Media Traffic’s contextual adware application, Vomba, has been delisted from TRUSTe’s White List of downloadable software. According to the announcement made on TRUSTe’s blog, the delisting was at the request of Media Traffic. It seems that Media Traffic decided it was not cost effective to maintain their certification, especially now that their affiliate program for Vomba installation is live. Part of the certification process involves demonstrating your distribution network is being compliant with installation methods. The TRUSTe blog also states that they were in the process of investigating how closely other companies under the same corporate umbrella were tied to Vomba and Media Traffic. Could they mean Integrated Search Technologies?

Ian Lee, founder of Affiliate Marketers Alliance, recently blogged that WaterFront Media is almost six months behind in payments for their affiliate payments through Commission Junction. Volumes could be said about just that situation with regards to both WaterFront Media and CJ. Ian does a pretty good job stating, what should be the obvious, on the matter of non-payment to affiliates.

If not paying your affiliates for nearly six months isn’t bad enough, it seems that WaterFront Media is capable of adding insult to injury. How could that be possible? Well WaterFront Media seems to have a propensity for marketing the various web properties they represent through Zango. This isn’t their affiliates (why would their affiliates buy ad inventory even through Zango when they aren’t getting paid?) but WaterFront Media themselves doing the ad buys. Ok, the ads come through the Agora Media domain, but same thing just a different name. (more…)

I had the distinct honor of being named Most Vocal Advocate at LinkShare’s 4th Annual Golden Link Awards ceremony last night. The award was presented by last year’s receipent, Shawn Collins. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the event myself, but this in no way took away from the excitement and pleasure of winning this prestigous award. Angel Djambazov, no stranger to awards himself, graciously represented myself and AffiliateFairPlay. The other finalists for this award were Eric Ewe, Affiliate Manager for Wyndham Vacation Resorts, and Revenue, both who have shown support for my endeavors in the past. I now owe them both a couple of beers from bets we had going about who was going to win. I’ll happily pay and it really is fun to “compete” with friends.

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Two separate class action lawsuits were filed on April 20, 2007 against Commission Junction, BeFree and ValueClick. One names CJ and BeFree publishers (affiliates) as the plaintifs. The other names CJ and BeFree merchants as the plaintiffs. So what do these lawsuits center around? Adware.

The lawsuits allege breach of contract, negligence and unfair business practices on CJ/BF’s part by allowing adware affiliates to operate within their Network. The gist of it seems to be that CJ/BF has knowingly allowed adware affiliates within their Network which commit commission theft and fraudulent transactions through adware applications. The suit is seeking monetary damages to both affiliates and merchants. More importantly, in my opinion, they are seeking a change in ValueClick’s corporate policy related to adware and compliance. 

I’ve always hoped that Networks would wise up by implementing fair business practices and enforcing them. My views on the subject matter certainly aren’t an Industry Secret. Unfortunately, the changes haven’t happened. As I was thinking about this, I realized that the adware issues have been ongoing for 6 or 7 years now. Wow, time certainly does go by quickly. It probably hasn’t been a matter of if such a lawsuit would be brought against someone, but a matter of when. Well, it looks like the “when” is now here.

How this may impact the Industry as a whole, well I just don’t know. It’s certainly bound to shake some things up. And I can’t imagine that other Networks aren’t going to be watching this case closely. I can only hope this will result in some real postive change within the Industry. 

You can find more information on the case here.
A copy of the affiliate claim is here and a copy of the merchant claim is here.

As we feel these cases are important specifically to the affiliate marketing industry, more so than any other case related to adware/spyware to date, we will be dedicating a special area of this blog to information on these lawsuits as they progress. We will limit the posting to official sources and will avoid commentary and speculation.

For those of you who are always fussing at me for not tooting my own horn enough (you know who you are), this post is for you. I was excited to learn that AffiliateFairPlay is a finalist for LinkShare’s Golden Link Awards for Most Vocal Advocate. Toot toot!

Winners will be announced June 19th at the Golden Link Award ceremony to be held at the Cipriani. The pictures on their site really don’t do justice to the venue. If you’ve never attended the Golden Link Award, you should definitely consider attending. Linkshare goes all out for the event and it’s definitely top notch. I’m not certain, but it appears some tickets are still available. It is held the evening before the Linkshare Symposium, whose theme this year is Performance Marketing 2.0: Innovation & Collaboration.

Alas, much to my chagrin, I will not be able to personally attend the event. However, I am extremely pleased that Angel Djambazov will be in attendance representing AffiliateFairPlay. If you are going to the Golden Link Awards, be sure to seek Angel out and ask him anything you would like to about AFP.

All the Finalist for this year are:

Innovative Affiliate of the Year
Linkstrom
StarStyle
Zafu

Innovative Merchant of the Year
Apple iTunes
Gaiam
NetFlix

Best New Affiliate
DBG AMEX Bonus Points Mall
Clicks2Customers
Discover Card

Best New Merchant
Direct Marketing Services
Drs. Foster and Smith Inc
Proflowers

Merchant’s Choice Award
FabulousSavings
FatWallet.com
UPromise

Affiliate’s Choice Award
American Express
Overstock
TigerDirect

International Merchant of the Year
Boden
FigLeaves.com
Forzieri.com

Best Performance-Based Search Strategy
Gardener’s Supply Company
McAfee, Inc
Wal-mart.com

Best Online Merchandising Campaign
American Express and TigerDirect
BareNecessities
Pingo

Best Integrated Online-Offline Marketing
Chase
Fabu.com and GSI Commerce
Wal-mart.com

Best Overall Online Distribution Strategy
Avon
CouponCablin, Inc.
Overstock

Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Advocate
AffiliateFairPlay.com
Eric Ewe, Wyndham Vacation Resorts
Revenue Magazine

It looks like I’ll have some fun competition with Lisa P and Eric in my category.

On May 9, 2007, CJ updated the Code of Conduct with little fanfare. Indeed, I’m not sure if they even made any type of announcement regarding the update. They may have an announcement through the Publisher interface if you are logged into your CJ account, but I can’t verify if they did or didn’t do that since my CJ account was terminated a couple of weeks ago. But that’s another story. There’s seems to be very little talk about the updated Code of Conduct (COC), so either many are not aware of the change or people don’t care about the change. The changes are rather interesting and abiding by the COC is part of the Publisher TOS, so it’s probably good to be aware of the changes. (more…)

Over the last couple of weeks there have been rumors that ValueClick would be a target of an FTC investigation regarding web properties owned by ValueClick which promote gratis offers. ValueClick denied any knowledge of any such investigation during their last earnings call. Those rumors of an FTC have now become a reality.

The SEC 8-K filings mentioned in the above news article can be found here. Government investigations of certain types of cpa offers and the manner in which they are marketed don’t seem to be limited to just ValueClick at the moment. It will be interesting to see how this develops as these types of offers are certainly big business for more than just ValueClick.

In the online world, we come across terms and conditions and end-user licensing agreements all the time. We’re all busy and it’s so easy to just check the “I Agree” box and continue with our business. But there are times when TOS and EULA’s can be very enlightening. And they are legally binding agreements, so there is prudence in knowing what you are agreeing to in many situations. I came across this EULA the other day. I have to think it falls nicely into a EULA from hell. I have to wonder how many end users would still install the software if they a) read the EULA and b) understood it. This EULA is for some “free” P2P enhancement software that comes bundled with adware. The adware is put out by AdSingular, who does operate as an affiliate. Let’s take a look at this particular EULA and see what exactly the end-user is getting with this free ad-supported software.   (more…)

AffiliateFairPlay has just released a case study looking at the impact of contextual adware advertising in and on affiliate marketing. Many may be surprised by the findings and it may challenge some of the preconceptions about contextual adware.

We attempted to give a broader view of this type of advertising. We focused our testing on top internet retailers. We looked at such things as how many merchants were having pop-ups delivered over their sites, who were placing the ads, to what degree were affiliates responsible for the pop-ups, how many pop-ups involved forced clicks (or cookie stuffing), which networks were involved and to what degree.

From the results, it seems to me that as an industry we are not adequately addressing the issues and practices related to this type of advertising.

The full report can be found here.

Over the last couple of months we have seen a surgence of a company called AdverLinkz targeting small to mid-sized merchants through Zango. They seem to be an “ad network” that will deliver “high quality traffic” for their clients. Although, the information on their site is sketchy and I didn’t see any actual place for advertisers to join. I do find it comforting that they don’t send any traffic from botnets like their competitors though. Yep, I’m rolling my eyes over here. From Whois information, AdverLinkz seems to be related to Focus Interactive Outsourcing Corporation. This may site where they recruit clients and AdverLinkz the site where they are running the Zango campaigns.

What I’m seeing is that they are targeting small to mid-size merchants to deliver a pop-up of a competing web site. I’m assuming these are their clients. They frame the merchant’s web site on the Adverlinkz domain. I’ve documented numerous cases of the AdverLinkz pop-ups through Zango. In every case so far, they are specifically targeting the shopping cart URL to deliver the pop-up. The pop-up either covers a majority of or completely covers the shopping cart page of the merchant being targeted.

The impact to the merchant being targeted is the end user may potentially leave their web site, resulting in an abandoned shopping cart and lost sale. If the end user initially came to the merchant via an affiliate link, then it could result in a lower EPC and conversion rate in their affiliate program. Affiliates could also potentiallly see a lower conversion for merchants being targeted, depending on how effective the pop-ups are being.

I suspect that many of the merchants who are appearing in the pop-ups have no idea how their sites are being promoted and “traffic” delivered to them by AdverLinkz. They also appear to be running a not so small ad budget with Zango. Again, I’ve documented numerous merchants being targeted and it’s not like I’ve been specifically looking for AdverLinkz pop-ups. In a recent test run I performed, they delivered a pop-up on 20% of the URLs I tested and accounted for 50% of the total pop-ups by Zango I recorded. It appears that they may have started this activity sometime in February, at least through the AdverLinkz domain.

I am reporting all instances found to Merchants of my Service. My recommendation to those merchants who find themselves being targeted is to contact the merchant displayed in the pop-up directly. I do suspect that many merchants being displayed in the pop-ups are unaware they are being promoted through adware. If you are a Merchant and are experiencing a decrease in your conversions, then you may want to investigate if your shopping cart is being targeted for this activity.

In these days of Internet marketing, everyone should be careful of from where and how companies deliver traffic. It is a good idea to always keep a close eye own your own server logs to determine traffic sources.