Out of Commission
By: John Gartner
The coding meant to protect affiliates is often being cracked and costing them commissions.
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How to Limit Commission Theft
1. Find a trusted network and merchants. Ask other affiliates about their experiences with network partners, and if you are not being protected, take your business elsewhere. Likewise, if a merchant partner advertises via adware that is known to facilitate commission theft, you may be better off without them.
2. Study your reports yourself for anomalies such as drops in conversion rates. Look at your server logs as well as network analytics to identify inconsistencies between the ratio of customers who appear to purchase and your commissions. If you are driving traffic but people suddenly aren't buying, it may be a problem of theft.
3. Test the software yourself. Even though isolating a computer and infecting it with suspicious software is a hassle, what you learn will be invaluable. Watching the activity when visitors come to you or your merchants' websites will enable you to understand the scope of the problem.
4. Educate yourself through affiliate marketing forums and the legal landscape. Affiliates and software experts are the best source of information available. While there is some misinformation, being well-versed in the issues is your best defense. Several court cases are pending that could decide the legality of overwriting commissions.
5. Tell customers not to download software that you suspect is assisting commission theft. If the evidence convinces you that some free applications are harming your business, advise your current and potential customers not to use it. | | We all operate to a great degree on trust. Whether you are an affiliate, advertiser, network or merchant, being able to succeed in business largely relies on others adhering to their written or implied agreements. We assume that most people will be honest and not interfere with our transactions.
"The overwhelming issue [in affiliate relationships] is about trust," says Joseph Matheny, chief technical officer of advertising network AdValiant. But unfortunately that trust continues to be violated by some who capture commissions rightly due to others or take credit from a merchant that is not earned.
"There are those who haven't bought into the rules of affiliate marketing," Larry Adams, product manager for Performics, says. Subversive software, the anonymity of hiding behind affiliate IDs and sneaky scripting on websites make it easy to steal commissions and avoid detection. The potential to redirect commissions without fear of prosecution "provides a strong financial incentive not to follow the rules," according to Adams, who says, "this is not a problem that is ever going to go away because there is economic opportunity."
While there are reporting and auditing tools that can flag some of the most blatant attempts at padding commissions, dishonest affiliates can marginally enhance their earnings from their partners with little fear of detection or repercussions. Scott Jangro, president of marketing services company MechMedia, estimates that loss of commissions due to theft is "in the single digits" and "part of doing business that you should expect."
NOT-SO-GRAND LARCENY
Commission theft generally falls into two categories: when tracking mechanisms meant to follow visitors from an affiliate or advertiser to a merchant are ignored or overwritten, or when someone claims a commission from a merchant for a transaction that they did not initiate. Unethical affiliates can stealthily overwrite competitors' cookies during visits to their sites, or they can "advertise" with companies that disrupt the buying process by launching pop-up windows that falsely create commissions by erasing the true referring ID.
Like its brother nemesis click fraud, commission stealing has existed since before the Web was dynamic and will likely always plague online marketing. In 2002, networks Commission Junction, Be Free (which was subsequently acquired by CJ) and Performics agreed to address the problem by creating a code of conduct for affiliates to follow. LinkShare developed it's own formal code of conduct.
CJ and Performics agreed that affiliates should insert a text identifier known as "afsrc=1" in their query strings to identify themselves to merchants and publishers. Affiliates and software developers should look for that string and back off from attempts to claim their own fees.
Performics' Adams says employing afsrc=1 "will protect against software used by a lot of marketers who play by the rules," and distribute applications that respond accordingly when they detect the code. The affiliate code of conduct has been revised twice since its inception, and Adams still advises new affiliates to implement the afsrc=1 code.
Implementing the afsrc=1 code "protects from a narrow class of programs" such as consumer rebate software like Upromise or eBates that follow the rules, according to attorney and adware/spyware expert Ben Edelman. But many adware companies do not conduct themselves along these guidelines, according to Edelman. Affiliates rely on the networks and each other for policing with "some affiliates paying bounties to those who turn in others," he says.
The afsrc=1 parameter and affiliate code of conduct is not enforced consistently and "gave too much wiggle room to the networks," according to Kellie Stevens, president of Affiliate Fair Play. Continued on Page 2...
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