Since the emergence of affiliate marketing, there has been little control over affiliate activity. Unscrupulous affiliates have used
spam,
false advertising, forced clicks (to get tracking
cookies set on users' computers),
adware, and other methods to drive traffic to their sponsors. Although many affiliate programs have
terms of service that contain rules against
spam, this marketing method has historically proven to attract abuse from spammers.
E-mail spam In the infancy of affiliate marketing, many Internet users held negative opinions due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled. As affiliate marketing matured, many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to prohibit affiliates from spamming.
Malicious browser extensions A
browser extension is a plug-in that extends the functionality of a web browser. Some extensions are authored using web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Most modern web browsers have a whole slew of third-party extensions available for download. In recent years, there has been a constant rise in the number of malicious browser extensions flooding the web. Malicious browser extensions will often appear to be legitimate as they seem to originate from vendor websites and come with glowing customer reviews. In the case of affiliate marketing, these malicious extensions are often used to redirect a user's browser to send fake clicks to websites that are supposedly part of legitimate affiliate marketing programs. Typically, users are unaware this is happening other than their browser performance slowing down. Websites end up paying for fake traffic numbers, and users are unwitting participants in these ad schemes.
Search engine spam As
search engines have become more prominent, some affiliate marketers have shifted from sending e-mail spam to creating automatically generated web pages that often contain product
data feeds provided by merchants. The goal of such web pages is to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, also known as
spamdexing. Each page can be targeted to a different niche market through the use of specific keywords, with the result being a skewed form of
search engine optimization.
Spam is the biggest threat to organic search engines, whose goal is to provide quality search results for keywords or phrases entered by their users.
Google's
PageRank algorithm update ("BigDaddy") in February 2006—the final stage of Google's major update ("Jagger") that began in mid-summer 2005—specifically targeted
spamdexing with great success. This update thus enabled Google to remove a large amount of mostly computer-generated duplicate content from its
index. Websites consisting mostly of affiliate links have previously held a negative reputation for underdelivering quality content. In 2005 there were active changes made by Google, where certain websites were labeled as "thin affiliates". Such websites were either removed from Google's index or were relocated within the results page (i.e., moved from the top-most results to a lower position). To avoid this categorization, affiliate marketer webmasters must create quality content on their websites that distinguishes their work from the work of spammers or
banner farms, which only contain links leading to merchant sites.
Adware Although it differs from
spyware,
adware often uses the same methods and technologies. Merchants initially were uninformed about adware, what impact it had, and how it could damage their brands. Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue much more quickly, especially because they noticed that adware often overwrites tracking cookies, thus resulting in a decline of commissions. Affiliates not employing adware felt that it was stealing commission from them. Adware often has no valuable purpose and rarely provides any useful content to the user, who is typically unaware that such software is installed on his/her computer. Affiliates discussed the issues in Internet forums and began to organize their efforts. They believed that the best way to address the problem was to discourage merchants from advertising via adware. Merchants that were either indifferent to or supportive of adware were exposed by affiliates, thus damaging those merchants' reputations and tarnishing their affiliate marketing efforts. Many affiliates either terminated the use of such merchants or switched to a competitor's affiliate program. Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban certain adware publishers from their network. The result was
Code of Conduct by
Commission Junction/beFree and Performics,
LinkShare's Anti-Predatory Advertising Addendum, and
ShareASale's complete ban of software applications as a medium for affiliates to promote advertiser offers. Regardless of the progress made, adware continues to be an issue, as demonstrated by the
class action lawsuit against
ValueClick and its daughter company Commission Junction filed on April 20, 2007.
Trademark bidding Affiliates were among the earliest adopters of
pay per click advertising when the first pay-per-click search engines emerged during the end of the 1990s. Later in 2000
Google launched its pay per click service,
Google AdWords, which is responsible for the widespread use and acceptance of pay per click as an advertising channel. An increasing number of merchants engaged in pay per click advertising, either directly or via a
search marketing agency, and realized that this space was already occupied by their affiliates. Although this situation alone created advertising channel conflicts and debates between advertisers and affiliates, the largest issue concerned affiliates bidding on advertisers names, brands, and trademarks. Several advertisers began to adjust their affiliate program terms to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on those type of keywords. Some advertisers, however, did and still do embrace this behavior, going so far as to allow, or even encourage, affiliates to bid on any term, including the advertiser's trademarks.
Compensation disclosure Bloggers and other publishers may not be aware of disclosure guidelines set forth by the
FTC. Guidelines affect celebrity endorsements, advertising language, and blogger compensation.
Lack of industry standards Certification and training Affiliate marketing currently lacks industry standards for training and certification. There are some training courses and seminars that result in certifications; however, the acceptance of such certifications is mostly due to the reputation of the individual or company issuing the certification. Affiliate marketing is not commonly taught in universities, and only a few college instructors work with Internet marketers to introduce the subject to students majoring in marketing. Education occurs most often in "real life" by becoming involved and learning the details as time progresses. Although there are several books on the topic, some so-called "how-to" or "
silver bullet" books instruct readers to manipulate holes in the Google
algorithm, which can quickly become out of date, Other training resources used include online forums, weblogs,
podcasts, video seminars, and specialty websites.
Code of conduct A code of conduct was released by affiliate networks
Commission Junction/
beFree and Performics in December 2002 to guide practices and adherence to ethical standards for online advertising.
Sales tax vulnerability In 2008 the state of
New York passed a law asserting
sales tax jurisdiction over
Amazon.com sales to New York residents. New York was aware of Amazon affiliates operating within the state. In
Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, the
US Supreme Court ruled that the presence of independent sales representatives may allow a state to require sales tax collections. New York determined that affiliates are such independent sales representatives. The New York law became known as "Amazon's law" and was quickly emulated by other states. While that was the first time states successfully addressed the internet tax gap, since 2018 states have been free to assert sales tax jurisdiction over sales to their residents regardless of the presence of retailer affiliates.
Cookie stuffing Click to reveal Many
voucher code web sites use a click-to-reveal format, which requires the web site user to click to reveal the voucher code. The action of clicking places the
cookie on the website visitor's computer. In the United Kingdom, the IAB Affiliate Council under chair Matt Bailey announced regulations that stated that "Affiliates must not use a mechanism whereby users are encouraged to click to interact with content where it is unclear or confusing what the outcome will be." ==See also==