Forced Clicks and Coupon Sites

There’s been quite a bit of discussion over the last few months about forced clicks (or cookie stuffing) and coupon sites. It’s a feeling of deja vu. This was an issue “discussed” at length several years ago. The discussions were pretty heated then and seem to generating a bit of flurry once again. The amount of discussion happening now may be related to a couple of things. First, there are many new faces in Affiliate Marketing that weren’t here when all the discussion was happening three or so years ago. Second, a couple of high profile affiliates with a reputation for advocating fair industry practices were “outed” for using what some considered forced clicks on their coupon site. That’s pretty much tantamount to striking a match in a shed full of gun powder.

I’ve gotten quite a few emails, IMs, PMs, and twitters on the issue of coupon sites using forced clicks the last couple of months. The amount of discussion in the community isn’t always the same as how prevalent the practice is however. So I decided to do a little study determine if the degree of discussion is proportion to the degree of coupon sites using forced clicks today. Is the rate of incidents more, less or the same as in the past?

I did some testing over the last week and the results of my testing of the Prevalence of Forced Clicks on Coupon Sites can be found here. (more…)