Rant: White Label Offers + Landing page approval - Common Sense = WTF

Deliguy

Deliguy

New member
Sep 27, 2006
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Oregon
I gotta post this rant because maybe I'm missing something in my logic and you guys can correct me, or maybe i really am seeing a dangerous trend.
<rant>
I've been hearing a lot of horror stories from my pubs lately about how they won't run a certain offer or advertiser because in the past they've stolen their landing pages and booted them for some BS reason. That of course pisses me off and has even happened to me in the past.

Lately I've been noticing a trend when dealing with some new advertisers who want to get on my network. Some are coming to me saying they're white labeled offers (they create a custom landing page for just your network). Then when it all sounds good and I'm getting the compliance details from them before making my decision on whether or not to accept them, they're telling me they require that all pubs wanting to run their offer disclose to them their landing pages first for approval and keep the referrers open. Then when I counter with them giving me a list of their full landing page guidelines and have my compliance dept manage the landing page disclosures for them, they get pissy and say absolutely not and that they need to actually see them all.

White Labeled Offer + Full Landing Page Disclosure = ???

Is it just me or is it common sense that by allowing a white labeled offer to see all of the landing pages and track their conversion rates you're basically just blindly allowing them to steal those landing pages for their own use? IDK it just seems to me that a network manager would be nuts to allow that in their network, and apparently its a big insult to them to reject their offer for that reason, and that lots of networks they work with never had that problem.

White Labeled Offer + Full Landing Page Disclosure - Common Sense = ???

So for now at least, until some light gets shed on this matter, I've been rejecting all that won't budge on the issue. I've even decided to pursue it a bit further to get to the bottom of it and tell them I'm wiling to do it but only if in the offer description and through verbal warning from the AMs that every publisher who runs the offer gets informed that they are submitting their landing page to a white labeled offer. The few I've presented that compromise didn't waste any time firing back an absolute NO, and that publishers aren't allowed to know about it.

</rant>
Input on this matter is much appreciated as I'm losing quite a few of what could be profitable offers this way.

Am i missing something obvious here, or just being overly paranoid? Knowing an offer was white labeled and required full disclosure of your landing page through the advertiser, would you still run it?
 


I see this a lot, and as a merchant, I've asked to see LPs afterwards, if something about a pub's traffic seems fishy to me and I don't think the compliance dept is keeping a close watch. I don't usually ask for it beforehand though, that starts to sound like a merchant just fishing for someone else to do the design and split-testing work for them so they can then cancel the pubs and run it themselves.

So many merchants have been burned by carders and incentivized/craigslisting pubs that violated the offer terms that they feel like they have to see the LP up-front. With at least one of the big networks, I think their compliance department is asleep at the wheel, so I ask to see LPs of anyone that sends more than X amount of leads per day (or an assurance from the network that they'll eat the leads if it turns out to be fraudulent, so I don't have to review the LP), Key is to make sure the merchants trust your compliance guy completely so that if he says he's seen the LP and knows its legit, than they'll respect that and not demand access to the LPs.
 
I dont think theres any solution to this. Both parties are just trying to protect themselves from scammers
 
As a pub, i don't mind revealing my LP to AMs or advertisers if requested, especially when it comes to get some high paying offers approved before promoting. I'd say just copy it, steal it as they like coz i can always hide my real traffic sources in case needed
 
I'm all for landing page disclosures. All I do is go to the pub and tell them they're not allowed to run this offer unless they get their lp approved through the advertiser. Then the decision is on them, and I have nothing to do with it other then being the messenger. It's the white labeling and disclosure combined that bothers me.
I honestly don't even see the short term gain in this. Lets say I get a pub rolling on a campaign. I go through the work of helping him setup on it, coach through the LP design, get it approved. He runs hot for a few weeks and makes some bank. Then they send me a shut down notice for something BS like "poor quality." At that point I have to shut him down, I don't have a choice. Any leads he gets after that I don't get paid on. Then if I see his landing page go up on the offer a few days later, I'm screwed. I'm still out all of the revenue from that pub, he still can't run and the advertiser is making money off our work.


bricema said:
As a pub, i don't mind revealing my LP to AMs or advertisers if requested, especially when it comes to get some high paying offers approved before promoting. I'd say just copy it, steal it as they like coz i can always hide my real traffic sources in case needed
Click to expand...
I see your point but I've had this happen to me before and it still sucks. I ran great for about a month and made an amazing profit off a landing page I made from scratch. They shut me down and jacked my lander and made it their main lander. I still had the traffic sources but a big fat good that did me since I still wasn't allowed to run the offer. It's pure loss at that point.
 
The problem i'm having is, what incentive is there for an advertiser to compromise on the issue even when presented with two different options that would make everyone happy? Whats aboveall in the grand scheme of their business model? Nothing, if they lose our business so fuckin what. They can just go to another network who will run no strings attached.

I really lose on all angles of this. Which is why i'm kind of concerned.
 
Indeed , I've been screwed on some offers too. At first, they begged for volumes, next decreased the payouts week after week, and then suddenly shut down the well converting offers saying "bad quality leads" or "poor quality traffic", they name it...
 
Its fucking annoying but i see a lot of advertisers these days who wants to see your LP. In fact, i got screwed by a advertiser a while back. advertiser wanted to see my LPs, they approved it and i made significant volumes for about 2-3 months then all of a sudden they gave some lame cashflow issues but then i noticed they started buying media inventory and the LP was exact copy paste, not even a single word changed. spoke to the network but they cant do anything either.

And whats with advertisers want to see your ads before promoting? new trend lately?
 
why not just agree with the advertiser whom the intellectual copyright (or whatever) is belonging to?

just make it clear with the advertiser in advance, what's so difficult about that?


P.S. OP grow some balls you sound like a beta who doesn't deserve any better.

inb4 OP blinded by his monetary success not able to admit i'm right
 
In all fairness all this not wanting to disclose your landing page nonsense is pointless. Keeping your traffic source hidden is way more important.
 
This shit happens all the time.

As a high volume publisher, we've had advertisers and even "highly reputable" networks themselves (at least as would be seen on this forum) steal our creatives/lps and even going as far as reverse engineer our traffic sources to instead run offers themselves using our highly tested and optimized creatives/page flows.

One was brazen enough to take our LP and put it up on the network for others to use as well.

As a result, we typically prefer to only run things that we have full control over to the point we're starting to build out our own offers and properties instead.

It's a damn shame how utterly short sighted some of these networks and advertisers are.
 
It's part of the game. One way or another, determined advertisers will get the goods. Even with cloaking, referrers do leak...complaints occur directly to the advertiser....etc

I've seen it to where an advertiser lied about bad quality and threatened non-payment if they didn't see the full traffic source....quality was never an issue.

Ultimately it comes down to relationships.
 
Eli,

I'd recommend adding a clause to your IO/contract which dictates that any creatives/landing pages that are used by the advertiser without your permission will result in the advertiser forfeiting X% of the revenue generated from said creatives.

This has been pretty effective for me in avoiding this issue.
 
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