Firefox is the page that contains the callback image has a last modified time of Thu, 04 Aug 2005 15:04:38 GMT so it doesn't get requested for second clicks.

In IE you get the destination page open in a popup but you also get the IE information bar showing that a popup has been blocked, this is the popup that contains the tracking.

**Kirsten** · 08-08-05

We do have click fruad measures in place so it would be normal not to register double clicks. Also, we did raise the tracking issue with the client, they are working with multiple partners already and their existing code currently supports this approach. Doing it this way meant the campaign could be made available sooner rather than later. They are aware of the implications and we have stressed its importance to the affiliates; they are working towards making the relevant adjustments to use different tracking methods.

**Rich** · 02-11-05

I was just going to refer to this thread in a new post and noticed topoffer are down with a internal server error and they are also using 180 Solutions to promote the site, including poping up another page when you get to their site.

i.e. You send the user to http://www.topoffer.org/py/landing.py?camp=a0030, 180 detects topoffer.org in the url and opens a new window over the top containing http://www.topoffer.org/py/landing.py?camp=a0040

**Kirsten** · 02-11-05

Hi Rich,

There was a temporary overload this morning but the server is now back up and running as normal.

Niether Top Offer nor Webgains would intetionally work with 180 Soltuions, we have checked our list of affiliates and spoken to the client and we can not see any evidence of 180. The pop which does flash up has the tracking code in it which records when a lead has been completed, it is not spyware.

However, both us and the client and keen to avoid any association with the likes of 180 so if you have any concerns or want to talk about this further please do give me a call or send me a PM.

Regards,
Kirsten

**Rich** · 02-11-05

Hi Kristen

This popup was definately launched via 180 solutions. It wasn't the tracking popup as it opened before I clicked any link on the site and I was browsing with Firefox and the popup opened in IE (plus the loading of the popup with the tracking code in it is still blocked by IE!). This wasn't loaded via an affiliate link the url loaded by 180 solutions is as posted above and I'm sure they could use camp=a0040 to identify what partner they are using that is connected with 180, though I have seen it pop up with other campain ids.

Below is a screen capture of my desktop cache of the communications between 180's software and their ad server. From the url you can see the keyword that triggered the software to look for an advert is .topoffer.org (encoded as %2etopoffer%2eorg) and the ad_url that 180's server returns to be displayed is as I posted above, and points directly to topoffer's site.

If you need futher reason to trust me for a moment over the merchant look at the source code for http://www.topoffer.org/py/search.py...sland=autorank. You will see where the call back for webGainsPingLife.html was on a0030 that it has been replaced by cydoorPingAuto.html. Cydoor is another spyware app similar to 180 solutions - http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/p...rue&pst=CYDOOR. If they are promoting their site via that why would they not use 180?

**Kirsten** · 02-11-05

Thanks for the info Rich, we will investigate this and get it sorted asap. I'll let you know as soon as we have any further information.

**Kirsten** · 03-11-05

It looks like Top Offer have managed to pin-point the culprit, it was not a Webgains affiliate but a 'trusted' third party they were using. All activity with this partner will be terminated as soon as possible, certainly by the end of the day.

Thanks again for brining this to our attention.