CPA sponsors dropping Incentive offers/publishers

[darkraven]

I received an email from hydra today basically telling me that they will stop working with incentive publishers due to the amount of fraud and I have to pull my traffic. Then I got an email from revenue universe detailing the changes they are making due to incentive traffic fraud. Is this the end of the incentive game?

Is there any other cpa network that you guys know of that are making similar changes?

[meditang]

Perfectpaycheck is also dropping incentivized offers

[stickycarrots]

I haven't heard anything about XY7 getting rid of theirs...

[Dave@Profitistic]

Strange... we are actively building ours...

[scriptreseller]

thats a shame i am setting up 2 incentive sites

[john269]

First I have also heard of this. I guess some will though in time is they find that they start get alot of invalid leads that don't convert that well for the advertiser.

[igneous]

not a surprise to me. I'd say the majority of people who do those offers on incentive sites have no interest, or cancel anyway.

[redgorillas]

Have anybody heard about incentaclick and maxbounty plans? I had one freebee site that i had no time to launch. So i'm thinking is it worth of it now. Frankly speaking i think that incentive offers will be over the web forever. Maybe big companies will not offer them but small and medium will do. There is great demand from both sides of market on this kinds of CPA.

[JP Sauve]

MaxBounty still accepts incentive traffic depending on the nature of the incentive. Programs that base themselves solely around paying money to surfers for completing offers are for the most part no longer allowed on the Network. A handful of inexpensive incentive scripts have popped up on the network flooding the market with these cash-incentive websites, and fraud levels among them have increased dramatically. I expect more networks will follow suit... no cash incentives, and to a certain level, no point incentives either.

We have some affiliates who create their own software titles and get surfers to complete an incentive offer in lieu of payment to use the software. This type of incentive is allowed. We have other incentive publishers which offer memberships to their websites, or access to special areas of their website, in return for completing an incentive offer. This too is still allowed. Offering an inexpensive product to surfers as an incentive is also fine.

I'd council anyone thinking of starting a website to abandon the cash model. You'll be flooded with fraud-prone traffic. Even experiences cash-model incentive publishers are having a hard time countering the fraud as is.

[west2nd]

Originally Posted by JP Sauve

MaxBounty still accepts incentive traffic depending on the nature of the incentive. Programs that base themselves solely around paying money to surfers for completing offers are for the most part no longer allowed on the Network. A handful of inexpensive incentive scripts have popped up on the network flooding the market with these cash-incentive websites, and fraud levels among them have increased dramatically. I expect more networks will follow suit... no cash incentives, and to a certain level, no point incentives either.

We have some affiliates who create their own software titles and get surfers to complete an incentive offer in lieu of payment to use the software. This type of incentive is allowed. We have other incentive publishers which offer memberships to their websites, or access to special areas of their website, in return for completing an incentive offer. This too is still allowed. Offering an inexpensive product to surfers as an incentive is also fine.

I'd council anyone thinking of starting a website to abandon the cash model. You'll be flooded with fraud-prone traffic. Even experiences cash-model incentive publishers are having a hard time countering the fraud as is.

An incentive is an incentive. What is the difference if it is cash or not? Is it the cash itself or is it because immediate cash payouts are being offered/made before audits/verifications can be performed? (One can easily take an ipod received as an incentive and sell it on ebay and get cash.)

The premise is still the same...Offers are completed based on an enticement. The bottom line in it all seems to boil down to the site owner's commitment to preventing, or at least reducing, fraud to the greatest extent possible.

If you would, please explain the rationale for the growing objection of networks to offering "cash" incentives.

[Steven Sauve]

Hello west2nd,

The largest problem with cash-for-offers incentives is that it allows their members to purchase low balance pre-paid credit cards, complete some trial offers with them, then cash out of the incentive site for a higher amount than what they paid for the pre-paid credit card. The member subsequently NEVER re-deposits into the pre-paid credit card, leading to failed transactions on the merchant's side when they try to make a charge on the card.

Similarly, it is possibly to buy stolen credit card numbers in bulk. These stolen credit cards are used right away to generate some incentive money, then by the time the merchant tries to use the card for a follow-up charge, the card is no good and the transaction fails.

All this cannot be avoided by the merchant because when they try the initial charge, everything checks out fine. It's the follow-up charges that fail, and those are the ones that the merchant depends on to be profitable. Without exaggeration, some merchants were seeing as much as 80% of their leads generated this way.

Incentive site owners cannot detect this either because when the member signs up, they use all valid information. Once they get their first payout, they disappear.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[west2nd]

Originally Posted by Steven Sauve

Hello west2nd,

The largest problem with cash-for-offers incentives is that it allows their members to purchase low balance pre-paid credit cards, complete some trial offers with them, then cash out of the incentive site for a higher amount than what they paid for the pre-paid credit card. The member subsequently NEVER re-deposits into the pre-paid credit card, leading to failed transactions on the merchant's side when they try to make a charge on the card.

Similarly, it is possibly to buy stolen credit card numbers in bulk. These stolen credit cards are used right away to generate some incentive money, then by the time the merchant tries to use the card for a follow-up charge, the card is no good and the transaction fails.

All this cannot be avoided by the merchant because when they try the initial charge, everything checks out fine. It's the follow-up charges that fail, and those are the ones that the merchant depends on to be profitable. Without exaggeration, some merchants were seeing as much as 80% of their leads generated this way.

Incentive site owners cannot detect this either because when the member signs up, they use all valid information. Once they get their first payout, they disappear.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Hmmm....

Seems like gamesmanship on both sides of the ball...

Freebie site users:

Sign up for offer (trial) - Allow trial to expire - Get gift - May never pay for anything more than trial.

Merchants:

Offer "trial" - Get paid (s&h/processing fee) for "trial" signups - Get upset because the real intent of offering "trial" is to leverage authorization to charge credit/debit upon expiration of "trial" period thus converting "trial" to full sale.... and then the sale is not realized.

(I'm not talking about fraud where a true purchase based on a payment plan is not honored by deliberately failing having the necessary amount of available credit on the original credit/debit card. I'm referring only to true "trial" offers where the trial period has expired and the user simply elects not to purchase for whatever reason.)


Outside of fraudulent credit/debit card use, it seems as if the freebie site users have the right to cancel, (or simply not be charged) after deciding not to make a purchase after the "trial" for whatever reason they choose. The primary goal of the merchant's "trial" offer is met. The product sample received the level of exposure desired by being placed directly in the hands of a potential consumer.


***This is not meant to be argumentative or in any way a premise to excuse fraud. I just think that advertizers, networks and publishers can all make money if we help each other. An open and honest dialogue needs to be maintained between all parties involved. ****

[Steven Sauve]

Originally Posted by west2nd

Outside of fraudulent credit/debit card use, it seems as if the freebie site users have the right to cancel, (or simply not be charged) after deciding not to make a purchase after the "trial" for whatever reason they choose. The primary goal of the merchant's "trial" offer is met. The product sample received the level of exposure desired by being placed directly in the hands of a potential consumer.

Freebie users absolutely do have the right to cancel, and it is fully expected by merchants that a percentage of the people who signup will cancel at/before the trial expiry. In fact, merchants use historical cancel rates when figuring out the per-lead rate they'll pay - that's why the per-lead rate is always higher than the cost to the surfer.

As I described in my previous post, it's the pre-paid and stolen credit cards that are destroying the incentive model. I'm absolutely not exaggerating when I say that some merchants are seeing that 80% of their incentive generated leads are bad like that. And these bad leads are being created with no real way to detect/stop them until it's way too late.

I agree with you that it would be great to have an open dialogue between affiliates, networks and merchants to try and eliminate this type of fraud. Unfortunately, one necessary thing would be for affiliates to wait up to 60 days to receive their commissions. This would give the merchants enough time to figure out which credit cards are no good and reverse those leads.

This is not a solution that would be very popular, and it would take across the board implementation to really work. That on its own would be a task even bigger than eliminating this type of fraud.

[RevU Kelly]

Originally Posted by Steven Sauve

Freebie users absolutely do have the right to cancel, and it is fully expected by merchants that a percentage of the people who signup will cancel at/before the trial expiry. In fact, merchants use historical cancel rates when figuring out the per-lead rate they'll pay - that's why the per-lead rate is always higher than the cost to the surfer.

As I described in my previous post, it's the pre-paid and stolen credit cards that are destroying the incentive model. I'm absolutely not exaggerating when I say that some merchants are seeing that 80% of their incentive generated leads are bad like that. And these bad leads are being created with no real way to detect/stop them until it's way too late.

I agree with you that it would be great to have an open dialogue between affiliates, networks and merchants to try and eliminate this type of fraud. Unfortunately, one necessary thing would be for affiliates to wait up to 60 days to receive their commissions. This would give the merchants enough time to figure out which credit cards are no good and reverse those leads.

This is not a solution that would be very popular, and it would take across the board implementation to really work. That on its own would be a task even bigger than eliminating this type of fraud.

Yes I agree completely. Many people are using prepaid and stolen (or often pre generated) credit cards to complete offers, they never cancel the offer they go to get billed and it comes back denied or worse stolen. The use of prepaid and stolen credit cards is ruining the incentive business.

I also agree with your possible solution but like you said that would have to be implemented across the board. IMO, many affiliates often go with whoever pays the most and whoever pays the fastest, just like their users.

[martymcfly]

forgive me, but can someone explain what an incentive offer is ?
in clearly defined specifics, and no jargon.

thanks for ya help!

[RevU Kelly]

Incentive means you offer an item/prize/gift in exchange for the completion of campaigns/offers/quizzes/zip-submits. For an example one incentive site that uses incentive marketing would be freeipods.com which is owned by Gratis Internet.

[FusionBrett]

There will always be changes in the marketing space. I have read a lot about incentivised offers lately and the trend suggests a sharp decline beacause incentivisation generally does not produce very good leads/traffic for the advertiser. Generally, I say. I just posted on ABW this morning about incentivised offers and referred to this article on Digital Moses: http://www.dmconfidential.com/blogs/category/Incentive_Marketing/

I hope this has helped. I am interested in getting other affiliates opinions on the future on incentivised offers.