Today Kellie Stevens of AffiliateFairPlay.com has published her first free public adware reports:
The two reports that are already available are:
(i) A report on AllFreeCoupons, a Firefox add-on which displays coupon/deal notifications when the visitor is on a website that may have such available, and also offers the website visitor to share the deal via Facebook or Twitter.
and
(ii) A report on DealAlert, a “shopping assistant” desktop application which “displays instant alerts of product deals and coupons added to the PocketDeal web site.”
Both act affiliates, and the affiliate cookie is being set when the adware user clicks on a deal/coupon alert/notification. In case with DealAlert, “incidents of the affiliate tracking link being set” before “a physical click by the end user” was not registered [see comments under this post for details], but alerts are coded through affiliate links with a purpose of setting that affiliate cookie. With AllFreeCoupons, on the other hand, channel cannibalization is present, and “the extension does not directly drive unique visitors to the merchant’s web site as it is activated only when the end user is already on the merchant’s site.” Read more by following the two above-quoted links.
The information that Kellie shares [like the above, or this] is a must read for both affiliates and merchants. Affiliates do not want to waste their time and money partnering with merchants that have such affiliates on board; while merchants (and their affiliate program managers) must be educated on such rogue affiliates not to harm their affiliate, and other online marketing initiatives, by letting them into their affiliate program(s).
Hi Geno,
Thanks for the blog post. 🙂
I’d like to make a clarification with regards to your sniplet quotes for DealAlerts. What I posted was
“Incidents of the affiliate tracking link being set were preceded by a physical click by the end user. We found no evidence of the software engaging in forced clicks.”
Maybe I need to word that differently so it doesn’t appear I’m saying the affiliate link was set prior to a physical click (for those having to quick read in our age of information overload). 🙂
I strongly believe in industry prfessionals having objective information to assist in their business decisions.
I hope to have more reports up soon!
Kellie, thanks again for all you do, and thanks for this comment too.
Yes, I did read that not evidence of forced clicks was found. So to word that differently, you’re saying that the sequence you’ve noticed has been [affiliate link] > [user click] > [cookie set], but never [cookie set] (without a click), correct?
That’s correct.
Understood, and will edit the post right away. Thanks, Kellie.