Home > Questions and Answers > General Questions

Bait and switch vs cloaking (9)

09-11-2012 11:11 PM #1 delaforet (Member)
Bait and switch vs cloaking

Hi,

While I was reading http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...act-Domination

This part striked me

WOOAAHH THERE..... For the love of god don't just "Bait n Switch" you will get caught and probably banned. Cloak it, much safer.
As stupid as it may sound I'd like to verify that my understanding of "bait and switch" is accurate.

Could you give me more details about bait and switch for PPV with traffic coming from LI?

My understanding is that cloaking consists of showing different pages to people who manually review landing pages. Is it correct?

If we compare bait and switch am I right in understanding that both tactics may lead to a banned account on LI or TV?

Thanks

09-11-2012 11:19 PM #2 dario (Member)

bait and switch = change destination URL after approval
cloak = constantly show a different page to people who review destination URLs (hopefully) and to visitors

09-12-2012 02:16 AM #3 hd2010 (Member)

both accounts are precious, advise to you dont cloak unless you're a risk taker.

09-13-2012 11:59 PM #4 delaforet (Member)

Hi,

Thanks for clarifying. I will definitely not cloak as I'm looking for sustainability.

I'm still confused regarding the difference between cloaking and split testing. And as you said hd2012 both accounts are precious and I don't to risk them.

My understanding is that split testing is not showing on purpose a different landing page or offer to the person doing the manual review. Split testing implies as well that each offer or landing page is compliant with requirements from each network.

But if I'm split testing how to make sure that LI or TV know that I'm not cloaking? (for Google I know that it's important to use a rel canonical tag as well as a no index but I'm a bit lost when it comes to LI or TV).

Thanks

09-14-2012 12:24 AM #5 zeno (Administrator)

Woah woah woah, split testing and cloaking are worlds apart. Their definitions might as well be in different dictionaries. Not quite sure where you got that split testing idea from...

Split testing is just the general principle of testing multiple things at the same time, i.e. changing one variable at a time and running things in parallel to understand which performs better. E.g. having 10 adverts with the same ad copy, run at the same time, but with different images = split testing. Sending people to a lander with 3 different rotating call to action buttons = split testing. It's all about getting data on how to optimise your campaigns. You should always be split testing.

Cloaking is just the practice of having ads send people to a different page depending on whether your 'cloaker' or cloaking system determines them to be a legitimate viewer or someone from the traffic source reviewing the ad for compliance. The legitimate viewers will go to a page or a destination where you're probably going to be split testing lander components and such, but it's completely unrelated to the cloaking that's going on.

09-14-2012 12:34 AM #6 delaforet (Member)

Hi Zeno,

I fully agree with your definition of split testing. I just consider a "cloaker" and a split testing platform like Visual Website Optimizer, Optimizely etc doing the same thing - redirecting users to different types of pages based on certain attributes (i don't consider MVT with section reports etc).

Setting-up an experiment for specific traffic segments could I guess be considered as cloaking (because you filter and redirect, this is available by default in most testing platforms).

I may sound picky but I just want to keep my accounts and don't play the Facebook/cloaking game anymore...

09-14-2012 02:56 AM #7 zeno (Administrator)

Hmmm I disagree - sending people to different landers based on certain attributes, e.g. subids, country code, etc, is more likely to be the result of split-testing data telling you that those specific landers work better for those demographics/traffic sources. It's not a type of cloaking, it's just optimisation of your traffic path. Redirecting people to different targets based on subids/traffic source/referrer etc isn't split testing either, the split testing would happen on the lander that they arrive at.

Things like VWO, Optimizely are not cloakers. You can't use them to cloak and wouldn't want to. The purpose of a cloaker is to intercept traffic immediately and through some well-developed algorithm decided whether or not the person visiting should be sent through your funnel. Reviewers from FB for instance are going to be easy to spot in some cases, but others much more difficult - especially when you're running volume and look shady, they will review you from what appears to be a normal user, so the cloaker has to try and pick up on these incognito spies.

Remember cloaking is malicious, it's sneaky, it's to get around compliance issues and send people to offers Facebook would shoot down in a heartbeat.

Redirecting traffic to different landers and rotating things, split-testing, having different landers based on subids etc. is just good marketing and not something that a traffic source like Facebook has a problem with.

09-14-2012 05:21 AM #8 maynzie (Moderator)

bait and switch =

cloaking =

09-14-2012 06:17 AM #9 zeno (Administrator)

You and yo' thug life Maynzie

Home > Questions and Answers > General Questions