The Cheating Affiliate Culture

“I've not only pursued the American dream, I've achieved it. I suppose we could say the last few years, I've also achieved the American nightmare,” stated Kenneth Lay. Kenneth Lay was an American businessman, best known for his role in the scandal of Enron Corporation. Like many in today’s society the American dream has lead us astray from the American dream to an American nightmare. We now live in a culture where the mentality of success tempts us to cheat in order to stay ahead because everyone else is doing it.

David Callahan describes a different kind of people, a different culture, and a different world not too long ago in the book, "The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead". James Bryce, an English scholar who traveled to many parts of the United States in the late 1800s, was astonished by how trusting and generous Americans were compared to Europeans. Bryce wrote, “People who meet on a simple and natural footing with more frankness and ease than is possible in countries where everyone is either looking up or looking down. It gives a sense of solidarity to the whole nation, cutting away the ground for jealousies and grudges which distract people.” (Callahan, 63)

Why is today's culture, a cheating culture? Where did our morals and ethics go? The prisoner’s dilemma teaches us the importance of cooperating or defecting by comparing and contrasting what the outcomes are: win-win, win-lose, lose-win, and lose-lose. For majority of the population, people play the game of life to win, not to lose. Winning to majority of the people means to have an excessive amount of money or as Aristotle states, "that what the masses say what makes them happy is what they don’t have at the moment." So when a person is stuck in a dilemma of having to cooperate or defect, the majority will choose what the best outcome is for them self and not others.Though everyone likes a win-win situation, they are rare to come by; especially when most are playing a win-lose game.

In the affiliate marketing world, some of these affiliate/publishers are playing the trademark poaching game. Trademark poaching is a problem for recognizable brand names such as Tool King. For the very reason that majority of Tool King's traffic comes in organically through the search term, "toolking", trademark poachers tries to take advantage of not only the merchant, but other affiliates as well. It doesn't take more than 4 minutes to setup a campaign using a merchant trademark that is going to get search by customers to begin with. Trademark poachers provide no added value to advertisers/merchants and shouldn't be credited with the sale.

It was late, almost midnight, sitting at the computer of my home, when a PPC campaign popped out of no where (or so I assumed). The room suddenly became somber when I saw our trademark was being bid by one of our affiliates. My first thought was, I wondered which affiliate I was going to have to notify to take off this PPC campaign? To my disbelief, it was an affiliate that I have sent a 'thank you' card to in the past. I was thinking of a new affiliate who might of just joined, someone who doesn't know our terms of service. I was wrong... but had no clue how long this has been going on.

This person was sneaky... turning on the PPC ad during certain times of the day and geo targeted every State except for Colorado (which was why I didn't catch him until now). I read on www.trademarkpoachers.com about how you can search for a keyword that is Geo Targeted. Here was the useful tip I used from Trademark Poachers:

On Google:
Do a search for your URL or trademarked expression then add the following to the end of the address for the results:

&gl=us&gr=us-ST&gcs=CITY

Replace the “ST” with the two letter abbreviation for the state and replace “CITY” with the name of the city you’d like to have search results for. Make sure you hit the enter key after making the changes to see the results.

For Example a results url of http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&q=WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM&btnG=Search

Becomes…..
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&q=WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM&btnG=Search&gl=us&gr=us-IL&gcs=Chicago

Checkout the screen shots below from AdTargetingPreviewTool:

Notice how this affiliate geo targets to the state of Alaska



But didn't geo target to the state of Colorado where Tool King is located. Hmm...


As noted in our TOS: Affiliates cannot over-bid or out-bid Tool King’s ad copies at any time during any bidding process. The use of the words "cheap" or "sale" in Ad Copies is prohibited. Affiliates may not bid on Tool King trademark or any misspellings or variations of our company name. They include and be it separately or in combination with other keywords, but not limited to the following:

• toolking
• Tool King Store
• Toolking.com Store
• Tool King stores
• Toolkingstore
• Tool King
• The Tool King
• The toolking.com
• toolking.com
  
  

If Tool King determines, in its sole discretion, that the affiliate partner is bidding on "Tool King" keywords as mentioned above in the "Not Acceptable" section, than Tool King may pursue any or all of the following actions: withhold all payment on any sales commission beginning with the date on which the affiliate partner started bidding on the prohibited trademarked terms or remove the affiliate partner from Tool King's Affiliate Program.

In order to for us to become the culture Bryce once wrote about, we need to cooperate and practice doing what is right, making it a habit. This will make it easier for all of us to do the right thing when we are faced with a prisoner's dilemma. Rewards should go to those who are doing what is right for the right reasons.