At Witts end with my network

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Dude are you off your rocker? I never threatened legal matters against your company... The closest I got was stating there is some sort of negligence on Copeac's behalf not acting on complaints in the last 2 months on Elitemate...

I do understand you are traveling, and yada yada big industry weekend and such. The point where I turned the tables is when your Director contacted me and told me the advertiser tested the link and the lead pushed through... AFTER telling me IT guys said the pixel was not firing.

Provide you a link?
Click banner stats... it shows exactly what links have been used... Am I the only one who knows this? Come on... I gave the Director my Links in an AIM convo as well...

You see where this becomes what it has become? I understand it happened at a shitty point in time... But please Mike, do not make false claims...
I never threatened to sue you, take you to court, nothing of the fashion.

The thread in your forum... well yea it went a little too far... realize though... its not like I made the shit up... you have no idea how fast I flew from the living room to my office once I heard the perp's name...

Dangle and Junior try to win tickets to the Amy Grant concert off the radio by naming every Stephen Sondheim musical when they accidentally hit the back of a car (I know, Dangle seems to do that every episode.) At the morning roll call, Dangle announces that he has two passes to a public execution. The officers in the department have to be on the lookout for perps with specific features in a weird scavenger hunt. It concentrates for the rest of the episode the various ways the officers attempt to manipulate the hunt.

Garcia ends up winning by bringing in an over 6'5" Jewish crack head with a wig and a tattoo of a bird (being Jewish was double the points.) He takes the hooker that Williams had arrested to the execution, and all the other officers flip him off as he leaves.
Reno 911!: Execution Tickets - TV.com

Anyways, to each his own...

I'm really happy for your company that you finally ditched elitemate

edit-- <--- thats an edit
I may not have made it clear enough in my rants...
Copeac has resolved this issue
 


So what it all boils down to is bad customer service and profit.

The networks know that a lot of these advertisers aren't paying for zip/e-mail submits, but they don't care. As long as the advertisers are paying for some of the submissions, the networks make money that they wouldn't make otherwise.


I'm far from a lover of DT ;) but you should understand that CPA networks only get paid when leads are generated. If you see no earnings, they see no earnings. So keep that in mind. I'm sure Copeac was just as surprised and disappointed to see the lack of leads.

The idea that networks should police everything is fine in theory, but not practical in reality. Not everything can be caught. I can say in our case, MaxBounty catches lots of merchant problems that pubs are never aware of. On the flipside, we also often go to bat for our pubs when facing off with upset merchants... and affiliates never know.

It's only human nature to be upset about the occasional problem here and there with a network, but there are probably a dozen other situations where the network thwarted the problem on your behalf.
 
It's only human nature to be upset about the occasional problem here and there with a network, but there are probably a dozen other situations where the network thwarted the problem on your behalf.

I agree with you 100%

Heres something to kick around-
I noticed on a different forum someone was having problems when they signed up for 10 different offers to test them out. Only one lead was generated. This was because of a cookie issue... Obviously when it comes to shaving, multiple IPs go first...

Why can't networks provide us with a tool of some sort to be checking these links ourselves? Or at least give a thorough explanation of how to do so?

It does look beneficial to everyone in the long run... Frees up time for network employees (less tracking issues), The network makes more money because there are no errors in tracking - AND if there is, it can be diverted... and the publisher also makes more money.

.02
 
Why can't networks provide us with a tool of some sort to be checking these links ourselves? Or at least give a thorough explanation of how to do so?

This might be a surprise to all, but merchants who won't disclose everything to affiliates also won't disclose everything to networks. Few merchants will tell exactly how they define a lead. Shit, unless the merchant is a sole prop, their account reps probably don't even know themselves. Do they filter out by IP, or perhaps age, maybe just scrub by dup email, or perhaps something unusual like a combination of the above. Usually it's not a problem. Networks collect as much info as possible and test the offer with reasonable data to ensure tracking works. Beyond that, whether a campaign is good or not, much often depends on feedback from affiliates.

Merchants usually give a bit of info, but rarely do they give all. If they're trying to be devious, they'll of course leave more out. Usually, they leave some details out to protect themselves from the fraudulent pubs who'll only generate leads EXACTLY as described. Again, perfect world - they disclose everything and fraud doesn't happen. This is more like the reality....


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....merchants vs affiliates struggling between payout and profitability with the network being the rope.

Affiliates should walk away from this thread knowing IT IS IMPORTANT to test an offer before they unleash traffic. As well, they should discuss tracking oddities with their affiliate managers before they send too much traffic.
 
I'm far from a lover of DT ;) but you should understand that CPA networks only get paid when leads are generated. If you see no earnings, they see no earnings. So keep that in mind. I'm sure Copeac was just as surprised and disappointed to see the lack of leads....

I know networks only get paid when we get paid, but they aren't spending the money advertising these promotions. They leave the hard work up to the affiliate. We test, spend, stop, rinse, repeat...

Example...

Affiliate Spends $100 on PPC = 10 leads = $20

Affiliate then stops campaign when he finds most leads aren't being tracked.

Affiliate ends up: negative $80 and time wasted
Network ends up: A profit on those 10 leads, no time wasted

So yes, the network didn't make as much as they should have, but they still made something (and didn't have to do any work for it). The problem starts when the networks let this continue after receiving complaints, testing offers, and confirming the promotions are shady.

When an offer is tested and confirmed to have a problem, it should be pulled immediately. Instead they milk every last drop they can out of it, before having to pull it because of too many complaints.
 
I check all my campaigns throughout the day many times, often making changes or changing offers entirely if I'm not happy with the results. This definitely isn't something you can run on autopilot, but is fairly easily controlled with some testing and changing. I have about 4 networks I work with, and one config file that controls the offers for all my sites, makes it very easy to change things up if a problem arises. It would be GREAT if you could run these on autopilot but just doesn't happen much anymore.
 
It's really not very hard to make a script that generates leads and then checks to make sure the merchant verifies the lead. Then at the end of the month just tell the merchant oh yeah we made 20 fake leads that you verified so don't pay us for those. Cut them off and redirect them if more than 5% or 10% fail. I'm not even sure why everyones like "Oh it's too fucking hard to check oh my oh me" probably are afraid of losing merchants. The reality is that affiliates are more important than merchants if you have tons of great affiliates the merchants will knock down your door but if you have a ton of shady merchants you'll get affiliates who will try you out and then decide you suck real fast.
 
It's really not very hard to make a script that generates leads and then checks to make sure the merchant verifies the lead. Then at the end of the month just tell the merchant oh yeah we made 20 fake leads that you verified so don't pay us for those. Cut them off and redirect them if more than 5% or 10% fail. I'm not even sure why everyones like "Oh it's too fucking hard to check oh my oh me" probably are afraid of losing merchants. The reality is that affiliates are more important than merchants if you have tons of great affiliates the merchants will knock down your door but if you have a ton of shady merchants you'll get affiliates who will try you out and then decide you suck real fast.

Any ad networks care to share their opinion of doing this?
 
From a developer's point of view it's not that hard to make a working tracking system, even most affiliates who have beginner programming skills can put together something equally as complex. There's really no excuse for a misfunctioning pixel or loss of leads - if the offer is working (email/zip submit or buy), their system is obviously running ok so there's no reason why it shouldn't be tracked. I can't help but be suspicious of offers that mysteriously stop tracking leads.
 
Wssmith, by posting your rant on this forum you basically fucked yourself more then helping yourself. As far as Copeac goes, Mike and his team are hard working, ethical, and dedicated to their publishers. If you read through previous posts I'm sure you would have thought differently. But seriously, you should have just thrown the traffic to another offer. Why cry about it and screw yourself over and any rep you may have had.
 
ah there's the WF drama, it's been quite bland in here lately. I think the moral of the story is check your offer before you run it and DON'T BE A DOUCHE BAG!@! Whiner.
 
In case anyone doesn't feel like reading the entire thread, here is a summary:

1) if you are a network, monitor conversions and remove/fix non-performing offers. Nothing pisses affiliates off quite as much as finding out that they are loosing money due to poor tracking.

2) If you are an affiliate, show some common courtesy and learn the basics of business communication. Under no circumstances should you resort to personal attacks, especially if it has only been a day or two since the problem occurred and the network is still researching the issue.

3) If you are an advertiser, don't mess with tracking. Otherwise, affiliates will eventually just start avoiding you like the plague.

Personally, I had tracking issues with several networks, but in every case they carefully reviewed the situation and resolved the issue. Sure, it usually took a few days - once it took about two weeks. Still, the issue was favorably resolved and there was no need to turn it into a public scandal.
 
a) direct track blows

b) i've experienced the same shit everywhere with facebook and impressions. i cut all my campaigns and still was getting 2k "clicks" per day with no leads. it's just something fucked up i don't technically know what happens.

c) direct track automatically shaves so there's a chance the lead you filled out got shaved.

You're an idiot. Direct track does NOT scrub leads intentionally. Occasionally you'll have a misfire where the tracking pixel is not requested correctly by the clients browser, or for one reason or another there will be some tracking downtime, but this is NOT intentional.
 
I think most of you guys are fuckin nuts. With the way some of these networks seem to be dealing with poorly tracking offers lately, it's probably smart for us to test tracking ourselves- but it SHOULD NOT be that way, so don't be fucking idiots and say that it's our fault when we get served up an offer that is not tracking and lose $50 trying to promote it. We shouldn't have to be unethical and sign up for an offer and get paid for a bullshit lead just to see if it's tracking.

When I go into McDonalds, I don't have to pull out my chemistry set and test the meat to make sure it's safe to eat. McDonalds inspects the quality of their meat and sets standards to ensure that they only serve meat that's safe to eat. Yes, I could buy a cow and slaughter it myself, or I could go smaller and buy a package of meat and make burgers myself, but I don't want that responsibility. I pay a little extra to transfer the risk to McDonalds. If they buy a bad batch of meat, they don't offer it to their customers. They go back and deal with the people who sold it to them. When they inspect a shipment and the meat is good, they have policies and procedures to ensure that the meat stays safe to eat until it is served.

I don't have to get mad cow disease to find out that the meat they're serving on a particular day is bad. If they fuck up and serve me bad meat and I get sick, I sue them- not the farmer who sold it to them. They mark their shit up and make a profit because they assume the risk. I pay extra because I don't want the risk.

The networks get a cut of every lead we push, so essentially, we're buying a service from them. We are giving them our money to take some of the risk from us. And we are paying them a lot of the times because we only want 2 hamburgers and not a whole cow. In other words, we're making less per lead, because we don't do enough volume to make it worth our while (or the advertiser's while) to work directly with the advertiser. We're also giving them a cut because we don't want to have to test tracking, bill advertisers, manage relationships with advertisers, blow guys to get better payouts, etc.

I assume that most networks test an offer before they put it out for their affiliates to promote. If it tracks, it goes live. Then what? They need to have policies and procedures to ensure that the offer is safe to run as long as they are offering it to their customers (affiliates). This means consistent testing to ensure that the offer is tracking properly. It also means that they are in constant communication with the advertiser to ensure that the advertiser does not have any issues with the traffic or leads being sent.

This is the bare minimum that should be happening. They should be constantly striving to make their network as efficient as possible- improving offer pages, terms, payouts, testing conversions, etc..

Instead, it seems like most networks have a team of Affiliate Managers (salespeople) and minimal support staff. Their main priority seems to be bringing in more and more affiliates and traffic to their offers. This should definitely be a priority, but they also need to maintain their core business functions. This is to support their affiliates. That is what we're paying them for. I am not giving a cut of my commission to a network just so they can pay more affiliate managers to attract more affiliates to the network. I'm paying them so they can deal with allllllll the shit- because I have a lot of other things to worry about when running my campaigns.

The end.

Wait- not the end... Does anyone have a sense of humor? The whole Reno 911/ calling that guy a cross dresser because he has the same name is pretty fuckin funny. I would have done the same thing. We're sending people to a 'free' gay dating site so they can get tricked into getting their ass and their inbox filled with spam (and find out that it's not actually free) <-- how could anyone call anything in this industry unprofessional?
 
Exactly. The networks are at fault here. They act as the middleman, so we shouldn't have to worry about the advertiser. In fact, it's the networks job to make sure we don't have to worry about the advertiser. Otherwise we could just bypass the network all together and talk to the advertiser... but we can't...

So what it all boils down to is bad customer service and profit.

The networks know that a lot of these advertisers aren't paying for zip/e-mail submits, but they don't care. As long as the advertisers are paying for some of the submissions, the networks make money that they wouldn't make otherwise. It's not like it's their money paying for all of these PPC campaigns that lose money because of this.

So the networks will continue to let these fuckers screw us over, because after all, something is better than nothing for them. It's going to take a lot more than a few pissed off network members bitching on forums to change anything...

You are also clearly an idiot. Yes it's the networks job to act as the middleman, but it IS possible to go direct to an advertiser. However an advertiser will not deal with you direct unless you can consistantly send them tons of leads. The Advertiser basically outsources their smaller affiliates to networks to let them deal with payouts and tracking. Although it is the networks job to discourage scrubbing, they cannot be expected to spend hours upon hours dealing with scrubbing Advertisers. If an offer sucks then simply tell your AM and stop running it. Just because you lost $50 in advertising doesn't mean shit.
 
You are also clearly an idiot. Yes it's the networks job to act as the middleman, but it IS possible to go direct to an advertiser. However an advertiser will not deal with you direct unless you can consistantly send them tons of leads. The Advertiser basically outsources their smaller affiliates to networks to let them deal with payouts and tracking. Although it is the networks job to discourage scrubbing, they cannot be expected to spend hours upon hours dealing with scrubbing Advertisers. If an offer sucks then simply tell your AM and stop running it. Just because you lost $50 in advertising doesn't mean shit.

Really? I'm the idiot? Thanks for dropping your superior affiliate marketing knowledge on me.

"...they cannot be expected to spend hours upon hours dealing with scrubbing Advertisers."

It doesn't take "hours"... that's the point.

And since you don't mind losing money, how about tossing some my way? Losing $50 in advertising does mean shit to me... especially when it could have been avoided if the networks did their job.
 
Really? I'm the idiot? Thanks for dropping your superior affiliate marketing knowledge on me.

"...they cannot be expected to spend hours upon hours dealing with scrubbing Advertisers."

It doesn't take "hours"... that's the point.

And since you don't mind losing money, how about tossing some my way? Losing $50 in advertising does mean shit to me... especially when it could have been avoided if the networks did their job.

It does take hours. I can point out specific offers which are consistently scrubbing XX% of leads, and I can do so with conclusive proof. If an advertiser is scrubbing 5% of leads, that means the network has to send 20 or more fake leads to test it. But then you have to take into account offers which don't scrub at first, but then introduce a scrub a couple of weeks after the offer is run, or run the scrub at certain times. To conclusively identify scrubbers it could take upto 50 fake leads per day just to find one scrubber. Do the maths and you realize it's not viable to hammer an offer with fake leads every single day just to see if they are scrubbing.

And yes, $50 of testing is inconclusive. If you run a successful test lead, you should then run atleast $200 worth of traffic to the offer to see what conversion rate you'll be looking at and what type of traffic converts.
 
And yes, $50 of testing is inconclusive. If you run a successful test lead, you should then run atleast $200 worth of traffic to the offer to see what conversion rate you'll be looking at and what type of traffic converts.

Maybe you have to spend $200 to see what kind of conversion rate you'll be getting, but I sure as hell don't.
 
I can do the math and the math tells me that a script can send a metric shit ton of fake leads if thats what's needed to test a site. You're point is
A)Stupid
B)Invalid

It does take hours. I can point out specific offers which are consistently scrubbing XX% of leads, and I can do so with conclusive proof. If an advertiser is scrubbing 5% of leads, that means the network has to send 20 or more fake leads to test it. But then you have to take into account offers which don't scrub at first, but then introduce a scrub a couple of weeks after the offer is run, or run the scrub at certain times. To conclusively identify scrubbers it could take upto 50 fake leads per day just to find one scrubber. Do the maths and you realize it's not viable to hammer an offer with fake leads every single day just to see if they are scrubbing.

And yes, $50 of testing is inconclusive. If you run a successful test lead, you should then run atleast $200 worth of traffic to the offer to see what conversion rate you'll be looking at and what type of traffic converts.
 
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