Caution Promoting ADD-Service Offers (16)
Hello my fellow friends. People know me from my Sweepstake case study interview that was hold by Amy. I want you to warm you about a direct advertiser I tried to work with this week. Their name- Add Service. After a friend recomanded them I decided to try some sweepstakes in Sweeden. After 50 leads they said all my traffic it's fraud and did not wanted to provide any proof of this claims. Even if the damage is only 200$ I want to warn you all because they did not had a pro attitude in solving this and they choose to ignore me..I run millions of dollars in sweepstakes ads per year and the big networks knows that I am a legit player in the space.I never run any fraud traffic in my entire career as a marketer. I am attaching the conversations here and let you guys decide who is right!
Does General Data Protection Regulation protect fake shit too?
What/who the hell is it protecting? The Bogeyman too?
If all the leads are fake names, addresses, etc. how does GDPR protect it?
Can't they just provide the fake names?
I hate these situations... I had this happen to me as well and I knew I was sending standard traffic from networks without any fishy activity on my end. I guess sometimes a sophisticated bot finds our campaign links and causes such trouble. Or maybe it's the networks being too paranoid... once way or another, it sucks.
They choosed to ignore my requests. Also heard they are late with payments for other affiliates so I posted this as a warning….
I recently had similar case with other network. Asked everyday if traffic is fine and if I can send more. Answer was yes. Then after 5 days they told me that 90% of leads were "fake" and they wanted me to explain how this could happen and what my proposal for this situation is. In my case it was 160 USD loss.
Since it was a new network for me I decided to stop working with them tho they offered me to take the losses if I continue working with them. But for me such shaving is a trust issue. Might be wrong with it but I personally feel much better with networks that have a quality check after X leads (even if payouts might be lower because oft that).
Originally Posted by larsometer
Totally agree and I was about to post my case here.
However I refused right away to discuss about the issue with them and made that very clear. Absolutely hated it that they wanted me to explain things.
Maybe was not so clever to play such a hard stance right away. I was freaking mad and before becoming too emotional I just stopped it (didn't see other solution).
That is the reason why I asked what to do in such situations. My approach was probably not the most professional one.
Originally Posted by jaybot
Situations like these are just troublesome.
Basically the power is in the hands of the network in these cases - when they tell you lead quality is too low or outright unacceptable, and can't exactly provide the proof. The money is in their hands.
This is why it's always good to send a limited number of leads first (which is what @blackemil did), and only scale if the network is satisfied with the quality.
And if quality isn't good enough (and is not likely to be with further optimization), cut our losses - either promote another offer or stop working with the network/advertiser altogether.
The affiliate marketing industry is in dire need of some neutral 3rd party, that can act as a "judge" to mediate these disputes.
If anyone knows of such a service, please let me know!
The word "fraudulent" is so offensive though - it's like they automatically accuse you of ill intent. If they could have worded it more nicely, e.g. "the lead data isn't checking out - let's try to get to the bottom of this together", maybe the matter wouldn't have come to this.
@blackemil. I hope you and the network/advertiser can reach some satisfactory resolution soon!
Amy
I don't know anything about this particular network @blackemil posted about, so can't comment. But I have an affiliate manager friend from another network (not related in any way to this one) that have told me horror stories - of how because of cashflow issues, their network kept having to decide which affiliates would get paid, and what amount to pay to keep them JUST happy enough to keep sending traffic.
Not implying this is the case here, but if the late payments are indeed happening, it can be a sign of cashflow issues. At best, it shows lack of professionalism.
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
Originally Posted by larsometer
When problems arise, I'm very transparent about where I got the clicks from, I send screenshots when needed.
But, since I'm the game for a while, most networks I work with have some history with me so they know I'm as legit as it gets. Being an STM mod definitely helps too, not going to deny it... they simply know I wont risk my reputation by trying to scam them for a few bucks.
I had a few situation where a small threat of making it public helped too, I even went through one episode of public shaming on another forum, which helped me to recover the funds.
The best is to make everything possible to prevent this from happening, but when we're about to get shat on... well, we gotta do what we gotta do. After all, we're paying the networks a share, so we expect some form of protection from non-paying advertisers to be present, right?
I love the double talk "All the leads are fake." "But due to GDRP we can't send you the data that we say is fake, because it may not be fake."
I recently had a network give me a bit of scare due to the language the AM was using. I stopped until I got paid, only did they I resume. Our choice in words matter, and jumping straight to fraudulent is going to create a very negative environment.
Originally Posted by iwanttofly
Originally Posted by iwanttofly
This raised my attention too.
I usually reply with: "to what article of [insert relevant text law - GDPR in emil's case] are you referring to?" or, "can you send me the procedure/protocol/law you just mentioned so that I can have a look at it". This forces people to prove their point, and based on that, you can argue, and escalate to their boss.
Originally Posted by jeremie
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