keeping your affiliate program clean
DESCRIPTION
Learn advanced approaches to running a clean affiliate program. A review of the systems, processes, tools and techniques used by leading affiliate programs to keep their programs clean.David Naffziger, CEO, BrandVerity (Moderator)Jamie Birch, Owner, JEBCommerce (Twitter @JamieEBirch)Graham MacRobie, President & CEO, Alias Encore (Twitter @grahammacrobie)Joshua Sloan, CEO, Sloan Tech (Twitter @sloanzone)TRANSCRIPT
Keeping Your Affiliate Program Clean
Graham MacRobie, President and CEO, Alias Encore, Inc.
Understanding the Conflict
Asymmetric Warfare - a conflict in which combatants attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses, even though their resources and power differ substantially.
Advertisers’ exploitable weaknesses – size, speed, and time.
Fraudulent affiliates’ exploitable weaknesses – greed, visibility, and to a lesser extent, accountability.
Know Your Partners
Reach out to new affiliates.Stay in touch with top affiliates.Consider occasional phone calls.Google the addresses, looking for other
businesses at the same location.Check the WHOIS contact information for
the affiliate’s domain name(s).http://www.BetterWhois.com.
Countries to Consider Checking Twice
(AI) Anguilla (BS) Bahamas (BB) Barbados (BZ) Belize (BM) Bermuda (IO) British Indian Ocean
Territory (VG) British Virgin Islands (KY) Cayman Islands (CK) Cook Islands (CR) Costa Rica (CY) Cyprus (DM) Dominica
(GI) Gibraltar (GG) Guernsey (IM) Isle of Man (JE) Jersey (LB) Lebanon (MU) Mauritius (MC) Monaco (AN) Netherlands Antilles (KN) Nevis (PA) Panama (SC) Seychelles (WS) Samoa (TC) Turks and Caicos Islands
Know How Your Partners Work
Understand how they plan to (or currently) send you traffic.
Who else do they work with?Is their plan consistent with their
performance?Do they have traffic patterns that are very
different than other affiliates?Engage your network.
Typosquatting
Misspelled versions of your domain name.
Capitalize on typographical and spelling errors.
Currently millions are registered.
Affects mid to large-sized sites (Alexa 50,000 or better) with domain names longer than 5 characters.
Traffic converts very well. All the “best” names are
already taken. Compete.com, Alexa, etc. are
frequently inaccurate on volume.
yootube.com 86,042
yooutube.com 68,486
youbube.com 36,286
youtabe.com 31,481
youtrube.com 34,831
youtuve.com 334,113
ypoutube.com 14,929
Proxies
A proxy is computer software and/or hardware which services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers.
Useful for investigating traffic fraud.
Web serverresponds with
web page,images, etc.
Web browsersends requestto web server
Proxy sends requestto web server
Proxy respondsto web
browser
Browser sends request
to proxy
Web serverresponds to
proxy
Tor - The Onion Router
Allows you to view a website as if you were located somewhere else in the world.
Similar to the “routing phone calls through multiple satellites” cliché from spy movies.
Both the software and the service are free.
Sometimes slow or even very slow.http://www.torproject.org.
Recording Proxies
Allow you to examine traffic in detail.Opposite of referrer logs (outside in).Pay particular attention to redirects.Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer (free) -
http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html.Charles Web Debugging Proxy ($50) -
http://www.xk72.com/charles.
Charles Screenshot
Tiered Commission Structure
Particularly useful for making fraud more visible.
Exploits a characteristic weakness – greed.
Relatively easy to apply.May make your program
unnecessarily complex for some legitimate affiliates.
For example:
$0 to $4,999 pays 5%
$5,000 to $9,999 pays 6%
$10,000+ pays 7%
Program Policies
Don’t assume a problem will go unnoticed.Well thought out rules indicate vigilance.Help protect legitimate affiliates from
unfair competition.Much easier to sort out in advance of
finding fraud.Consider gray hats as well as black hats.
Contact Information
Graham MacRobiePresident and CEO
Alias Encore, Inc.
http://www.aliasencore.com
(866) 608-8202
(949) 870-0633 direct
Keeping Your Affiliate Program Clean
David Naffziger, CEO, BrandVerity
Operating a Clean Affiliate Program
Abuse is Inevitable
Forms of Abuse to Watch Out For• PPC• Malware / Toolbars• Cookie-Stuffing• Transaction / Lead Fraud• Domain squatting
Techniques for Combating and Cleaning a Program
Discussion
PPC Policy Violations (Trademark Poaching)
PPC policy violators have become very sophisticated
Techniques Utilized to hide from Merchants• Copy search ads• Use special characters in trademarked terms to evade Google’s
filters (ex: lowercase “L” instead of capital “I”)• Reverse geotargeting: all regions but your office• Reverse ip-targeting (comes with any email you send): all IP
addresses but yours• Narrow geotargeting: specific regions• Dayparting• Referrer Laundering• Entry Pop Ups, Exit Pop Ups• Affiliate ID protection
Malware / Toolbars
• Pop Up Advertisements that drop affiliate cookies• Often triggered by:
• Google searches• Visits to your website• Visits to your competitor’s website
• Legitimate Link Replacement: They rewrite existing links (affiliate or otherwise) with their own affiliate link
Malware affiliates utilizes two primary techniques
Cookie-Stuffing
• Close to sale• Found off of organic search
results• Especially Forums
• Triggered by:• 1x1 iframes• Invalid images• Other Javascript
Drop affiliate cookies without user consent
Transaction/Lead Fraud
Do you pay commissions on invalid sales?
Some of the techniques used• Co-registration: Sign up for service 1,
user registered for service 2• Incentivised registration: Fill out this
insurance application, get more points/guns/life in Facebook game X
• Lead padding: Fake leads (often taken from yellow pages)
• Stolen credit cards: Stolen credit cards are used to make fraudulent purchases so affiliate can get CPS or CPA• More common on digital goods
Brand Squatting
Own your brands. Everywhere.
• Domains• Typos (nikee.com)• Brand Extensions ( nikeshoes.com )
• Twitter• Facebook• AnySocialNetwork that overlaps your customer base
Techniques to Clean a Program
Discussion
Contact
David NaffzigerCEO, BrandVeritySearch Ad [email protected]@brandveritywww.naffziger.net/blogwww.brandverity.com