Is It Ethical When A Network Competes Against Their Affiliates?

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maximus

maximus

Hard Work Is The Answer
Apr 11, 2007
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Is it ethical when an affiliate network's in house search team starts competing against their own affiliates?

We all know it's common for networks to have their own search teams but I haven't seen as blatant competition in a high revenue niche as I have yesterday and today. I'm not promoting in this particular niche so I don't care that much but I've read posts here which tell me that some of you guys are... so my question is:

This network is open about their in-house search team and recently have had an offer than is doing big revenue. I've researched the niche before but have not entered it. Upon researching further yesterday and today, I now see the network's in house team running almost identical ads in places that only affiliates used to run. Is this ethical?

(I'm not going to out the network because this thread is not meant to bash them but to figure out if this type of practice is common and ethical.)
 


Of course its not ethical, esp. since many affiliates don't clean their referrers before sending the networks traffic, so they have access to tons of keywords that end up working well. Screw that, they should be outed for being shady.
 
wrstroud said:
Of course its not ethical, esp. since many affiliates don't clean their referrers before sending the networks traffic, so they have access to tons of keywords that end up working well. Screw that, they should be outed for being shady.
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Seconded. There has to be at least SOME trust between the network and affiliates.
These guys are killing it.
 
This is why you have to clean your referers and not show off your shit to your aff managers etc..
 
Ummmm...

"Here ye, here ye, affiliate guinea pigs! Test these offers for us and let us see what works and doesn't work across hundreds of affiliates trying various techniques, keywords and landing pages. We'll take the best of all your campaigns and make one super campaign that crushes all of you!"

Smells like a horse shit sandwich to me...
 
peeon said:
0 competitors to 3 competitors within a week. I also believe that since AMs get commissions based on their affiliates, that AMs compete internally and may tell their affiliates what is working for other AMs affiliates and bring upon competition that might otherwise not be there.
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I'm sure every network does this. When you ask for a "suggestion" for some ideas on new campaigns/verticals to explore, where do you think they their ideas from? You can't really prevent this since their goal is to make more $.
 
Dr_Ngo said:
I'm sure every network does this. When you ask for a "suggestion" for some ideas on new campaigns/verticals to explore, where do you think they their ideas from?
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From what I've gathered, no network has given me any information that would help me to make money in search - They just push whatever shit offer they think they can make the highest margin from that week.

I believe Azoogle AMs are prohibited from running their own campaigns, so I have to wonder why a policy would apply to the AMs but not the company as a whole. Though Azoogle did have a dubious spam past (which considerably harmed my hosting business back in 02-04), I believe they may actually have some ethics now.

I've never cloaked any of my profitable Azoogle campaigns (even in the $10K+ range per month), never been secretive about my traffic sources, and never had a campaign stolen by Azoogle or another Azoogle affiliate. Even when doing Facebook ads, making a huge profit margin in the double digit thousands, I never saw Azoogle come into direct play.
 
johu said:
From what I've gathered, no network has given me any information that would help me to make money in search - They just push whatever shit offer they think they can make the highest margin from that week.
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You have the wrong AM's then. I know what half the dudes on this forum are running. Guess which networks I avoid! (any that give me info on what other people are running)

I believe Azoogle AMs are prohibited from running their own campaigns, so I have to wonder why a policy would apply to the AMs but not the company as a whole. Though Azoogle did have a dubious spam past (which considerably harmed my hosting business back in 02-04), I believe they may actually have some ethics now.
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I'm not speaking from experience here since I don't do any business with azoogle at this point, but, I have a few buddies who get the 3rd degree from their azoogle AM about their traffic whenever they start making money on a campaign. These are not questions that would come up if there were an issue with lead quality from the merchant, which is the only legit reason any network would be asking anything about traffic sources.
 
It is highly unethical, but sadly quite a few of the bigger networks do this. Many of them have an in-house search marketing division.

That's why you need to keep your data private - don't say more then you need to.
 
Man you guys stop being naive. Every network I know does all this stuff. That's just how it works. Almost like saying "what networks shave leads?" That's just naive, it's a shady business and anything they can do to make money they're going to that's be bottom line. There's not a network that I haven't heard stories about unless you're dealing with the CJ, Linkshares and shareAsales of the world. Just learn to be smart and protect your assets. I share what I'm doing with my AM's a lot of the time but keep things vague, don't get to into details. I share because I want them to know where the traffic is coming from should their be an issue down the road, they can't claim they were un-informed. But anything like PPC I wouldn't say anything other then "this is ppc traffic" that's enough. Strip you referrers 2 times, double meta's. Make sure you're not passing tell tale info in your url's or cookies.
 
johu said:
From what I've gathered, no network has given me any information that would help me to make money in search - They just push whatever shit offer they think they can make the highest margin from that week.

I believe Azoogle AMs are prohibited from running their own campaigns, so I have to wonder why a policy would apply to the AMs but not the company as a whole. Though Azoogle did have a dubious spam past (which considerably harmed my hosting business back in 02-04), I believe they may actually have some ethics now.

I've never cloaked any of my profitable Azoogle campaigns (even in the $10K+ range per month), never been secretive about my traffic sources, and never had a campaign stolen by Azoogle or another Azoogle affiliate. Even when doing Facebook ads, making a huge profit margin in the double digit thousands, I never saw Azoogle come into direct play.
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Paragraph #1. True until you get to know your rep very well. ;)

Paragraph #2. Why would they buy Bazar? History repeats itself.

Paragraph #3 Its only a matter of time. Don't worry. It'll happen soon.
 
smaxor said:
Man you guys stop being naive. Every network I know does all this stuff. That's just how it works. Almost like saying "what networks shave leads?" That's just naive, it's a shady business and anything they can do to make money they're going to that's be bottom line. There's not a network that I haven't heard stories about unless you're dealing with the CJ, Linkshares and shareAsales of the world. Just learn to be smart and protect your assets. I share what I'm doing with my AM's a lot of the time but keep things vague, don't get to into details. I share because I want them to know where the traffic is coming from should their be an issue down the road, they can't claim they were un-informed. But anything like PPC I wouldn't say anything other then "this is ppc traffic" that's enough. Strip you referrers 2 times, double meta's. Make sure you're not passing tell tale info in your url's or cookies.
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Why is it every post I read from you, is the only one on the thread thats dead on accurate?

Ask yourself this question people - if you were the network, would you run your own campaigns? Hell half the networks started by guys who ran offers and scaled up enough to get the offers direct, than offered them to affiliates and started a network.
 
It's highly unethical, but it's done.
Hell, I'll admit that I run the program I push... although I make my own LP and try to target a particular niche with it that would generally avoid competition with my subs (a) because of the ethics and b) because I think it's a fucking great idea that no one else has thought of truly exploiting on our offers yet)
 
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