The Grim Reaper
posted in Affiliate Marketing, Closed Groups |
Whilst at auexpo, I had to miss a segment of one of the morning sessions by sloping off quickly to ask a small team (after being collared by them) involved in the affiliate marketing industry about their latest tool, cherily named The Grim Reaper.
Whom Are The Creators Of The Grim Reaper?
“As for whom, we do wish to remain anonymous at the moment, sounds a little pretencious we know, but we could be likened to multiple Keyser Soze’s of The Usual Suspects, where quite a few people know him, but those people don’t know who he is.”
What Is The Grim Reaper?
“In theory it is a Search Engine Bidding Abuse Monitoring Tool.”
Why or What Inspired You To Develop The Tool?
“The initial inspiration behind the tool was to identify, but not necessarily disclose, which affiliates or parties we feel are maybe receiving questionable preferential treatment both past & present for various affiliate programs, which we feel is having a negative impact on the industry. The Grim Reaper allows us to easily shortlist & isolate those merchants, affiliates & networks we suspect that fall into this category & those networks whom haven’t been transparent with mentioning which programs have closed groups on program information pages.”
Are There Other Reasons?
“Absolutely, the operation of the tool is functionally the same & can serve several purposes, for example it can identify which affiliates are repeatably & systematically abusing a merchants brand on a deliberate basis, and we do empasise deliberate basis, when merchants have clearly stated otherwise. Though we are fully aware of the lack of clarity & changes in keyword policy without sufficient notice & can symphasise with the genuine affiliates to try to correctly adhere to frequently changing T&C’s”
Do You Feel That Monitoring Affiliate Brand Activity is Part of Networks Remit As Part Of the Override They Earn?
“Erm, yes & no. It depends on the network & what agreement they have set up with the merchant. Most are ethical, however In our experience some turn a blind eye & simply say carry on until busted by the merchant, however networks are genuinely in an awkward predicament & policing brand shouldn’t necessarily have to be part of their uneviable role, when more focus & resources should be on new technologies for affiliates & genuine affiliate support. However, a few have fallen into the the abyss with little regard to their incestuous closed group approach and as a result we decided that part of The Grim Reapers role is to purge the culprits. Some networks proclaim they have tools to monitor affiliates bidding on banned terms, but from our experiments, it clear that it’s questionable as to how effective these really are. On the swing side, yes it should be part of networks role to to promote & control affiliates to ensure they are working within reasonable terms & conditions, for whom most do a decent job”
I Notice Your Natural Disdain for Closed Groups?
“The Grim Reaper can also ascertain whether closed groups are adding value for their client by hunting for traffic beyond brand, such as generics or targeted product terms, it appears many are not & some only recently starting to add wider terms away from the brand. It doesn’t make particulalry good reading when inferring the results, but not all can be tarred with the same brush. We would like to add there is an inherent problem, with the familiar groups & networks relying on a cushy nest egg, without which they maybe wouldn’t be around today, it really needs to be addressed by all involved in the space.”
What About Arbitraging These Unfavourable Programs?
“If that is a publishers perogative, go for it, Ebay & Ask.com as you mentioned, could be perceived as doing it. It might make the merchants or networks wake up and smell the coffee. After doing the math, vast .. infact obscene earnings could be made this way, but it’s a concious decision any publisher has to make & be comfortable with both for themselves & within themselves. But The Grim Reaper, already knows who is.”
Are You Concerned About Being Perceived As a Supergrass?
“Ha, ha, ha, no not at all, we aren’t the one’s that should be worrying !, why would we be ?., although having said that the Grim Reaper is NOT going to send top secret reports to networks, why should we do their work for them.
The Grim Reaper allows us to create a more accurate accessment of the affiliate landscape on the paid search front. We are supportive of ethical paid search affiliates & content sites, though because we feel quite strongly about this we may disclose the affiliate ID’s to the public domain of those we are confident of being in closed groups that’s not adding value, it’s not exactly rocket science to find out, but a matter of time one allocates to it. The Grim Reaper automates the process.”
Are You Simply Scaremongering?
“Nope, not amongst hard working affiliates who adhere to reasonable terms & conditions or those inadvertently breaking pay per click guidelines, it’s easy to spot the accidents from the systematic abusers, so honest, regular everyday affiliates have nothing to worry about. It’s only the calculating rule breakers & undisclosed closed groups or exact match brand only affiliates on closed group terms which should be wary.”
How Does The Grim Reaper Work?
“Basically we monitor the paid search advertisments of any desired list of keywords, for example brands, misspellings, variations & even their URL’s. Where an instance for a keyword is found triggering an ad, it’s recorded into the database and fed into our reporting system for later analysis.”
What Do You Record?
“Initially it harvested just the affiliate ID, and thus network being used, any attributed display URL and destination URL, competitor merchants bidding on rival brands. If the ad features a non affiliate link and leads to a landing page or site, we visit the destination URL and collect off site urls, logging any affiliate links on the way, On top of that we now even conduct a whois to try & obtain the owner of the domain name, though we appreciate this is easy enough to disguise & can be misleading. We know some closed group or perpetually rule breaking affiliates may cloak their tracks a little, so we try to get inside their mind what they may possibly do, a few should be chastised.”
But Won’t You Be Incurring Costs for Those Paid Advertisers & Assisting with Increase in CTR’s?
“No, we don’t click links, there’s no need, we log affiliate urls if direct to merchant and visit destination urls if not, we have no need to click any links, incur any cost or boost anyone’s CTR, so rest assured it incurrs no cost or benefit to anyone from clicking ads.”
At What Time Intervals Do You Monitor the Ads?
“Any, currently it is once per hour, but we can easily set the time frame to whatever is desired, even every five minutes, realistically there is no finite time limitations, we simply do what is most practical, so weekend and or evening rule breakers won’t get a look in.”
Is The Grim Reaper Monitoring All Paid Search Platforms?
“Initially it was only Google, because it was easier, but …”
Sorry To Interrupt But, Does This Mean MSN AdCenter & Yahoo Search Marketing As Well Because They Encrypt Their Links?
“Oh, yeah for sure it took a while but we managed to crack the encrypted link conundrum, granted it took our inhouse team some long nights a red bull drip fed army of amazing coders and big pot of cash, but we got there in the end so now there’s nowhere to hide on the big 3, in fact we can monitor any country too in our quest.”
You Maybe Aware My Repetitive Bug Bear is Ebay UK & Ask.com Bidding on Many URL’s & Almost Anything Going. Do You Have Any Thoughts?
“We think you summarised much of it within your blog, but there does seem to be a different ruling for them in the way they are treated by Google. The merchants or networks having little inclination to address these two parties, all very hypocritical if you ask us. The Grim Reaper reveals the scale of this problem & we are bemused by the inertness of affected parties.”
Thanks For Your Time, Is There Anything Else You Would Like To Add?
“Yes, please can you remove this spot lamp from shining in our eyes & turn the strobe off so we can get back to the a4uexpo. Oh, by the way, you might want to check the keyword policy of that merchant, which changed without notification, you are appearing for the brand.”
Oops!
