I attended Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas this past week, and one of the most interesting sessions I attended was called “Identifying Scam Networks”.

The hour-long panel discussion was moderated by Kim Riedell, VP, Client Development at Commission Junction.

The Panel:

Lucas Brown, Chief Executive Officer, HasOffers.com
Rebecca Madigan, Executive Director, Performance Marketing Association
Hersh Sandhoo, CEO, HealthConverter.com

What was so interesting about the panel?

The discussion was intended to cover the factors in deciding if a network was legitimate or not, and the big (and only) question submitted to the panel was “can you provide a list of scam networks?”  Not a question anyone wanted to answer directly, actually, and no one did.

The panel started out by defining a list of red flags that affiliates should look for in a network.  It is worth a look over, and some things might surprise you.

Signs that an affiliate network is less than reliable

1. Fees – no legitimate network should be charging fees to affiliates to join.
2. Easy registration and verification process – it should be simple to fill out registrations forms, and there shouldn’t be any issues getting approved.
3. Time in the industry – How long has the management of the network been around?  The general consensus was the longer, the better.  In the affiliate marketing industry, longevity and the ability to have ridden the waves of tech changes and regulations is an indication of quality.
4. Along with the above, a network should make management backstory readily available on the company website.  If there is zero information written about the people behind a network or their is no contact information, it’s a bad sign.
5. How many of the offers on the network have you seen before on other networks?  Look for lots of exclusives, which means that there is a lot of good blood between the advertisers and the program managers.  That relationship directly affects affiliates.

Two big points

Most impacting were the two final points, brought up at the end of the hour by PMA Executive Director Rebecca Madigan.

Red flag:  If the affiliate network says that they have no fraud, walk away.

She then posed:

“Is the problem that networks are unsafe or unreliable, or that publishers are behaving badly?”

Currently regulation is light for affiliates, who are mouse-quick to innovate new ways to gain leads and sales for the merchants they market for.  Most behavior correction is in the form of annoying slaps of one form or another and the always bad news of unpaid leads (But this hasn’t seemed to affect the billions of dollars changing hands each year between advertisers, networks and publishers).  In short, regulation is reactive and not proactive, and enforced by networks, who are then given a bad rap for not paying commissions.

The panel also addressed this issue and agreed that for now, the onus is on the affiliate networks to create and enforce protective measures against fraud, and punish bad behavior among their affiliates.   The question then remained: By heavily regulating affiliate activity, will we suppress innovation and creativity, the keys to being a successful affiliate?

Solutions

Madigan introduced an idea she is working on at the PMA, a code of conduct that networks would agree to.  Currently the PMA offers memberships to networks, solutions providers, agencies, publishers, and advertisers.  Member groups like the Anti-Fraud/Anti-Abuse encourage communication among networks and professionals in the search for solutions to the problem of fraud.
What does Adsmarket do to minimize fraudulent activity on the network?

As an affiliate network we take fraud activity very seriously.  We are in constant collaboration with our advertisers and publishers to be as proactive as possible in preventing and dealing with fraud.

As part of this effort, we created the “VC Quality Verification” in October, which aims to improve the quality of Virtual Currency traffic and reduce the frauds and duplication caused by users.  As a result, advertisers that allow VC traffic and VC publishers are both pleased to see  a boost in not only the performance of campaigns but also the validity of leads.

What do you think? Please give us your feedback and comments on this issue.

Author

Daneka Soudak is the Marketing Communications Coordinator and Social Media Manager at Adsmarket. You can contact her by email at daneka.sATadsmarket.com, on Twitter at @dssocialqueen, and on Facebook.