Hey everyone, this is a bit of a newbie affiliate question - until now I've normally hosted affiliate banners myself, as I like to be in control of all the page content on my sites, and ensure that my search/ppc keywords referrer data isn't being handed out left right and center. I've never really thought of this as a bad thing, but on an affiliate network I've just signed up with, they claim that if their banner full code snippet is not copied/pasted EXACTLY as it is supplied, into affiliates websites, then it can result in lost leads/sales? How could this happen, if I'm sending the visitors to the correct aff URL for that particular offer/product?
in general I don't see why you shouldn't host your banners on your won server (some affiliate programs even require you to do this). Check for extra pixels in your code (I think that if you host the banners yourself you should also use the text link provided to link to your merchant or campaign). And it could be a good ideea to ask your AM about this (he should explain what problems might appear).
Most Companies don't want you change anything because they may update the banner every now and then. If you do change something, they probably will not care as long as you send them good clicks. Of course this gives them the option of coming back and saying "You changed something, therefore we are not paying you". The other thing with banners is that they use the image to figure out how many impressions the banner has had so if you don't use it then they may see 0 impressions to say 10 clicks. This may trigger a flag or something and you may end up not get anything for those clicks. What you could do to get around this is to set their banner width and height to 1 and then add your own banner.
Main idea was, if you modify the code, you can probably change aff code and this would cause lost commissions.