Are you seeing more ads from your friends on Twitter? Several of the people I’m following on Twitter are pushing ads through their Twitter streams. I assume they’re using services like Sponsored Tweets, though they could simply be affiliate links.

First, this post isn’t meant to be critical of their activity. It’s just got me thinking about this means and how we perceive the things that our friends say and recommend online.

None of the ads that I’ve noticed have actually offended me. In fact, they were particularly relevant this past weekend. On Friday and Saturday I saw some reminders to buy flowers. Today I saw one promoting tax preparation.

But I wonder if these people are personally recommending these products? Have they used them? Or do they just have space for sale on their twitter streams?

I’m all for making a buck and if my friends are popular enough in the social media space that they can sell spots on their clothes, cars, or twitter streams for cash money, that’s great.

But to me there’s a difference between wearing an ad on your shirt or having it plastered on your car and having it appear intermixed with your ordinary conversations.

Dale Jr. wears Amp Energy drink, National Guard, Budweiser, and a dozen more ads on his clothes and cars, but I doubt he works them into his conversations. I’d bet that Phil Mickelson has never uttered the words “Bearing Point” while chatting with his buddies at the 19th hole.

That would probably become pretty annoying if he did that.

And how do we tell the difference between a real recommendation and a bought one? At what point do we stop trusting that our friends are providing completely unbiased recommendations?

Are you misleading consumers who visit your website? You don’t think so? I bet the guys at Intercept, LLC didn’t think so either. Or at least they didn’t worry about it.

Don’t Mess With Texas

The Attorney General of the State of Texas, Greg Abbot, announced on Monday, Cyber Monday no less, that they’ve taken legal action against Intercept (and a second company, Everyprice.com) for misleading consumers.

The Charges

The issue is that these companies on several price comparison websites have represented to consumers that they are promising independent, reliable, and trustworthy information about online retailers when in fact retailers are paying for higher rankings.

The charges are that these companies have misled consumers describing merchants as reliable and trustworthy while representing themselves as neutral and unbiased. They have been using words like “Trusted“, “Recommended“, “Lowest legitimate price“, and “Customer certified” to describe merchants when, as the attorney general asserts, these labels are in fact for sale not earned.

The Outcome

The prosecutors won an injunction.

According to Abbott, Intercept has agreed to cease this practice and pay $300,000 or cease business operations entirely in the State of Texas, which in practical terms means everywhere.

As such, Intercept has taken all of their websites offline, including Shopcartusa.com, Diduprice.com, Flyingprices.com, Digitalsaver.com and Pricingdepot.com. I guess $300,000 was too steep a price to pay.

How bad is bad?

I’d like to think that the offenses were egregious and deserving of such attention and prosecution. At the very least, they pissed someone off in Texas. Unfortunately, now that the sites are down, we cannot look to see exactly how the websites operated.

I don’t know if it is related, but searching the Google for “ShopcartUSA” turns up no shortage of consumer accusations of “scams” by this company. Case in point:

I would like to say that I was a naive consumer when I went online to purchase a Nikon D200. I could only wish I had come across this website before expending much time and frustration in my persuit of finding a low priced D200. Yes, I am guilty of going on ShopCartUSA and falling for the BS of the low priced merchants (all in Brooklyn I may add). (source)

Make enough enemies like this and I guess this sort of action is a disaster in the making.

Check Yourself

The lesson here is pretty clear, watch how you represent information on your websites.

On the surface, these accusations sound a lot like the sort of behavior that many (many) publishers may be toeing the line on (or crossing it) without even knowing it.

Watch the video of the press conference held in TX on Monday.

I was doing some shopping online this weekend and I was stuck by some sort of phobia that I have gained over the years:

I avoid buying through affiliate links.

I almost never click on PPC ads, in fact, I go to lengths to avoid them. I’ll type in the URL in the ad instead of clicking on it. Same for affiliate links. If I see a link goes through an affiliate network or that it is masked.

I am hyper-sensitive to my online actions that generate money for others, mostly because I’ve been in this industry for so long.

I notice without trying, and I avoid clicking without thinking about it.

But why is making money for someone else who helped me find something online a problem with me? Let’s think about this…

Privacy concerns?

It is true, I do not like to be tracked. I suspect that many people don’t like the idea of being tracked. Though I know enough about affiliate marketing to know that the affiliate publishers don’t know who I am (unless I tell them, and if I do, they have the ability to know a lot). The affiliate networks have the ability to know quite a bit about me, but that’s way too much effort and they’ve got enough to do. Except for Google, and I’ve given up on Google knowing everything about me. So that’s not it.

Jealousy?

Somewhere somebody is making money off my actions. It should be me (or a friend).

If I had a coupon or deal site and an affiliate link for every merchant advertiser in the world, this would be a little more rational. Except generally, I don’t buy through my own links. Even if I have one (unless I want to test for tracking). I also don’t like to buy through other affiliate’s links (like my friend’s coupon site) just for the sake of doing so. I don’t feel that’s right, as it costs someone money…

Cost of my Actions?

By clicking on a PPC ad or buying through an affiliate link, I know that my actions are costing someone money. This is why I don’t click on ads or buy through affiliate links for the sake of doing so, especially my own.

And sometimes I judge the affiliate publisher. Do they really deserve this money? Did they wrest their way into the process and dupe me into clicking a link? Stuff a cookie? Act on a url type-in? Or did they really do something that has impacted my decision to buy something through this particular advertiser?

Competitiveness?

Like someone who works at Coke won’t drink Pepsi. (It’s true, they’re crazy about this.)
Or sending a package to someone who works at UPS via FedEx.

When the Coke truck driver drinks a Pepsi at their friend’s house, they aren’t literally taking money out of their own pocket. In fact it could be argued that they’re helping the soft drink industry overall.

And for that reason, I’m going to get over this hang-up starting right now as we enter this holiday season.

I don’t mean that I’m going to actively seek out affiliate links for my purchases, because that’s not what this is about.

But I will support the good publishers in the affiliate marketing industry by letting the affiliate commissions flow.

At the same time, In doing so, I will only support the publishers who I feel deserve commissions because they helped me make a purchase by adding value to the process. I can’t help but pay attention after all.

How about you? When you make a purchase on line, do you click through your own links? Click on others? Avoid links altogether? Do you have the same hangups as I do?

Take the poll and weigh in! And comment below to let us know how you behave.

Earlier this week, Google Affiliate Network announced that they’re making affiliate traffic referral data available to their advertisers.

This is not unprecedented. Other networks do this too, but (a) this is Google, and (b) they’re potentially showing more data than any other network to-date.

So, I have some questions and went straight to Larry Adams, Product Manager for Google Affiliate Network.

Here’s the Q&A I had with Larry over email.

Me: This report contains a click count for the prior 7 days. Is this every referrer, or just a sample?

Larry: Every referrer (being part of google has it’s advantages )

Me: As a publisher, can I examine my own referrer data to see what my advertisers are seeing?

Larry: At the moment, you can only see referrers for out of date links that are generating traffic on your site. we plan to offer publishers a view of all their referring traffic but it’s not available yet, no eta for the moment.

Me: Do you plan to share other information per referrer such as transactions, EPC, or conversion rates?

Larry: We think there are a lot of intriguing possibilities around providing more insight about how affiliate traffic performs based on origin and destination, nothing to share here yet though.

Me: I may be concerned that certain extraneous information may be getting passed through with these referrer URLs, such as my local tracking parameters. I realize that I can redirect and clean these up so visitors land on a clean URL before clicking on any ads. But this brings up another related transparency question. Do advertisers have access to my MID information?

Larry: Any information that is included on the URL of the page the user was on is transmitted. Note that we’re not reporting on parameters you add to the tracking link, but if there is a token that is included on the page on your site, it would be included in the referrer.

Me: Thanks Larry!

Larry: Thanks as always for your interest and support.

Is this a good thing?

I support the feature. I think transparency is critical to merchant advertisers, especially as they become more responsible for their publishers’ actions, such as with the new FTC endorsement guidelines. If they can see the problems, they can deal with them on a case-by-case basis. The alternative is that they may need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and eliminate entire publisher segments, or worse as the only way to avoid publishers promoting them in ways that they don’t want.

Watch your Referrer Data

The last question I asked Larry is an important one to publishers who are concerned with advertisers gaining proprietary information. For example, if you are doing direct PPC, the advertisers will see what keywords you’re sending traffic through. The referrer will be the search engine page that had the advertisement on it, which includes what the visitor searched for.

I don’t in any way advocate being evasive in order to hide the source of your traffic, or bid on restricted terms without detection. However, you may want to take steps to prevent too much data from getting passed through to curious marketers who may also be running their own SEO and PPC campaigns.

Looks like Google Adwords is doing some cleanup of the right kind.

It’s can be a big pill to swallow choosing between money and doing the right thing. Good for them.

This went out to some Adwords advertisers this week:

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

We’re writing to let you know about a change to Google’s advertising policies that could affect your AdWords account.

Beginning in the coming weeks, we’ll no longer accept ads that promote Unacceptable Business Practices. This includes, but is not limited to, negative option or unclear billing, the sale of normally free items or services, and false celebrity endorsements.

Negative option billing specifically relates to sites that offer free trials, services, or other offers in conjunction with a subscription service. Sites in violation of this policy automatically enter users into a subscription if they do not cancel within the pre-determined trial period.

In order to comply, these pages must contain an opt-in checkbox that contains the price and billing interval of the subscription service on the page where a user enter their billing information.

When we make this change any URLs in violation of this policy may be submitted for Landing Page Quality disabling. Once this has been completed you will have 10 days to make any necessary changes to your website in order to comply before the disabling will take effect. We ask that you make changes to your ads and/or website to comply, so that your campaigns can continue to run.

As a business, Google must make decisions regarding the advertising we accept. We’ve given much thought to our stance on this content, as well as the potential effect our policy decision could have on AdWords advertisers, and we apologize for any inconvenience it may cause you.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team

source

Lots of sky is falling posts came out immediately following the news that the FTC would be going after bloggers for not disclosing material relationships on testimonials.

Fast Company’s Jennifer Vilaga managed an interview with the FTC’s own Richard Cleland who said in yesterday’s article,

That $11,000 fine is not true. Worst-case scenario, someone receives a warning, refuses to comply, followed by a serious product defect; we would institute a proceeding with a cease-and-desist order and mandate compliance with the law.

So there you have it. The sky isn’t falling. You’re not going to get taken down for 11 grand for any transgressions. That worst-case scenario doesn’t sound so bad. And you’d have to be a pretty big knucklehead to let it get even that far.

But that doesn’t change the rules. The message is pretty simple. If there’s potential for conflict of interest, consumers should be notified.

My take, if you’re engaging in word-of-mouth or blogging product or service recommendations, just disclose and make no apologies for it. If you’re for real, people will on average think well of you for it, perhaps even better.

Isn’t it just ethics? Dare I say common sense?

Do the Right Thing

Is it so wrong to just do the right thing?

But what is “the right thing?” What do I have to do to be compliant?

You’ve now heard it from the horse’s mouth, again from the FastCompany article. The “right thing” is up to the blogger’s own discretion as Cleland says,

The bloggers have to look at how they do their blogging, their business practice, and figure out the way that consumers will best get the message that this is a sponsored post. In terms of clear and conspicuous, the criteria there is that the consumers will notice the disclosure. Disclosures can be made in different ways, whether you make it outside of the text but in proximity to blog, or incorporate it into the blog discussion itself–those are the issues that bloggers will have discretion about.”

You don’t know what the right thing is? Srsly? Take your best guess and you’ll be fine. No big deal right?

Unless of course you are toeing the line of misleading consumers and profiting from it. But then I don’t feel bad for you.

The Real Risk to Affiliate Marketing

But wait, there is a risk to affiliate marketing from the new FTC guidelines. That’s overreaction.

• What if industry thought leaders make more of this than it is and get everybody up in arms?
• What if the lawyers latch on to this and start advising extreme caution?
• And then what if as a result, merchant advertisers (who are ultimately responsible for the actions of their citizen marketers) get scared and start tightening the reins on their publishers to the point of choking bloggers out of their affiliate programs?

Results are Not Typical

Now, the removal of the “not typical results” language as acceptable CYA language, that’s another matter that seems to me will have much broader impact. This is a change that hasn’t been talked about so much by the run-of-the-mill bloggers and affiliates. I suppose it simply doesn’t affect us as much as it does the hard-core mass-marketers. I have to say, as a consumer I’m pretty happy to see that one go.

Fellow affiliate marketer Kim Rowley was spending a few days at the hospital tending to one of her twin daughters who has unfortunately landed there this week. Thankfully, it sounds like she’ll be ok.

Her tweets today also caught my eye for another reason…

I asked her what this meant and she sent me the following screenshot

This is a bummer. Basically it means that anybody browsing behind a corporate firewall, ISP, or desktop that is using McAfee’s Web Filtering service is blocked from seeing this website.

How did this happen?

We’ll likely never know, but Kim probably used some Advertising network that pushed an ad that McAfee took exception to at some point. Maybe there was a drive-by spyware installation that was happening through a promotion. She did tell me that she has had links from CPA networks on her sites.

What can she do about it?

My advice to Kim was to go to McAfee and run their Domain Health Check. You need to go through a short process to verify domain ownership and then you can get a PDF report delivered free for your domain. Along with that report is an email address where you can raise concerns with the results.

Here’s what she got back…

Lo and behold, there it is. Web Category: SPAM Urls.

What a fine category to be in. I think it’s pretty safe to say that she feels that the “web categorization of her domain does not reflect the nature of her business”.

Check your own sites

Short of taking a trip to the Children’s Hospital of Omaha to test our websites, you can go through the same process with your websites. It’s very quick and automated and you’ll have an answer back within minutes.

I did this for jangro.com  just to go through the process myself and it came back with no issues. You might want to give this a try on some of your sites, especially if you’ve been serving up ads from third party ad networks where you don’t control the advertising.

On October 5, 2009 the FTC announced an update to their guides governing endorsements and testimonials in advertising. The last time they updated these guidelines was in 1980. A lot has changed in the world since then. The guidelines will go into effect on December 1st, 2009.

The press coverage is focusing almost entirely on the blogging community but in reality this covers any website that may publish word of mouth marketing.

You should read the FTC announcement and guidelines directly and get educated. There are also many bloggers posts explaining in detail their interpretation. Links to some resources at the end.

But in short, to me, it seems pretty clear that if you are publishing anything that can be construed as an endorsement about a product or service, and you have any material relationship with the advertiser (the provider of that product or service), you should disclose that relationship.

In the case of affiliate marketers the material relationship is pretty well defined. Much more so than in many of the examples the FTC gives, like receiving free product. If you are in the affiliate program of an advertiser, there is an undeniable material relationship.

An important question is, what is an endorsement?

Does the content have to be in the “voice” of a person who might be endorsing a product? Where is the line drawn between an endorsement and a clear advertisement?

And what if the content isn’t actually promoting or recommending a product? Perhaps the article merely mentions a product with no bias one way or the other (there are LOTS of affiliate sites like this). Or what if the article is actually a negative review of the product?

Annother important distinction is that the author of the content is not necessarily the owner of the website. This brings to mind many scenarios that fall into potential gray areas.

For example, what if the content provided by the website is user generated and the website owner, either manually or automatically, converts that post to an affiliate link?

When it comes down to it, why not disclose?

This brings to bear the final question. What’s reasonable disclosure?

I’ve had a disclosure in place on jangro.com for many months now which I link to in the top navigation. However, I’m not sure that it is enough. I probably need to put something more direct on each post that has an affiliate link in it and direct people to that disclosure.

A friend of mine, Tim Carter of AskTheBuilder.com has quickly pulled together a great solution. He created a page similar to mine, though I do like the language he uses. He doesn’t apologize or act at all defensive about his “material relationships”. In fact he states it proudly. And why shouldn’t he? How could any consumer react negatively to that?

These guidelines go into effect on December 1st, 2009. Start thinking about how this impacts you.

More information:

• FTC’s Press Release
• The updated FTC endorsement guides notice
• A great analysis of the new guidelines by Anne P Mitchell, Esq.