"Ethical" Cookie Stuffing

[Rob_TID]

Need your feedback.

A fairly big affiliate (yes, you have heard of him) suggests in his latest book that you should set up a landing page and as soon as a visitor hits that page, you should stuff the affiliate coookie onto their computer.

I challenged them on email (mentioning the Shawn Hogan case) and here is the response I got:

Yes - eBay/Amazon are no no zones for cookie stuffers.

But I don't tell people to stuff cookies. Never have. The way that I
suggest it should be done is not unethical. It's totally normal on
ClickBank. Only drop one cookie... and it's only done so that clean,
non-affiliates links can be used. Nothing "iffy" about that.

In many ways it improves the visitor experience.

Now, am I just a puritan with no clue, or am I missing something? Is this ok in your books?

 

[ChrisMonty]

What?? I'm missing it too, whatever his point it.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Ya I'm missing it too and confused about a couple things.

1st I'm a purist too when it comes to cookie stuffing and MOST of the ethical networks prohibit it too. Any forced click or cookie drop which is not caused by a user generated click is wrong in my and their opinion.

"and it's only done so that clean, non-affiliates links can be used."

Don't even get that at all?

"In many ways it improves the visitor experience."

What??? My head hurts over that one!!!

 

[Linda Buquet]

As you guys know I don't deal with CB so was not familiar with their TOS.

Just did a quick scan and found this. Not sure if what he is suggesting uses any of these methods.

10. Will I get referral credit if I hide hoplinks by making them open into a frame, iframe, layer, applet, image, or other sub-window object?

No. These are illegal hoplinks. For security reasons, and to ensure proper tracking of your referrals, all hoplinks must be targeted to the top level of a new or existing window.

11. What happens if I do make illegal hoplinks?

The short answer is that if you make illegal hoplinks you will lose money.

Hoplinks targeted to frames or iframes are automatically retargeted to fill the top level of same window, with full affiliate referral credit awarded. Note that this retargeting may have the unintended effect of displacing your entire web site.

Hoplinks targeted to images or other invisible html objects give you no affilate referral credit at all. In some cases they will also prevent you from receiving affiliate referral credit for legal hoplinks on the same page.

Accounts that are found to be abusing the hoplink system may be terminated without notice.

The part in bold I highlighted because that's one of the methods that those guys were allegedly using to stuff eBay cookies.

 

[Niche48]

I just don't know what people are up to these days
It's one thing to stuff cookies knowing it's unethical, but this chap seems to be trying to teach his newbies that it is ok to stuff cookies

He needs to be outed!

 

[Rob_TID]

This is what I wrote back to them:

Am I missing something?

The cookie is set when the visitor lands on teh page, right? Not when they click on the link?

And their response:

> The cookie is set when the visitor
> lands on teh page, right?

Yes.

> Not when they click on the link?

Nope.

Here is an example:
http://www.XXXX.com

The two order links at the bottom of the page are clean non-affiliate
links. Because of that I have to drop a cookie whenever someone lands
on that page.

 

[Rob_TID]

Linda:

No. These are illegal hoplinks. For security reasons, and to ensure proper tracking of your referrals, all hoplinks must be targeted to the top level of a new or existing window.

I see that says "window" and not "link"

Is it you and I who are wrong here?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well I understand better now what he's doing or suggesting and I think that there are different degrees if you will or different economies of scale when it comes to cookie stuffing.

It's like with stealing in the brick and mortar world. Shoplifting a candy bar isn't considered as bad as robbing a bank, but it's still considered stealing and still against the law.

So in my mind here are a few degrees of stuffing. Some kinds of stuffing may be worse that other, but they still are cookie stuffing.

Forum cookie stuffing, where there is no link, no ad, the forum visitors don't even know the person exists that's stuffing and they never click or visit his site. This or any other type of mass cookie stuffing with no user interaction or knowledge at all is the worst.

Another type of cookie stuffing that comes up a lot and is controversial but some say is justified is coupon site cookie stuffing. Some couponers feel they are doing the work to drive visitors to there site, the visitor IS reading their ad copy and interested in the product but the customer cuts and pastes the coupon code and enters it directly in the merchants cart, without clicking the affiliate link. So the coupon affiliate feels they did the work and the pre-sell that caused the sale but got bypassed and ******* out of their rightful commission. I can see their point.

I can also see the point of affiliates that think it's wrong. Then too there are different degrees of coupon stuffing. Someone visits their Buy.com page - they drop a buy.com cookie. That's one level. But then there are some coupon sites that go, everyone else is dropping cookies, so when someone hits my homepage I'll drop cookies for all 20 merchants. Then even if they don't go to any of those merchants sales page on my site, I still have a shot at maybe getting credit for a sale even if I don't deserve it.

In the case of this guy, it sounds like he's driving targeted traffic to a landing page at least. So he is driving traffic, he is getting people to his page to read his copy. So it's not as bad lets say as the blatant massive forum cookie stuffer. HOWEVER it still, no matter how much he wants to justify it, CAN be stealing from another affiliate. He's thinking if they clicked my raw link, then it's fine I dropped a cookie because if I'd used an affiliate link they would have gotten my cookie anyway. Well what if they don't click his link? What if they think his copy stinks and they leave after 2 seconds? Does he still deserve credit for that sale?

So for example Rob does PPC and PAYs to get Joe Surfe to his site. Rob writes compelling copy, pre-sells the guy, gets the click and the person is ready to buy. Rob tagged him and sold him, but the guys gets interrupted and doesn't compete the buy right then. Next day Joe can't remember Robs site or the name of merchant site - searches Google for KW and lands on Mr Cookie Stuffer's site. Takes one look and goes "yikes this is an ugly page and seems really high pressure and spammy, I'm not sure that's even the product I was looking for - I'm outa here and back arrows it back to Google. Then finds the merchants direct link and buys.

Rob placed the only legitimate cookie, Rob sold the guy. Mr. Cookie Stuffer, with the ugly site that Joe didn't even read and backed out of after 2 seconds - got Rob's commish.

Maybe lame example, but I think it proves my point. You deserved that commission, right Rob?

 

[Rob_TID]

But is it really a realistic scenario, Linda?

I mean, there aren't that many cases of truly terrible copy and in that scenario, with targetted traffic, even bad copy would still get a pretty good CTR, so isn't it a moot point?

And if everyone is doing it, then there's really no disadvantage to anyone???

I dunno. I mean this guy is pretty respected in the industry.

 

[Linda Buquet]

No of course, I said it was a lame example and I was exaggerating just to make a point.

Everyone is doing it? There aren't some affiliates that haven't read this person's training that are still doing plain old honest affiliate marketing with normal tracking links?

Why isn't he just using regular clean looking redirected links?
Like mysite.com/product?

 

[Rob_TID]

I guess I am just venting, Linda.

I just feel like people like you and I are fighting a losing battle and we are losing more and more market share to people like this. More importantly, people who should know better are starting to join them.

I am depressed.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I know it must be frustrating Rob. I don?t really do any affiliate marketing myself so I don't have to deal with the personal frustration of losing money due to this, but since I consider myself an affiliate advocate it still really pains me to hear of these things.

One thing I can say is that what goes around almost always comes back around and karma rules. Some day some of these guys will get their accounts pulled when they are owed many thousands of dollars, or they will be made an example of like eBay is doing with Shawn.

 

[Oregon Coast Guy]

I see it as a black and white issue.

Whether you put a pretty bow around it or not, a turd is still a turd.

Tony

 

[Kellie AFP]

Ethical cookie stuffing...kind of an oxymoron no? By definition, if it really is cookie stuffing, I doubt it's ethical. It doesn't really matter what window dressing you put around it. And I've seen some creative window dressing over the years.

Evaluate the actual behavior while trying to factor out "who" is justifying it. There's been more than one big name in the industry who have advocated questionable practices over the years. Unfortunately it happens, but it doesn't make it good business advice (for themselves or for others how may unfortunately listen to them).

I remember John Chow advocating cookie stuffing on his blog. If I remember correctly, his rationale was close to what was in the email you posted Rob. He was actually doing on the page where he made the post. Hidden forced clicks. End result? He got blasted by many other bloggers and he got his account terminated with the company he was doing the cookie stuffing with. Oops. Might have been good link bait, but may not such good advice.

More recently Seth Godin blogged that people should click ads (meaning CPC ads) on content sites to show you liked the content. Kind of a tip jar thing. When he got blasted for click fraud, he came back with some convoluted rationale of how the online advertising ecomony didn't reallly work and clicking on CPC ads on sites where you liked the content would make advertisers have landing pages that converted better; so everyone wins including the advertiser in the long run. Don't even bother trying to figure out that rationale because it was just BS to justify advocating click fraud. Interestingly, or maybe not so, he did NOT post that on one of his sites were he runs AdSense ads.

Number 10 of ClickBank TOS that Linda posted prohibts the practice. That's all that really needs to be known. If you do it, then you are risking your CB commissions. That's not to say that it doesn't happen on CB, because it does. But if someone decides to enforce the TOS, you are up a commission creek without a paddle.

"Cookie stuffing" (a term I don't particularly care for overall) means an automatic setting of the affiliate tracking cookie. It's not dependent on how many merchant's cookies you set off on one page. Nor is it dependent whether or not the forced click is targeted to the merchant or not. Untargeted cookie stuffing is no more profitable than legitimately sending untargeted traffic to the merchant. Of course they want the forced clicks to be targeted! They don't earn a commission otherwise! I mean seriously...what would he do...stuff a cookie for merchant X while the page is for merchant Y? Being smart enough to target it makes it ok? LOL Sorry I found that justification pretty funny.

As far as it being ok so there are "clean" non-affiliate links. My oh my. First off that's equivalent to saying that if consumers see a link is a hoplink they are scared of it. If that's true, there's a much bigger problem going on. Second is there are other ways of making the link "clean" (not look like an affiliate link) that does NOT require you to stuff the cookie. CJ makes it an option when you make a link with them. That little onmouse js tag can be quite handy.

Rob were right to listen to your gut. It is unfortunate and discouraging to see big names promoting such practices. Unfortunately it happens. But we all need to critically evaluate the practices and techniques we use in our own businesses. Following gurus (or anyone else) blindly probably isn't the best business move. Kudos to you for questioning the information you were given!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks so much Kellie. Your voice of reason is exactly what we needed in this discussion. Wish I would have thought to pull you over earlier. I was feeling overwhelmed with some other stuff at the time and was having a hard time with this one. Thanks so much for going into all the detail to make this situation more clear cut.

 

[ChrisMonty]

Amen. Let's hope that Clickbank gets a little bit more proactive about detecting it too.

 

[Kellie AFP]

Linda, I can empathize with the being overwhelmed. I popped over a while back and spied a couple of threads I wanted to respond to. Then got pulled away to some other stuff and just now got back over. It's been crazy busy lately hasn't it? And Q4 hasn't even officially started yet.

One of these days we're gonna figure out a way to either clone ourselves or add a couple of extra hours to the day!