Filed under: Search Engine Marketing
The Spyware Confidential blog reports in Adware company gets the boot from affiliate network that Commission Junction is finally cracking down on commission-rerouting affiliates.
In theory, affiliate marketing is a great idea - you promote my site, and if you sell something I’ll pay you a commission. In reality, of course, things aren’t this simple. One of the rather nasty techniques employed by some affiliates is to redirect or rewrite requests for the merchant’s site to include their affiliate code, even if the user clicked on another affiliate’s link. This is done by installing software that resides on the user’s computer, often without the user’s knowledge. Most consider this spyware, although the firms who install the software often allege they did so with the user’s permission.
Such commission hijacking couldn’t work if the merchants or affiliate marketplace firms declared it to be against their rules and summarily dropped anyone who cheated in this manner. To date, though, action has seemed half-hearted. Commission Junction did drop several adware-type affiliates earlier this year for policy violations.
Now, CJ has dropped ShopAtHomeSelect, a firm whose mode of operation is detailed in an article by Ben Edelman. In addition to commission rerouting, the software apparently displayed popup ads and both tracked and reported user behavior.
At the 5 Star blog, the word is that CJ’s quality control group is going after parasites with new enthusiasm. This couldn’t happen too soon for most affiliate marketers.
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