(The following
articles have been archived for both instructional and referential purposes.
To read the full articles please follow the links to the source located at the
bottom.)
PremierEquity Cans Ezula Links
By Brian Clark August 20, 2001
Last week's article about Commission Junction tracked links
for PremierEquity appearing in Ezula-ed browsers created a storm of outrage
in the article's discussions, with comments from CJ and webmasters with very
different opinions on Ezula. Then, on Friday night, the other shoe dropped.
Jayme Sears of Premier Equity posted further details to the article's discussion,
revealing that an affiliate of theirs had been purchasing clicks through Ezula
and sending them on to the merchant through Commission Junction.
"This form of advertising was not authorized or approved
by PremierEquity, nor was it our intention to be promoted in this manner. We
have since rejected this affiliate from our program, and Ezula is currently
in the process of removing all the links to our website," Jayme wrote.
All of this stink generated by the actions of one affiliate? All
the more chilling -- not just that Ezula might have utilized performance marketing
for revenue generation, but that there might be enough margin in it to attract
unethical "middlemen" affiliates buying keywords themselves?
It also means (for the record) Commission Junction didn't make
any money off of Ezula in this case either: with the termination of the affiliates,
the only people who hypothethically gained anything was PremierEquity if they
received new applications as an "illicit fruit." Even the software
publishers who pushed Ezula, who are reported to receive between 20% and 50%
of the advertising fees get nothing this time.
However, we're left with what is in many ways an even more troubling
version of affairs: rather than treating this action by the affiliate as a case
of fraud, Commission Junction left that determination up to the advertiser.
The community of online publishers is justified in their concerns that Commission
Junction didn't just treat this as a case of affiliate fraud and move on, and
everyone is waiting to see if CJ chooses to clarify there position regarding
these technologies.
This glare of attention, though, should fall just as sqaurely
on the other providers such as Be Free and Linkshare: do your networks consider
these "advertising overlay technologies" affiliate fraud in violation
of your agreements? In my humble opinion, this should be a no-brainer for each
of the networks to answer, "Yes, this is fraud."
