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Advertiser "reviewing" banners... I wish it was a joke ! (10)

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Hello guys,

How on earth have we come to the point where "Advertisers" review our banners ??

I find this extremely disturbing : basically we're just giving away "free angles for all".

What's your position on this ?

- Do you simply "ignore" Aff networks and/or advertisers asking for this ?
- Do you send basic banners and afterward replace them with your real banners/angles ?

Coming from SEO I can tell you I would have laughed my ass off if any advertiser ever asked me "how did you do to rank that high ?"

Cheers,

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I think most legitimate advertisers would be committing negligence if they are not reviewing what their advertising agents are actually advertising ...

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It bothers me when they want to know my traffic source as well. Okay, so you have my banners, you have my landing pages, how about I tell you my bidding strategy as well? lol

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Then change your strategy.

Build a web-asset (email list / website) where you own the media so at least you have a monopoly there.

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Working towards it as we speak

Btw, I liked your List of traffic sources. Very smart!

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Basically, it is a free market. You don't have to work with any advertiser whose terms you don't agree with, and vice versa.

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I see your point, but I don't see myself as an Advertising Agent but more like a Lead Provider... if I was an Advertising Agent I would likely have a contract mentioning somewhere that my client can't steal my ideas... I'm pretty sure we, as affiliate, don't have this kind of clauses with our contracts with Aff Networks (haven't really checked to be honest)

Now of course I could just move on, but I find this strange (especially when the advertiser doing the review is based in China, which we all know as "it's own way" to see intellectual property).

I would have been Okaish if my AM would have said "let me check" just to see if I'm not doing some weird stuff (like all folks promoting antivirus in a scareway manner) but I find this a bit too much.

I guess next time I'll put a watermark on the banners, lol

Cheers,

Cheers,

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Pretty much the merchant is liable for anything you do. There is tons of FTC and AG cases proving this point.

They have to do their diligence or potentially suffer the repercussions. Now if they don't do their diligence they can't even say they did and have plausible deniability.

We just had exactly what you said happen to one of our publishers. A merchant took all their stuff and ran it internally.

Also just had stub hub steal our publisher direct. Happens....

There's pluses and minuses to affiliate marketing.

Pluses:
Someone else paid to build a product, service , maintain, optimize marketing funnel. This costs a tremendous amount of money. And invest a tremendous amount of risk. You don't have to do this. You grab a link and go.

Minuses:
You control nothing. Have 0 defensibility and are at the whim of the advertiser.

There comes a time in everyone's life they need to move to investing in the own product. The question is when?

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Smaxor is spot on. There are 2 things that I don't like about affiliate industry that made me focus on building tools instead of being an affiliate:
1) You have no assets, no control
2) You can't rely on anyone, everybody is by himself with a "let's milk it as much as we can, fuck the other guy" mindset. This goes from affiliates that rip landers to affiliate networks and advertisers that scam affiliates and steal campaigns.


Because of this "everyone is stealing from everyone" issue, I can understand why affiliates are afraid of getting their angle and landers stolen. But from the advertiser perspective, I don't want a John Doe affiliate, who I never met, mess with my brand image or send me leads that I can't convert by using something I know it won't work.

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It sounds like such a catch-22! Definitely an example of the challenges of AM. I do not have a first-hand experience of an advertiser taking advantage of an affiliate's resources, yet I have unfortunately heard of it as well.

From an affiliate manager's perspective, especially when it comes to big brands or sensitive offers, I do believe it is valid for advertisers to want to review creatives.

The misrepresentation of an offer, use of incentives when forbidden, copyright infringement etc. can not only greatly damage the advertiser/brand but also potentially lose the offer for the network. Thus, our relationship with the advertiser can be negatively affected. Moreover, other affiliates would have to halt their campaigns or miss out on the chance to even run the offer. It is better to be safe than sorry. The unfavorable results can be extensive.

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