lesbiandude

i talked to couple of AM and found out that a lot of networks are getting rid of their incentivized offers. Clickbooth completely got rid of their incentivized offers and they told me that the industry is heading that way and soon almost no network will have incentivized offers..

this sucks considering i just paid some money to have incentivized website done and now im finding out most of those offers are being cancelled.

how do you guys feel about it, especially the ones with more experience..

and do you think its true that eventually there will be no incentivized offers especially not for things such as free trials?

drugoon

There are some campaigns that are not accepting incentivized traffic anymore, I see people talking about this on many networks. But I don't think they will disappear completely. MaxBounty have plenty of offers active for example. And I don't see where you got this from : "Clickbooth completely got rid of their incentivized offers " as there are over 40 offers still listed and active in "incentivized" category if I am not wrong

I am currious how this will end...

lesbiandude

yeah i saw that too and i asked my account manager about it and she said that it should be updated soon. they made the decision this wk (so im guessing today) to remove them

krazyjosh5

incentivized offers are on their last leg. they are not a feasible business model. period. i mean, unless you want to make chump change with them.

JP Sauve

I don't think this is the end of incentive marketing. It will surely change, but it won't end. There are still plenty of merchants who hunt for incentive traffic, and when run properly, incentives work well for all involved.

The problem is that incentive marketing is easy to abuse. There are a few sources selling incentive scripts to very inexperienced affiliates which have flooded the market with mostly low quality fraud prone leads. These green publishers make no effort at quality control, generate a flood of bad leads, and cause all kinds of problems. (And of course cry foul when they get booted without pay!)

For MaxBounty's stance, we will not be banning incentive traffic but we will continue to tighten restrictions to lessen problems from these publishers. Most affiliates who run incentive programs via these scripts are rejected before they're allowed in the network. In some cases, we give them a chance and educate them on how to lessen fraud. (Make your merchants happy and you’ll earn long term.) Those affiliates who comply and take appropriate measures are welcome in the network. Those who aren't... well they won't last very long in the industry.

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krazyjosh5

Yeah but these restrictions will kill the only affiliates that run these programs. Incentivized offers are such because affiliates can bribe people to sign up. Ill give you this free shit for you to try any of these services you dont really care about to begin with.

All incentivized advertising doesnt begin with BLOCKBUSTER ONLINE FREE TRIAL and, at the bottom say, '*Free iPod included'. It begins with FREE IPOD and at the bottom says '*Must sign up for Blockbuster Online'

I mean, the bottom line is your bribing, 'offering an incentive' to people to sign up for these things so all they really want to do is get the shit in the first place. Its all about the free shit.

When you have to bribe someone to sign up for something, then give them the option to cancel that signup (often times resulting in little or no money spent on their part) theyll just want to milk the deal. The only profit youll see is off the people who forget to cancel once maybe twice, and do you really think a sustainable business can be run off people forgetting to cancel?

And do you think its worth it to spend more money on an advertiser than it is to just buy the incentive being offered? So, right there, for an offer payout to be attractive to anyone, the advertiser has to be willing to take a loss.

Dont get me wrong, this does benefit companies with legitimately good services. I once signed up for RealRhapsody and enjoyed it and, had I the cash, I would have stayed on. But that was the only one out of the 30/40 offers Ive signed up for.
But I dont think HOODIA DIET PATCH LOSE 350 POUNDS OVERNIGHT is going to produce a legitimate, steady stream of income from anyone that doesnt directly seek out their lousy product already - much less receive a bribe to try it.

Maybe youve heard of the 4NoCash Network...?

JP Sauve

Not that kind of restrictions on incentives. That's more so the sponsors owning the offers making claims of FREE and so forth, not the affiliates. Sponsors will push the wording in their advertising as much as their lawyers allow.

Restrictions against pubs are more like not allowing any affiliate into the network if they payout their members via egold... which is almost a guaranteed indication that fraud will happen. Or if they pay their members for the offer sign up without delay, or only ask for the email address from the surfer. Some don't do any IP verification or email validation, or any kind of quality control at all.

For those interested, we have some simple guidelines for incentive publishers here - MAXBounty.com - highest paying CPA rates. If a publisher adheres to these guidelines, the chances of them having problems with fraud are greatly reduced.

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CPAPIMP

CB just sent some BS email saying they are leading the industry, and getting rid of all incentive pubs, this is hilarious:

"Clickbooth has quickly become the top true performance based network in the world, and we owe that success to all of our partners and to our continued emphasis and reputation on doing business only with both Quality Publishers and Quality Advertisers. In the long run, we decided this traffic channel would hinder our emphasis on quality and compliancy that we deem essential to the success of our network. All Incentive based publishers will be paid as always for all non-fraudulent traffic."

"Clickbooth Setting the Standard: Removes All Incentive Publishers from Network"

Setting the standard, please!

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drugoon

Yeah, I just saw that too

krazyjosh5

ah gotcha suave... makes sense, then.

anyways. get your free ipods while you can. (shit, now that i think about it i need a 5th free ipod - no kidding)

LazyHippy

I was running an incentive thing with them I'd be confused...

"All Incentive based publishers will be paid as always for all non-fraudulent traffic."

Business as usual then?

"Clickbooth Setting the Standard: Removes All Incentive Publishers from Network"

Maybe not...

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Fewleftstanding

I just found their email in my spam folder.. I still need to cancel my account with them.

lesbiandude

yeah see i told you guys cb is getting rid of all their incentive offers

drugoon

Well I don't get it: that email states that they are closing Publisher accounts not advertiser accounts... so the offers are still up but there will be no publishers to advertise them :P

CPAPIMP

typical confusing, yet contradictory email from CB.

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Mike Richardson

Hey Josh. How's it going.

I remember the 4NoCash Network very well

kingrage

Atleast they made it clear in their email how they were the best...

krazyjosh5

Mike! Hot damn, how the hell are ya?

Ill send you a PM.

Propellorhead

KrazyJ,

I agree wiht your statements. I can assure you that we have dealt wiht incentivized offers as both a lead buyer and also as a list manager for this. In both instances the lead purchase, or the email received are worthless. Let me give you some further rinsight. Yesterday we ran a test campaign to an incentivized list of 10k. Very small sample but the results are shocking. We had a 78% deliverabilty rate into yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and a bunch of smaller ISP's. The results were " 4 opens, 3 clicks." Just to make sure that it wasn't the offer we followed it up with two seperate offers this morning to the same data segment. The results were..Drum roll please......." 2 opens, 0 clicks. I think this pretty much somes up incentived offers.

krazyjosh5

Yep.

<angry.fat.lady.at.register.voice>Neeeeeeehhxt!! </angry.fat.lady.at.register.voice>

Propellorhead

Shall I say that if you are pinning your hopes on incentivized marketing you mind as well find the tallest building and prepare to leap!

lesbiandude

i got banned from Revenue Universe. and they wont return my email.. i dont get it..i only promoted one offer with them and got 1 lead..

they wont tell me why im banned and wont respond to me on aim.. anything similar happen to any one of you?

HellaGood

Some offers let you incentivize, but not with cash. My plans include a mix of incentivized and not. My prediction is that incentivized offers may return, but advertisers will require more from the customer, e.g., diet plans that are now incentivized require the customer to sign up for two months or so. In the future, Blockbuster, et al. may require a minimum commitment. Or some deal that gets their money back and picks up a few new customers.

Cut

I think the people that decide they want to run a incent offer have to think about it. And think to there selfs, is this going to be flooded with fraud? I think these companies can do better to prevent fraud from happening. For example, not accepting visa gift cards. Even so these companies can be frauders also by charging way more money then the product costs. Thats why I don't think they should start bitchin and complaining when "fraud" happens to them. Then they don't want to pay the networks. That is there fault. Some sorts of offers work being incent and some don't.

Jon

Face it..

Incentive traffic sucks for the advertisers. You're lucky they lasted for this long.

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trigatch4

Anyone else want to weigh in on this? LesbianDude how is the site you built around incents going?

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Aquasis

Our network has alot of incentivized offers, and one reason why incentivized traffic sucks at times is due to the amount of fraud that comes through to the advertiser. For example, prepaid visas. Users use them to complete an offer and then when the advertiser trys to charge to that card at a later time theres a chargeback, have to many chargebacks and that could result in the advertiser getting out of the incentive market or even from the network in general.

krazyjosh5

Yes, this just reiterates the recurring theme of this thread: incentivized marketing blows.

Massimo

Incentivized traffic is a lose-lose for just about everyone involved, charge backs suck!!! I’m guessing it’s time for a new marketing plan for everyone whose main earnings come from incentivized sites. Too bad they days of blowing up are over….which I think everyone could see this coming. What I don’t get is wtf are there all these tiny sites that do those stupid zip/email submits…lol making like $1.35 per lead. From what I have heard, those are getting the most charge backs, I know this dude just for the email/zip submits he was charged back double digits, and it’s only the start of the month….

minger

does this mean you *mailed* 10k people your email offer and only 4 people opened up the email, then mailed them back this morning and this time only got two opens?

zayd

Incentivized zip/email submits were always the most retarded ones.

What % of those leads led to quality conversions for the advertiser? 1%?

che1959

KJ, you make a valid point in the study of human nature, but it's not entirely valid in the real world.

Timeshare telemarketing is a good example. Give people free shit to get them to go into a sales presentation. A $150 Home Depot Gift Card? No problema. Vacation Certs? No problem. Getting them to show up for the presentation is the job of the marketer, getting a solid sale is the job of the salesman/resort.

That's a formula that's worked for years because sure some of the people are going just to get the free shit, in fact all of the people are, but still some will convert. The goal is to make enough profit off of those that convert to more than pay for the expenses of getting the leads that don't convert.

Back in the day, we got $225 for every qualified person who showed up for a presentation. Out of the $225, we could offer as many incentives as we needed to get them to show.

You'd be surprised how low the sales conversion rates were, but still everyone involved, vendors, salesmen, the resort, made bucketloads of money.