I think you're right - the bad economy is making everybody act more crooked and desperate, from advertisers down the line to networks and affiliates. Maybe this will ease when things improve. Or maybe not.
NB Has been good to me until....
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think it has more to do with the advertisers, looking to save every penny they can find and scrubbing everything they can to do so. A couple of my clients wanted to go 6 months back, and I said no way, would ruin business long term.
I don't bother with Never Blue anymore. I sick and tired of working hard on offers and asshole companies think is fine to shave a few leads here and there. Sometimes those shaved leads is what makes the campaign profitable or not. I think Never Blue is going to get less and less affiliates working with them. Word get around fast, and this is not the first time I have head about them shaving.
I no longer run offers with them, and I never will again. I like C2M and A4D among a few others, that have proven to me they are honest.
Shady networks run along , your days are numbered................
I no longer run offers with them, and I never will again. I like C2M and A4D among a few others, that have proven to me they are honest.
Shady networks run along , your days are numbered................
At the meetup202 here in Vancouver the Neverblue affiliate managers I talked to either played dumb or blatantly denied having any shaving or click loss issues when I confronted them about it in person.
I'm not one to speak for anyone else (which I passed along to NB) but I did discover in my testing of various offers on their site that there was a significant discrepancy between conversion ratios on NB and on other networks. This was easily noticeable within 20-30 leads on a couple of offers, which is when I pretty much stopped promoting through them.
I'm sorry to see a local company get dragged through the mud time and time again on this forum but I suppose that's how these things work. Hopefully they can work to clear both their issues and their reputation.
I'm not one to speak for anyone else (which I passed along to NB) but I did discover in my testing of various offers on their site that there was a significant discrepancy between conversion ratios on NB and on other networks. This was easily noticeable within 20-30 leads on a couple of offers, which is when I pretty much stopped promoting through them.
I'm sorry to see a local company get dragged through the mud time and time again on this forum but I suppose that's how these things work. Hopefully they can work to clear both their issues and their reputation.
some tracking platforms have a scrub setting. Its bullshit and stupid to do cause in the end it will only cause your affiliates to go somewhere else.
Pixels work differently if you think you are being scrubbed just ask them how they get their figures. A lot of networks count raw pixel fires, which can fire multiple times for the same IP even though they only went through one redirect link. This all get's scrubbed out by the advertiser during invoicing anyway.
I got shaved big time today. Had two offers that should have pulled, one got a 1% conversion rate, the other a 4%. It was BS and know I was getting shaved. My ppc engine showed hundreds of clicks, but hardly on nb. So I stopped. Wonder if I'll go back.
haven't been hearing much from them lately. they are usually throwing there name around all over blogs and websites haven't seen much from them. there tracking blows and there always on the last end to get offers. At one point i recommended them. Not so much anymore.
I ran a campaign with neverblue for a couple months. I was their top affiliate on it. Every once in a while I would get a conversion come through that had no dollar revenue associated with it. It seemed odd to me. I figured it was a mistake and they would pay for it later.
When they finally figured out what it was they said it was a possible action that had no revenue associated with it. And it was a mistake but it was normal and fine.
I felt like I discovered their secret shave system. My AM who is an absolute aweomse dude there assured me it wasnt shaving. It was a weird offer so I dont know. It was only about $240 in these ghost conversions.
Anyway - that same offer they made a mistake and said that they would pay on up to two rebills , but mid way through the offer they raised the payout a bit and went to a fixed payout.
When we all figured out what happened Neverblue bonused me 2k for the mixup which was the average money I would have got from the rebills. So Neverblue is cool with me.
When they finally figured out what it was they said it was a possible action that had no revenue associated with it. And it was a mistake but it was normal and fine.
I felt like I discovered their secret shave system. My AM who is an absolute aweomse dude there assured me it wasnt shaving. It was a weird offer so I dont know. It was only about $240 in these ghost conversions.
Anyway - that same offer they made a mistake and said that they would pay on up to two rebills , but mid way through the offer they raised the payout a bit and went to a fixed payout.
When we all figured out what happened Neverblue bonused me 2k for the mixup which was the average money I would have got from the rebills. So Neverblue is cool with me.
Sorry for the slow reply on this. I was away at a conference yesterday and didn’t see the thread.
I can understand how any affiliate would be pissed that they were being chargedback for traffic that they sent months ago. This is an education offer, and educations leads take a while to validate. At least one month and sometimes 2 months. Edu advertisers will pay for any lead that isn't fraudulent. Fraudulent in edu = a person that doesn't exist, contact information that is not real. So to clarify, if they can contact the person and they're just not interested they still pay for the lead. If they can’t contact the person in any way and/or the person doesn’t exit they don’t pay for that lead. If the advertiser comes back to us claiming leads are fraudulent they have to show proof, we then go over these reports and argue anything they haven’t given valid proof for, then the final report and is passed on to the affiliate (tpsp88 if you didn’t get this let us know.)
So in the case of tpsp88, on more than on occasion he drove a lot of great traffic to the offer and was paid for this good traffic but was later chargedback for the traffic that was shown to be fraudulent by the advertiser. I think our numbers are off (I don’t see even close to $7,000 in chargebacks) but we're more than willing to discuss the discrepancy with you offline and get it sorted out.
It’s obvious that we didn’t do a good job of explaining this possible situation with tsps88 and if he was led to believe this couldn't happen more than once than I think we owe you an apology dude. I’m sure this would have made you think twice about sending traffic to these offers again and you have every right to be mad and post to let everyone know the situation. We’ve since updated all the offers that a potential chargeback situation could occur and this should be clearly explained in the campaign description to avoid any mishaps like this happening again to any affiliates.
To address the tracking issues I can assure you again that it is nothing underhanded like a big special scrub button we push everyday and go mooowhahaha. We have been tacking all your feedback very seriously and our tech team has been working frantically to come up with a solution that is going to increase our chances of winning this split tests. They’ve got some rad things in the works that I know you’re all going to be stoked on but in the mean time I encourage you to split test everything and hopefully we’ll win more than we lose.
I can understand how any affiliate would be pissed that they were being chargedback for traffic that they sent months ago. This is an education offer, and educations leads take a while to validate. At least one month and sometimes 2 months. Edu advertisers will pay for any lead that isn't fraudulent. Fraudulent in edu = a person that doesn't exist, contact information that is not real. So to clarify, if they can contact the person and they're just not interested they still pay for the lead. If they can’t contact the person in any way and/or the person doesn’t exit they don’t pay for that lead. If the advertiser comes back to us claiming leads are fraudulent they have to show proof, we then go over these reports and argue anything they haven’t given valid proof for, then the final report and is passed on to the affiliate (tpsp88 if you didn’t get this let us know.)
So in the case of tpsp88, on more than on occasion he drove a lot of great traffic to the offer and was paid for this good traffic but was later chargedback for the traffic that was shown to be fraudulent by the advertiser. I think our numbers are off (I don’t see even close to $7,000 in chargebacks) but we're more than willing to discuss the discrepancy with you offline and get it sorted out.
It’s obvious that we didn’t do a good job of explaining this possible situation with tsps88 and if he was led to believe this couldn't happen more than once than I think we owe you an apology dude. I’m sure this would have made you think twice about sending traffic to these offers again and you have every right to be mad and post to let everyone know the situation. We’ve since updated all the offers that a potential chargeback situation could occur and this should be clearly explained in the campaign description to avoid any mishaps like this happening again to any affiliates.
To address the tracking issues I can assure you again that it is nothing underhanded like a big special scrub button we push everyday and go mooowhahaha. We have been tacking all your feedback very seriously and our tech team has been working frantically to come up with a solution that is going to increase our chances of winning this split tests. They’ve got some rad things in the works that I know you’re all going to be stoked on but in the mean time I encourage you to split test everything and hopefully we’ll win more than we lose.
I have been not a fan of NB on this forum (primarily due to offers performing very noticeably worse on NB than on other networks), but this is a pretty darn good response. Honest and truthful. +rep for the response. That said, not a huge fan of the fact that if the .edu company can't reach a lead it's considered fraud (for instance, I, as a real person, frequently simply won't answer my phone for #'s I don't know despite being a real person), but that's another matter. I have no idea if it was or not in the terms of the offer for the affiliate to see before running it -- if it was, that's legit and above board then (know the conditions before promoting the offer). If not, it should probably be noted in the terms. (Random Aside: I'd actually LOVE to see more detailed terms, as detailed as possible, per offer, from affiliate networks. I know the whole "nobody reads the terms" arguments but I think it'd be really useful and prevent a lot of these issues if there were very laid out and thorough terms of what the affiliate could expect regarding fraud, etc.)
Props on getting it sorted out with the OP too to the point where he's happy. Genuinely glad to see NB staying on top of issues. And would love for NB to consistently do well split tests -- they have a lot of offers, just in my *personal* experience (can't speak for anyone else and really want to stress this) don't perform nearly as well as other networks on EPC (for me) nor provide close to the same level of quality relationship through the AM's (again, for me at least) as others have.
I think NB needs to give you a raise and promote you to czar of brand protection online
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