cpaway – ADOTAT

2016-02-282016-02-29

Survey: 72% of Marketers are Victims of Fraud

Performance Marketing Insider launched a survey this month to discover what exactly was happening in the trenches with marketers in regards to fraud and CPA affiliate networks. We asked affiliates, networks and advertisers their perceptions of fraud, if they trust CPA Affiliate Networks, and most importantly, if any solutions are working. We had hoped to find good news about fraud, how marketers were catching fraudsters, and how the industry had changed in the last few years.

We didn’t find anything of the such, but just the opposite. The results are shocking and should worry everyone in the industry.

Despite all the solutions being proposed, fraud in the performance marketing industry still seems to be a plague. Discussions at conferences, meetings at industry organizations, and general statements about fixing fraud haven’t done anything in the last decade to improve the situation. Everyone admits the same thing, that fraud is one of the most destructive forces in the marketing business and has the ability to ruin any company caught in some of these complex schemes. Yet, despite all the advancements, the online marketing and especially the performance marketing industry, is facing a crisis in which there are not just more fraudsters but better fraudsters.

Fraud is still here and it’s only getting worse with more and more money flowing into the performance marketing industry and more and more people launching networks and companies with little experience, little ethics and not a whole lot of trust.

This is what we found — and have provided a nifty infographic.

82% of all marketers say fraud is a serious problem in performance marketing
72% of all advertisers say they have been a victim of fraud.
10% of publishers say a CPA Network has asked them commit fraud.
11% of networks admit they have asked a publishers/affiliate to commit fraud.
52% of publishers do not trust CPA Affiliate Networks
66% of advertisers do not trust CPA Affiliate Networks
While 84% of Networks use some sort of Fraud Detection Program, 49% of Advertisers believe it doesn’t work.

What does this all mean?

In order to sort through all this, we asked some of the experts their advice, looked into the numbers and what exactly they mean, and what can be done. Strangely, despite the overwhelming issues, very few CPA Networks wanted to speak to us about the fraud issue, and the few that spoke to us off the record, said they were worried about retaliation within the industry about talking about fraud too much.

However, Tim Burd, the CEO of Digitize IQ, and a columnist for Entrepreneur, revealed a little insight into why some CPA Networks commit fraud. As the former owner of an affiliate network, he said he dealt with a lot of fraud from affiliates using complex schemes and scripts to trick the CPA Networks. However, he pointed out that the problem with CPA Networks not being trusted is a little different,”advertisers do not trust networks in many cases because many networks are incentivitzed to push through “iffy” traffic. They mix subids to blend the traffic.”

Phil Caramanica of CPAWAY, a relatively prominent CPA Network agrees with the issues and told us “that some networks blend traffic by taking different types of methods of promotion, that are often not allowed, and combine them with legitimate sources hoping the advertiser wont notice the fraud. Many networks we have found doing this as a way to increase the affiliate’s payout to be more compeitive, while paying less the non-complaint traffic. This hurts the guys, trying to play by the rules.”

“It is mind boggling to me the number of affiliate networks that will clearly allow fraud, thanks to lax policies on fraud and also aggressive quotas imposed on affiliate managers,” Ricky Ahuja of RickyAhuja.com told PMI. “This has obviously, and rightfully so might I add, made the advertisers weary working with affiliate networks. My stance for the last 12+ years has been one of complete transparency with the affiliate/network/advertisers and I think working openly rather than trying to hide behind their legal department and fraud detection software would go a long way to help the industry progress.”

David Sendroff, CEO of Forensiq, a fraud detection tool used by many advertisers and networks, says that all advertisers and networks must have some sort of fraud detection tool in place. According to him, “Depending on where you sit in the ecosystem, there are a number of risks you take by working with affiliates. Advertisers risk affiliate payouts and fulfilment costs associated to fraudulent transactions, while networks and aggregators risk advanced payouts, end of month chargebacks and the loss of their advertising clients. Fraud detection creates a level of transparency so that both advertisers and networks have at least a real-time awareness of the intent and integrity behind each conversion. A more advanced integration also creates an ability to proactively block high-risk conversions, which is necessary to eliminate these risks.”

Burd agrees with the issue but also points out that CPA Networks that blatantly aren’t committing fraud aren’t still not really helping fix the issue. He says they “don’t vet the affiliates properly. Its a shit show. Now obviously some networks are better than others at all of this.”

Yes, obviously not all CPA Networks are committing fraud — we are not even suggesting that. Even by our own numbers, 10% of publishers report that they have been asked to commit fraud and 11% of CPA Networks owners admit to committing fraud — so approximately 90% of the networks are trying to do things the “right way” and follow the rules, but the other 10% of companies seem to be ruining for the rest. Ricky Ahuja agrees, “There are a lot of quality networks out there, let’s not mess it up for everyone on account of a crappy few.”

So for most CPA Networks, Affiliates and Advertisers, the issue isn’t that they are committing fraud, but they are having a bad time preventing fraud from creeping in from bad actors who don’t want to play by the rules. According to the survey 84% of all networks use Fraud Detection programs that are supposed to catch the bad guys in the act of trying to rip off the industry. Yet, despite these steps almost half (49%) of all advertisers say these systems don’t actually work.

Brian McLevis has seen a lot of fraud as the CEO of Scrubkit, a CPA affiliate fraud detection tool. He doesn’t buy that the systems don’t work, telling us that “I am not sure who is saying “they don’t work” because ScrubKit has yet once to steer us in the wrong direction. Maybe the people saying this are uneducated in the fraud software space and/or basing their opinions on information that isn’t factual or firsthand experience.”

Sendroff of Forensiq seems to agree and told us that the “the increased sophistication of fraudsters, faulty attribution and a lack of granularity in reporting are a few reasons that advertisers may question fraud detection. Attribution fraud happens to be very confusing for advertisers because they are seeing true revenue associated to a set of conversions. For instance, cookie stuffing and mobile device stuffing allow affiliates to steal the credit for real conversions or installs based on traffic they haven’t actually driven. In lead generation, fraudsters will also capture leads through non-approved channels and then recycle them to a number of similar campaigns. Bad actors tend to blend their traffic with legitimate sources, which can also throw off KPI’s. Therefore, it’s important to use a fraud detection solution that evaluates the integrity of each and every conversion rather than looking at the overall success on an aggregate level.”

What are your thoughts about these results? Do the systems work? How do we prevent fraud, and is it really this bad? What do you think can be done to fix this?

2012-07-182012-07-18

Affiliate Summit East Party will Shake with Vanilla Ice and Bubba Sparaxxx

The Dynamic is about to change…. Adknowledge, and CPAWay are bringing the swamp to New York City for ASE 2012.
No charge for drinks, everything free.

Join us as we bring the most original party in the history of ASE. Join your Host for the evening Troy Landry, “As Seen on the Swamp People Television Series”, as things start to get “Ugly” with musical guest Bubba Sparxxx kicking off the evening!

Partying in true Affiliate and Performance Marketing fashion at Latin Quater, One of New York’s premier night clubs. The drinks will be flowing with liquor courtesy of our generous sponsors: CPAWay, Adknowledge, Incentivize, Adscend Media, Digital BullDogs, Install Monetizer, and Ad Mobix. The music will be pumping, and the surprises will be non-stop! All guests that come through the door will receive a free gift from our sponsors and a chance to be randomly selected to win one of many large ticket items.

Before the night is over our head liner, Vanilla Ice, will make you Stop, Collaborate and Listen while he rocks this Performance Marketing Event that you simply can’t afford to miss! No Bling required, Vanilla Ice has that covered.

We invite all of our partners to stop the media buying, pause the email blasts, and stop hating on Ryan Eagle’s Purple-colored suit to come and enjoy a night out with CPAWAY, Adknowledge, Adscend Media, Digital Bulldogs, Install Monetizer, and Admobix at the can’t miss event of ASE.

This event is FREE to all attendees of Affiliate Summit East 2012. Doors Open at 9pm on Monday, August 13th, 2012 @ Latin Quarter – 511 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017

CLICK HERE TO RSVP FOR THE PARTY

2011-11-022011-11-12

CPAWAY and Thomas Dietzel Have it Their Way

When I heard a while back there was a new network called CPAWAY, the first thing I thought to myself was: “Another network called CPAsomething…”Over the last year I’ve gotten to know Thomas Deitzel and his company, and more importantly the way that he does business and how his company works. In a short period of time, CPAWAY has become one of the top CPA Networks and one that is spoken of in almost every group as a success story. If you’ve attended any convention, you’ve seen CPAWAY as the top sponsor at all of them. I was able to sit down with Thomas Dietzel the owner of CPAWAY this week and find out how he’s build his company, where he sees the industry going and what opportunities there are out there for affiliates.

Q. Tell us about yourself, how you got started in the industry and what makes you tick.
A. Pace, I’d like to start with thanking you for taking the time to interview me. This is one of the most difficult and uncomfortable questions for me to answer. As clumsy as it may sound, I’m not very good at tooting my own horn, mostly because talk is cheap and our industry like most others is results driven on minute to minute basis.

I’m blessed! As a 27 year old entrepreneur I have an awesome wife that provides a much needed support system and two wonderful daughters. I will admit that one of the biggest obstacles to overcome is the ability to strike that balance between business builder, husband and father. Fortunately, I’m made well aware when this balance is out of whack.

Unknowingly, I entered this industry many times over the last 10 years and can recall receiving checks in 1999 from CJ marketing band fan sites for various music artists and groups. In 2004 and 2005, I was driving traffic to various web hosting affiliate programs after selling our web hosting entity. We had over 600 dedicated servers under our label prior to us selling it and moving on. Webhosting had quickly become my passion as we were quickly able to build a company from a $19.95 reseller account to a multi-million dollar entity in 9 short months. The margins in that industry at the time were very slim and only those with VC backing them were able to take it to the next level.

In the middle of Q3 2006, I had come up with the idea to use CPA offers to provide free domain names. At the time, not being a developer, we quickly hired one on script lance to help build out a platform that would allow us to track this. We joined two affiliate networks and were off to the races. Within 4 months we branched out and started providing multiple items for free, from which 5 additional sites took hold and started producing hundreds of thousands of dollars on a monthly basis. But, as with anything else, the incentive space quickly grew and many competitors entered the field to take their share of a very lucrative market sector.

My focus changed heavily into creating an affiliate network in early 2009. We came up with the name CPAWay and off to the races once again with development and new ideas…. In October 2009 we officially opened up CPAWay to our affiliates and it has been a fun and rewarding climb ever since.

Q. What affiliate platforms are you using and why? If there are some features you could add to it, what would they be?
A. When we started our network and began the planning stages for it, like most others we demoed all of the off-the-shelve solutions available at the time. Not surprisingly, most of the systems offered were clunky and not very user friendly. Each solution had its own unique feature sets which were to the contrary of what we were trying to create. Our need was a solution that allowed us to run an entire business from one platform. Not having to be dependent on a separate CRM tool, separate accounting platform, fraud prevention system amongst other items was paramount. It became very clear that we would have to build our own. To get started, we purchased an open source off-the-shelf-product to quickly establish a base for everything. This off the shelfer was turned into a very power tool. Over the next 2 years an entire re-write was done and not a single line of that original code exists in our platform today. With my re-write, I also added all the features we would need to run a successful PROACTIVE business. Today, this platform system has everything it requires to perform and deliver results (until a new idea is brought forward to make it better). To this end we are adding new features daily to make our business model more efficient. In an attempt at staying ahead of the curve, our corporate road map is set for the next 6 months from a structure and revenue standpoint.

Q. You’ve done a great job of branding – what are you trying to tell people through your ads and website?
A. We have spent a fortune in branding over the last 12 months. This effort has definitely paid off and rewarded my company with a tremendous amount of business. Our continued goal through various channels is to message confidence to both our Publishers and Advertisers alike. The picture we’ve attempted to paint and feeling we want to convey is this. We are not a fly by night network, but are here for the long haul. This fortune is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and holding up our brand is priceless. Our Publisher base can rest easy in knowing that when it comes to their money, they will receive every penny owed them. For our Advertisers, we will build sound relationship and gain respect and trust over time so that they have confidence in allowing us to manage their most valued campaigns.

Q. If you had 10 seconds to tell a super-affiliate why they should work with you, what would you tell them?
A. CPAWay is cash flow positive with a long term business model. I own the office we work in and I’m continually investing in my company’s future. There’s a lot of pride that comes with paying on-time every time and believe it or not, if you call our office we answer the phone. (Simple enough right? But if you called 10 networks, you would probably only get 20 – 30 percent of them on the phone if that) Also, we will not hide behind a PO BOX or secured office space where you need a blood and urine sample to get buzzed in. Why Hide? Lastly, as far as we are concerned, every affiliate has the potential to become a super-affiliate and for this reason, we would never discriminate against any new comers.

Q. Why should advertisers work with CPAWAY? What makes your traffic and affiliates any different than 100 other CPA Networks?
A: We have a very strong proactive approach to conducting our business. This is a very common question received all the time. The best answer I can give is our staff. Every one of my employees completely understands what is expected of them. As a unit, we are driven to conduct ourselves with an “eye open” approach. Happen to your day before the day happens to you. Things don’t magically correct themselves, success for our customer base require proper planning followed by the execution of that plan. That said mistakes happen. A bad affiliate may get into our platform. Almost always we identify these unwanted affiliates with our pre-emptive screening of traffic before our merchants realize they existed. This allows us to mitigate potential programs before they become harmful to our merchants. Our affiliate screening process is second to none. We don’t rely solely on online tools to screen affiliates. A few of our techniques involve going back to basics which require us to think outside the box. (Merchants can inquire for full details; we can’t publish our methods online for obvious reasons) J

We do not setup merchants to fail. If they opt-in to traffic types we feel may not be a good choice for a specific offer, we tell them in advance that they should simply refuse to allow that bad experience to happen.

Q. If you could go back two years in time and tell yourself something about this industry, what would you reveal?
A. This is a very difficult question. I would suggest a lot more forward thinking to keep ahead of trends and not jumping into those trends too quickly. I’ve seen many businesses fail from simply bouncing from trend to trend.

Q. What would you say your biggest success has been with CPAWAY?
A. My biggest success would be controlling growth while preserving cash and capital. We have not taken on any venture capital, or partners. I’ve learned from past experience that partners typically never work and I stick to this premise. We are seeing growth month over month and will continue to do so as we release our technology and monetization tools gradually and over time.

Q. What changes would you like to see in the industry?
A. As with any industry, there are lots of changes that I’d love to see. However as with every other industry, change does not occur without a leader. Someone must always be first and the others will follow suit. We are hoping by taking proactive fraud prevention techniques others will copy and move on. The sad part is, since this costs money and doesn’t bring in real time capital, most simply ignore it. (It does bring in capital over time because you are able to build true relationship with your merchants.) Over the last 2 years turnkey software has put a damper on our industry. It allows anyone with a credit card to become a network. While this is stimulating in many ways, it gives “networks” a bad name.

Q. You’re a huge sponsor of many of the conferences. What advice can you give people when attending these conferences, and what they can take from each one?
A. Many people ask why they should attend a conference. The simple answer is relationship-building. While technology allows us to be virtually anywhere, nothing can replace what human interaction provides. I have built hundreds of relationships over the years simply by attending conferences. Most of these relationships would not be possible without conferences, as some partners require face-time to close a deal. Face-time is something you can’t put a value on. It simply supersedes any email or telephone conversation you could ever have.

My advice for those attending a show, would be is to meet with as many people as physically possible. Make the most of your time by scheduling as many meetings in advance prior to attending. While most breakout sessions are good, spend your time and money wisely. I’ve learned this value add by simply chatting with various people. It is amazing how much information you can obtain and learn inside these types of conversations. Most are very eager to share their ideas with you, and from that, a new idea may be triggered for you. If you decide to attend a session, take action with the ideas and information you learn from them. Always read between the lines. (Is the session simply trying to sell you something? Is there a message or method you need to try and use to your company’s advantage?)

Q. What is a great new source of traffic that you’d love to tell people about to try when running CPAWAY offers?
A. While the traffic source may not be new, it is the one most frequently forgotten about. Second Tier search engines and providers allow for much lower click costs while delivering similar if not better results. Our account managers can provide examples if asked.

Q. WarriorForum seems to love CPAWAY. What advise can you give affiliates in using this forum?
A. My advice is to never buy anything with the exception of maybe the war room membership. There are many “get rich quick” offerings there which have absolutely no value to anyone other than the person selling them. Most affiliates fail because they try everything and never stick to one method. Pick a method and stick to it. Once you’ve perfected it, then bridge into additional methods. Don’t believe everything you read. Take into account 100% inflation on figures from those who post them.

Again, pick one method and try to master it, and then grow from there.

Q. Any tools that you’d recommend for affiliates in general?
A. There are many tools out there. The best tools are free. I won’t mention any by name, as I don’t like to promote products that I have not personally used. Our affiliates can definitely hit up our account managers for specific tool ideas. J

Q. What are your goals for CPAWAY in the next 12 months?
A. We have many goals over the next 12 months. While most we can’t speak of specifically, (until they are released for obvious reasons), our most important goal is to increase revenue by 400% in 2012. We will do this by utilizing the tools we are releasing over the course of the next 6 months. These tools will become the tracking to monetization vehicles for our publishers to utilize and take full advantage of. (This is one significant example of the benefits in offering your own platform)

CPAWAY is throwing a huge party for ADTECH – RSVP Here: www.xposure2011.com