This Sunday marks the season finale of HBO’s popular “Game of Thrones” TV series, which actually set a record for piracy earlier this year. The data from that record-setting season opener was rather impressive: over a million downloads within 24 hours and more than 163,000 users simultaneously sharing a single torrent.

As the information spread, it soon came to the attention of HBO. And although their initial response wasn’t so decisive, it now seems that they’re taking action to prevent such piracy (for all their programming—not just Game of Thrones). If you search for Game of Thrones related torrents on Google, you’ll see a good number of DMCA takedowns among the organic listings. Each takedown includes a message from Google with this basic verbiage:

In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.

From this sample DMCA complaint, we can see that HBO is working with the third-party service IP Echelon to report copyright violations for 23 of its shows. And this effort should get them some traction—organic listings are a very common way for users to find their illegal downloads (the search term “game of thrones torrent” receives about 550,000 searches per month on Google).

Getting these organic pages taken down will certainly provide some relief. But what’s happening on the other side of search? How does the Game of Thrones brand fare in paid listings?

An Alternative Form of Brand Abuse

Here’s the good news: torrent sites don’t seem to be going after the Game of Thrones brand in paid search. That would have been especially concerning, so we’re glad that we haven’t found any evidence of it. However, that also leads us to the bad news. We did find a significant group of advertisers promoting episode streams and other alternative ways to watch the show. In particular, these advertisers are targeting the Game of Thrones brand in ad copy and through their selection of keywords. For example, take this ad placed on AOL:

Note the misleading domain as well

Once you land on the advertiser’s site, gameofthronesseason4.com (which by itself is sort of begging for a lawsuit), you’ll find some formulaic narrative content, display ads, and a section with links to streaming episodes. The episodes section (which you can also navigate to through the “Full Episodes” sitelink from the ad) links to streams at the websites Movie4k.to and Movie2k.to.

If you try clicking on the links for seasons 1 and 2, you’ll actually land on an error page. The reason? Well, each of those links goes to Movie2k.to, which apparently was shut down back in May (possibly due to the MPAA’s complaint about piracy). Conversely, all of the season 3 links go to Movie4k.to and seem to work.

Ultimately, whether those links are working or not, this site is only serving to divert traffic from HBO’s own site—where a visitor might buy episodes on DVD, find merchandise, or sign up for HBO GO. Furthermore, by presenting these free viewing options, this site undermines the paid options that actually make money for HBO. And this site accomplishes all this by taking advantage of the Game of Thrones brand name in its domain name and its ads. (Interestingly, though, the advertiser seems to also be monetizing the site through affiliate links to Game of Thrones figurines on Amazon).

Toolbar Promoters Seize the Opportunity

Unfortunately, being a popular search also makes you a target for anyone looking to snag some traffic. And this case is no exception. We’ve seen many toolbars piggybacking off the show’s popularity—with the majority of them making some sort of misleading claim about how users can watch episodes for free through their software.

Here’s an example that showed up on Ask:

While the ad does indicate that the user will be downloading something, it’s rather deceptive about what that something actually is. In this case, it gives the impression that the download will enable the user to watch full episodes of Game of Thrones—seemingly for free. Furthermore, the designation of “app” makes it seem like more of a full service program such as Netflix or Hulu—not a toolbar.

The landing page is somewhat apologetic about the “app” claim, replacing the term with “extension.” However, the rest of the page follows suit with the tone of the ad:

But if you end up downloading the toolbar, your computer won’t exactly turn itself into a TV. In fact, you’ll have no free option for watching Game of Thrones at all. You’ll merely find a portal with a set of links to watch it via HBO GO or Xfinity. And those will only work if you’re already an HBO subscriber through your cable plan.

Beyond that, you may find the occasional link to watch a different show on Hulu or elsewhere. But that’s about it, with the exception of your default search engine being reset to “MyWebSearch” (as you can see on the download page above).

Unfortunately, Popular Trademarks Are Often Targets for Abuse

Of course, this basic practice isn’t anything new. Blackhat advertisers will often try to leverage such combinations of search popularity and brand trust in order to dupe users into taking some undesired action. The specifics may be unique, but we’ve seen similar brand bidding tactics before. Many of the offenders in this case were familiar to us, due to the scale of paid search monitoring that we conduct.

We find that the most actionable step for brands to take here is to issue complaint letters to the search engines. That way, these trademark infringing ads can be taken down, preventing traffic from being diverted and users from being deceived. If you’re curious about how to manage the process, we’d be happy to discuss it in further detail.

This post originally appeared on the BrandVerity at Game of Thrones Brand Gets Targeted in Paid Search

That’s why we’re pleased to announce these two new features in PoachMark, our paid search monitoring service. One update is to our policy creation process, and the other is to our reporting, so they actually bookend the service rather nicely. Without further ado, here’s a quick rundown of what these updates are and how they should make your compliance efforts just a bit easier.

A Simpler, More Flexible Way to Flag Ad Copy Violations

Which advertisers are using your trademark in ad copy? Are they authorized to? By using your brand name, are they capturing clicks that would have otherwise gone directly to you? It’s very common to need visibility into how other advertisers are referencing your brand. And although we’ve supported that functionality for quite some time, it hasn’t really been a particularly intuitive or extensible part of the system.

To make ad copy simpler for you to monitor and manage, we decided to change that. So we’ve added this optional step to the policy editor. (Keep in mind that the feature is entirely optional, and will have no effect on previous policies). Here, you can choose to enter your trademark terms and their variations. Remember to enter them one per line just like in the Keyword, Your Website Domains, Whitelist, and Blacklist sections of the policy editor. You’re free to include as many brand names as you choose in each policy, but depending on how you plan to use our reporting, you may want to be discerning about which terms you include (we’ll explain more below).

If any of the terms you enter in this box are used in the ad copy (either in the headline or description) of the ads found in your policy, they will be flagged as “Brand Matches” in your BrandVerity reports. The more terms you include, the more Brand Matches you’re likely to flag. You’ll also notice that we’ve updated our reports with a new column for “Brand Matches Found.” That’s our shortcut for drilling down into the specific ads that include your trademarks in ad copy. Similar to the Alerts and Adhijack columns to its left, the Brand Matches column can be used to navigate deeper into our reporting interface. Just click on the number in a particular row, and you’ll see a report of all the brand matches from that particular day.

We’ve also included an option where you can select “Only notify me if my brand terms are found in ad copy” in this section. When this box is checked, you’ll only receive alerts for ads that included one or more of your brand names AND meet all the other criteria of your monitoring policy. Any ads that fail to meet each and every one of your policy’s rules will be filtered out—so remember to use this feature strategically.

This addition should make it simpler to target some of the more complex subsets of ads that you may be looking for. At the same time, it also eliminates some of the redundancies in policy creation—and streamlines the process of monitoring for ad copy violations. Of course, if you have any questions (or you’d just like a quick refresher on building policies), we’re happy to give you a quick walkthrough. Just contact our support team.

See If Your Search Engine Complaints Are Getting Traction

When it comes to certain ads that abuse your trademark and go against search engine policies, BrandVerity’s interface has included a standard feature for filing complaints to the search engines. The feature was able to simplify the process of sending bulk complaints. But unfortunately, once you sent a complaint, you wouldn’t get much feedback from the engines.

To close the loop on that process, we’ve added a new update that tracks the success of the complaints that you file. Here’s how it works: every complaint that you file gets recorded in our system—the date, the ads you complained about, the search engine(s) you complained to, and a copy of the letter that you sent. After you’ve sent the complaint, our system will comb through the new data that comes in each day, checking to see if the same ad has appeared again. If the same ad resurfaces, we know that the complaint was probably unsuccessful.

The tracking is supported by some new reports that are available to you in the Case Management (Case Mgmt) tab at the top of our interface. Simply navigate to that tab, and then “Complaint Letters” to explore your options. Here, you’ll be able to see the history of complaint letters you’ve sent, the ads you’ve complained about, and the success of your complaints over time. You’ll even be able to check whether a specific ad has been seen again within a given timeframe. Plus, you can filter these reports by date, keyword, search engine, and more.

Our hope is that by providing this information, you’ll be able to invest your time more efficiently in your outreach to the engines. We know that sometimes the search engines can seem like inaccessible black boxes, so the more feedback you can have in the process, the better. The one thing to keep in mind is that this reporting will be most accurate for accounts that have a relatively high search frequency, since higher frequency means we’re more likely to immediately catch an ad when it shows up again. If you’re unsure whether your account qualifies, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team. We look forward to seeing your results!

Need a Walkthrough?

We’d be happy to guide you through these features and suggest some ways for you to get started with them. Simply send a brief message to our support team and we’ll set up a time to walk you through the updates.

Update on 5-24-13:

A Sample Brand Matches Report

As we mentioned above, when you click on the number in the “Brand Matches Found” column, you’ll be taken to a report of all the times your trademarked terms (the ones you entered in the Your Brand Names box) were used in ad copy on that day. You can also generate these same reports by selecting “Brand matches only” in the Ads report within the Paid Search tab.

For example, here’s a sample report where we included “Paid Search” as our brand name. As you can see, each ad in this report includes that term somewhere in the ad copy.

This post originally appeared on the BrandVerity at Introducing Two New PoachMark Features

Lately, we’ve found some similar practices targeting social media sites. Not all of them choose arbitrage as their end game—some opt for toolbar downloads or other schemes. But the end results are roughly the same:

1. User deception and negative user experience for the visitor
2. Brand dilution, lost traffic and increased PPC costs for the brand

Why Bid on These Terms?

For starters, these terms are frequently searched. Very frequently. The AdWords Keyword Tool estimates 151,000,000 global searches for “facebook login” each month. And that’s just for one keyword targeting one social media site—on one search engine!

Secondly, these terms are incredibly cheap to bid on. The AdWords Traffic Estimator tool suggests that a maximum bid of $0.05 would be enough to consistently rank in the #2 position.

What Are the Advertisers Getting Out of It?

We’ve noticed a few methods that sites are using to monetize this traffic. They’re generally the sort of things you’d expect in PPC abuse. Let’s start with an example of arbitrage. This was what initially reminded us of our prior investigation:

This one starts with a search for “Facebook sign in” on AOL. You’ll immediately notice that this site, matchedhere.com, is being rather deceptive in its ad. The display URL includes the full address www.facebook.com in front of .matchedhere.com, in an attempt to trick users into thinking it’s actually facebook.com (while technically circumventing any display/landing domain match regulations).

So, what happens when the user clicks on this ad? The site actually loads a blank page, and then pulls in ads through an iframe. The ads are actually syndicated by Bing, but based on a completely new search term, “raid data recovery.” The owner of MatchedHere has clearly rigged this setup in his/her favor, so these ads should have a much higher CPC than the “Facebook sign in” ad placed by MatchedHere.

If you want to look at this for yourself, head over to this page on MatchedHere’s website.

The Dreaded Toolbar Download Landing Page

We’ve observed many of these advertisers promoting certain toolbars on their landing pages. Generally, the goal of the toolbar download is to reset the user’s default search engine—or to simply have them use the search engine provided in the toolbar. In this case, the sites seem to be making money from this in a few ways:

1. Sending their search traffic directly to a specific search engine — and receiving some sort of commission or payment per search they refer
2. Loading in search results and ads from another search engine onto their own site — and then earning a commission for the ad clicks they generate
3. Placing pop-ups or other ads in the user’s browser

In some cases, these toolbar-related landing pages actually do a reasonably decent job of mimicking the actual site. That’s bad news for the site—but unfortunately it’s good news for the toolbar promoter. Let’s look at this example where we found Pinterest being targeted.

Here, the ad does a particularly good job of seeming legitimate. It has the trademark “Pinterest” in its display URL domain, and even includes the word “Pin” a few times in the copy. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have been terribly suspicious of this ad if I had encountered it in the wild. My reaction might have been “interesting, Pinterest now has a desktop app” and then I would have moved on.

The landing page also does a surprisingly good job of looking like it’s actually Pinterest. Although it’s somewhat conspicuously lacking the official Pinterest logo, it uses a font that’s very similar to the Pinterest font. I even considered for a moment that I may have been totally off base, and that this was in fact a legitimate Pinterest-operated site. However, a little additional investigation on their contact page reveals that premiuminstaller@gmail.com is the only provided contact for the site.

After clicking on “Get Started,” the user is then taken to a subsequent page with the call-to-action “Download Now.” This launches something called Optimum Installer (which is actually mentioned in the fine print just below the Download Now button). Optimum Installer prompts the user to install a handful of toolbars alongside the Pinterest app. These include the AOL Toolbar, DefaultTab Search Toolbar, GetSavin toolbar, Norton Security Scan Toolbar, and others. Interestingly, an incomplete list of these bundled toolbars is actually available on Optimum Installer’s website.

In our testing, we weren’t able to associate the GetSavin toolbar with affiliate oriented activity, but our testing was limited. We did notice a considerable amount of ad injection and pop-up activity. And ultimately, whether it’s motivated by affiliate commissions or ad revenue, it’s definitely an unwanted and unsolicited annoyance to the user.

Brand Bidding Covering the SERP

It gets even worse. While many of these ads are showing up below or to the side of the organic results, there are some cases where they overwhelm the organic listings quite considerably. Here’s an example from Ask where the actual Pinterest login page has been buried almost halfway down the SERP:

For Pinterest, there’s absolutely nothing to be gained from these advertisements. All they can do is divert traffic away from Pinterest’s site. Traffic from users who were simply looking to access their Pinterest accounts and use the product.

Furthermore, the calculated trademark abuse by sites like pinterestdesktopapp.com may have even more harmful results. By luring in users and pretending to be the actual brand, they can lead those users to attribute their negative experiences (frustrating toolbars, ad-filled landing pages, etc.) to the real brand. Not only does that weaken the brand, it can easily result in some user fatigue and attrition.

How Widespread Is This?

We’ve noticed a variety of social media sites being targeted by this, with some experiencing more abuse than others. From what we’ve seen, this is primarily occurring on AOL and Ask, with some instances on Bing and Google Mobile as well. So far, the sites behind the brand bidding include:

What Can Be Done?

Fortunately, the vast majority of these ads should be eligible for takedown from the search engines. They’re usually in violation of either the engine’s arbitrage policy or its trademark policy.

Our advice to these social media sites would be to proactively monitor their branded keywords across the major search engines. With a process or service that provides broad visibility into paid search, they can more effectively protect their brand and their users from these forms of abuse.

This post originally appeared on the BrandVerity at Advertisers Brand Bidding on Social Media Sites’ Logins

Compliance is a particularly interesting challenge at the network level. If a network conducts compliance poorly, they are likely to make more money in the near-term. Conversely, they actually have to invest in people, process and technology to conduct compliance well. My experience suggests that network compliance has a meaningful fixed cost — there is a minimum investment required to protect the network at a basic level and it is almost independent of the size of the network. Large companies that run their programs entirely in-house seem to maintain a similar level of compliance investment as top networks do. The investment that allows you to capture one rogue affiliate typically allows you to capture the rest.

For advertisers, compliance is a multi-faceted issue. To really dig into the many aspects of compliance that might be relevant to your program, take a read through our 30-page guide to affiliate compliance. In my discussion below, I’ll focus on the topics that I consider to be particularly important when evaluating network compliance: Paid Search, Software, Cookie-Stuffing, Malware/Adware and ensuring a “one account per affiliate” registration policy.

Effective compliance stands on three legs: People, Process & Technology. Strengths in some of those areas can make up for minor weaknesses in others. Similarly, a big weakness in one can destroy compliance entirely.

People

The people conducting compliance have a major impact on outcomes. I’ve certainly observed this many times. Some of the best compliance personnel have developed a fine-tuned sense for a rogue affiliate, and can quickly identify suspicious activity. Similarly, junior personnel can often be easily misled by an affiliate and may end up inadvertently helping rogue affiliates conduct more abuse.

I’d ask the network:

1. Who is responsible for compliance in your network?

2. How many people are there? Are they full-time or part-time? How many years experience do they have?

3. Are they focused solely on compliance? If not, what other responsibilities do they share?

4. I’d also ask about reporting and compensation structure.

Compliance is a very specialized skill set. It requires a strong technical background, a curious intellect and fairly relentless focus. I’d expect to see dedicated full-time personnel conducting network compliance. I’d want to see them organizationally independent from the publisher side of the business and no part of their compensation should be tied to advertiser or business performance. I’d expect the compliance personnel to possess meaningful seniority in the organization. I’d never want a situation to emerge where someone in the account management or publisher management function could overrule someone in the compliance department.

One network executive cheekily commented to me that his compliance team was “in the profit destruction business”. He was happily trading off short-term profit for healthy long-term relationships, but his comment underscores some of the tension inherent in network compliance.

Some networks have their account managers conduct some aspects of compliance. This isn’t necessarily a problem (although I prefer dedicated personnel), but it does require you to understand more about the person or people that would be your account managers. The experience of individual account managers can vary widely. They are often the most junior staff at a network, sometimes hired into that role right out of college. I’ve also worked with seasoned affiliate account managers that have years of experience and can appropriately balance the conflicting demands of compliance and sales growth.

I expect many larger GAN advertisers had a relationship with at least one person from GAN’s compliance team. I’d ask to meet someone from the team you’d be working with and have them walk you through their processes, policy and technology.

Process (& Policy)

Understanding the process and policy behind a network’s compliance efforts requires digging into details, but it is incredibly worthwhile. Questions I’d ask:

1. What is your network’s policy toward:
   -paid search policy abuse?
   -affiliate use of software?
   -cookie-stuffing, malware/adware and affiliates with multiple accounts?

2. Under what circumstances will you remove an affiliate from the network (or from a program)?

I’d look for strong base of network policies with clear protocols for removing affiliates who are found to be in violation. Most networks will remove affiliates found violating their network policies, but are less likely to remove affiliates from the network if they are only found violating your own policies. A strong baseline of network policies gives you enhanced protection, because you know that once the affiliate has been caught by anyone (whether it’s the compliance team or another advertiser), the affiliate is likely to be removed from the network.

Also, what happens to affiliate links when an affiliate has been removed from the network (or from your program)? We’ve seen many rogue affiliates who, after being kicked out of networks, continue to promote programs for some time. Often, unsuspecting users get caught in the middle and end up clicking on a link that gives them an unexpected error. To be clear, I can see situations where you might want an error but most of my experience has involved circumstances where the broken link damaged the advertiser.

Along with asking the network about its policies, you’ll also want to know what specific steps the network takes to discover violations and ensure compliance. I’d suggest asking:

1. Does your network proactively monitor for paid search abuse, software abuse, cookie-stuffing, and malware/adware?

2. Who does the monitoring work? Is it advertiser specific?

3. Do you proactively monitor on behalf of specific advertisers? Do you reactively investigate?

4. What is your process for conducting the monitoring?

5. Do you reach out and resolve abuse directly or simply provide reporting to advertisers?

6. Under what circumstances will commissions automatically be reversed? How far back?

7. What do you do to ensure that affiliates removed from the network are not readmitted or that affiliates only operate one account?

Generally speaking, you are looking for networks that proactively monitor for affiliates violating both their network policies and their advertisers’ specific policies. There is some natural tension here, since advertiser-specific policies can vary widely, but you’ll at least want to understand what the network monitors and what you’ll be expected to monitor.

I’d really dig into the monitoring process itself as well. Have them outline their processes. For example, when discussing software, I’d ask how often they test the software and whether they conduct that testing on versions submitted by the affiliate and/or versions they find in the wild. For paid search, if the network monitors on your behalf I’d ask how often they review collected data and engage with violating affiliates – daily, weekly or monthly. We’ve found that quick follow-up discourages repeat abuse.

Lastly, once the network has removed an affiliate, I’d really like to have some comfort that the affiliate can’t rejoin the network tomorrow. It is likely impossible to prevent this entirely but I’d like the affiliate to have meaningful barriers to rejoining the network.

Technology

I’m very conscious of my biases on this topic, so I’ll keep it short. Detecting paid search abuse, cookie-stuffing, malware and software abuse requires meaningful, sustained investment in technology. Rogue affiliates are a creative and adaptive bunch and any technology that stands still will eventually be consistently outmaneuvered by affiliates.

Inevitably, a network will either build or buy technology to address those compliance challenges. We work with a number of networks that had once built an internal technology for paid search monitoring and to their credit, they were very quick to adopt a third party solution once they deemed it advantageous to their advertisers.

I’d ask what technologies they use and how they support those technologies. I’d drill down into service details. Using paid search as an example, I’d ask how many times a day they monitor to give a sense for how comprehensive the offering is. I’d also ask whether you will get access to the reporting details.

GAN’s Compliance Strengths

GAN’s compliance team was particularly strong in several core aspects. By no means were they the only network to excel in these areas, but as you consider moving networks, I might focus on these topics in particular to understand where you might experience additional exposure.

GAN was particularly good at ensuring affiliates had only one account.

I assume they dramatically improved on this dimension when they joined AdSense and Google Affiliate Network accounts. Of course, it was by no means bullet-proof—but GAN did a particularly good job preventing rogue affiliates from maintaining multiple IDs.

GAN had a relatively strong software policy.

They did not allow affiliates to bundle their software. In my own opinion, software bundling most frequently results in pernicious activity. Either users end up with affiliate software they didn’t expect, or the software itself behaves more aggressively than the versions the affiliates made available to networks. Regardless, if you move to a network that allows software affiliates, you’ll need to consider how their policies match up against GAN’s and what additional abuse you may now be exposed to.

GAN also was incredibly proactive with malware and adware.

They conducted their own proactive monitoring and aggressively removed affiliates that they found taking advantage of malware and adware. They’ve also looked at malware abuse across other networks and they felt pretty strongly that they maintained one of the cleanest networks in this regard.

Don’t forget the advertiser’s role in compliance

While this discussion has focused entirely on network compliance, the advertiser plays a really important role in ensuring effective compliance. Their duties extend from developing clear, unambiguous policies and affiliate agreements all the way through to proactively utilizing data unavailable to the networks (such as chargebacks and fraud reports) to identify problems.

Despite everything the network can do for compliance on an advertiser’s behalf, the advertiser is ultimately responsible for ensuring program compliance to their standards. The affiliate networks can offer tremendous resources for compliance monitoring and management, but network compliance should not be a substitute for an advertiser’s own efforts. Read through our aforementioned compliance guide to more deeply familiarize yourself with the steps an advertiser should take to manage compliance.

And finally: what did I miss? I’m sure this is by no means comprehensive, so I welcome any feedback that you’d like to add.

This post originally appeared on the BrandVerity at Evaluating Affiliate Network Compliance: People, Process & Technology

The number of moving parts involved here is incredible—and potentially overwhelming. In particular we are expecting abusive affiliates to take advantage of the decreased focus to increase their efforts. After considering the burden this has placed on many in the industry,  we’ll be providing complimentary monitoring of GAN affiliates in paid search through the end of July to all advertisers currently unprotected by BrandVerity’s monitoring.

If you’d like to try our service at any point over the coming weeks, simply send us a quick note and we’ll get you started.

This post originally appeared on the BrandVerity at For Those Affected by the GAN Transition

Arbitrage targeting the GEICO brand name

One of the advantages of running paid search monitoring on a large scale is that you occasionally uncover valuable data by accident. Kick up enough dust, and sometimes it settles in an interesting, unexpected way.

We recently noticed a new brand bidding practice. The tactic actually bridges two slightly different forms of search advertising: traditional search engine PPC and dynamic on-page ad placement (via some form of ad syndication, such as the Google Network).

The basic formula is to pay for ads on long tail brand keywords, then link the user through to a parked domain that pulls in ads from the Google Search Network. Here’s the typical process:

1. Site owner buys search ads on well-trafficked, but not so conspicuous search terms (e.g. “Geico login”)
2. Site owner sends the user to a front website
3. If the site owner isn’t suspicious of the user, the user is then sent over to a parked domain
4. Ads appear on the parked domain
5. Site owner makes money when users click on the placed ads

How Does This Make Money?

Based on this schematic, it would seem pretty difficult for anyone to turn a profit this way. At the end of the day, you’re just replacing one ad with another (or a few others of lower value). Right?

In reality, it’s slightly different from that. The sites responsible for this are actually exchanging low cost, brand-specific search traffic for higher cost generic search traffic. While they bid on terms such as “Geico login” (which have low competition and are relatively inexpensive) to bring in visitors, their parked domains return ads for much pricier searches such as “motor insurance quote” or “low insurance rate.” That’s where they make their margin. It’s textbook arbitrage.

But we still haven’t explained part of the equation: how do they actually get visitors to click the ads on their parked domains? It’s not really that complicated. There’s a clear pattern: the brand from the user’s original search (e.g. Geico) always shows up in the #1 ad spot on the parked domain. The domain owners are simply targeting brands with aggressive paid search campaigns, knowing that those brands will appear in a top position for specific (and very expensive) keywords.

Upon seeing the domain they originally intended to visit, many visitors will simply make the easy choice to click through. And enough of them must be doing exactly that, otherwise there wouldn’t be any money in this form of arbitrage.

Search Network vs. Display Network

Another reason these domain parkers are able to turn a profit is their use of Google’s Search Network. According to Google’s policy, parked domains can be classified as either Search Network or Display Network. These could make equal money for an average parked domain, but per-click revenues for Search Network ads are significantly higher. Since these brand bidding arbitragers have rigged what ads show up on their domains, they’re able to get high clickthrough on these pricier Search Network ads.

Front Websites

Each of the sites we’ve observed so far has used some form of front website to cut off suspicion. These front sites seem to only protect against direct traffic. Anything other than a blank referer will usually send you through the sequence of redirects.

In general, the sites include enough basic website elements to bypass a very cursory visual test. Some even include social media icons. But just a bit of additional investigation shows how little material is truly there. The text is composed by keyword-stuffing as many brand-related terms as possible. The social media icons merely link to the homepages for Facebook and Twitter. And if you actually try to buy anything, they tack on hundred-dollar shipping fees.

Here’s an example of what we’re talking about:

Forcing Clicks on a Delay

Once the user has been redirected from the front site and actually lands somewhere, it’s time to place some ads. But in many cases, we’ve found some even more deceptive practices taking place here.

The sites use a domain parking company to monetize their traffic. They use a ’2-page’ lander in order to display the more valuable search network ads.  The first page shows a few suggested searches and a search box.  If a user were to search or click on one of these links they would be taken to a page with the higher value search ads. Here’s the catch: after a few seconds, these sites load in their ads by spoofing a user’s click.

Here’s video evidence of such behavior. (For some reason, the landing page wasn’t initially responding. Disregard the page refreshes—they have no bearing on the URL sequence or redirects.)

Notice how in the upper right, the terms “motor insurance quote” are pre-loaded into the search box! After a few seconds, the site uses some JavaScript to submit the search. It effectively clicks the search button on behalf of the user. The search terms are actually included in the URL that the user lands on:

http://technologyshopnow.com/?s_kwd=motor+insurance+quote&s_token=dGVjaG5vbG9neXNob3Bub3cuY29tbW90b3IgaW5zdXJhbmNlIHF1b3Rl

We were even able to identify the code that’s primarily responsible for this behavior. It’s a script that essentially captures the search terms from the “kwd=” portion of the URL, reformats the string, then attempts to match it with the anchor text from one of the links in the left column of the page.

In this example, the closest we get to a match is the third listing, “Geico Quote.” Failing to match, the script will replace the search box text with the string of search terms (which is exactly what we see happening here). Depending on which of those pathways the script takes, it will then set one of two delays—the first being 2-4 seconds and the other being 3-6 seconds. Finally, it sends a POST request to the server with the new search, triggering ads.

The Origin of This Suspicious Code

From what we’ve seen so far, all the domains involved in this have been using the domain parking service SmartName. We doubt that any legitimate domain parker would actively participate in these tactics. But if SmartName is hosting the domains (and thus controlling all the data they serve), where is the malicious code coming from?

Upon further investigation, it appears that the malicious code is injected by a tracking link from the domain trackerpath.com. This is probably a manipulation of some custom field within SmartName (most likely where users can enter their own tracking link). In this case, the tracking link loads the malicious JavaScript in addition to whatever tracking code may actually be present.

It’s unlikely that SmartName has any intention for tracking links to be used in this way. Their FAQ indicates that the code would be against their policy:

You have the option to choose if your domains go direct to results, or to a lander page that further refines the user’s search and often provides you with a higher RPC.

One or the other, not both. But these arbitragers are trying to do both: offering a landing page that forcibly takes the user directly to results (ads).

Iframing: Another Method of Obfuscation

The Google Network isn’t the only source of the ads showing up on these domains. We also noticed Bing ads being syndicated in iframes. In those cases, there wasn’t even a delay to misdirect suspecting visitors. Instead, the front site would simply load a blank page, filling it with an iframe that calls in search ads.

The keywords triggering those ads don’t come from the user’s original, brand-specific search. As in our previous example, they get replaced with higher value generic terms such as “business credit cards.” And once again, that’s how these sites are able to turn a profit.

Why use an iframe? Well, in this case the iframe would hide anything that appears within it (including ads) from certain types of web crawlers. It’s another clear attempt to cover up what these sites are actually doing.

Harmful to Brands

The most obvious issue with this brand bidding tactic: it diverts organic traffic from brands’ websites. Regardless of whether the user’s intent was to make a purchase or simply access their account, the result is a negative experience that users and brands don’t want.

Under the surface, there are more insidious threats that can directly hurt a brand’s bottom line. To start with, if any of this brand bidding overlaps with the brand’s own PPC campaigns, the brand’s cost per click will increase.

What’s worse, though, is what happens when the user actually clicks on an ad at the parked domain. Let’s say the user originally searched for “geico login,” only to be redirected to a parked domain serving ads for “motor insurance quote,” and then clicked a “GEICO Car Insurance” ad. In that case, GEICO would have to pay for the click on a highly competitive search term when it was already going to bring in the traffic organically (or at least through some very cheap paid search). Plus, GEICO wouldn’t have any way to trace the user’s pathway back to that original search!

The Sites Behind This Brand Bidding

So far, we’ve found all this arbitrage originating in AOL paid search. We can confirm that the following parked domains are involved with this brand bidding practice, targeting the brands listed below:

How Marketers Can Respond

The motivations behind these tactics aren’t very complicated. Whether attempting to bypass analysts’ investigations or mask violations of advertising policies, it’s clear that these site owners aim to hide their questionable practices.

They’re also in clear violation of several Google advertising policies. And since AOL (the engine where this arbitrage starts) is a search partner of Google, ads on AOL are also subject to the same regulations. Here are just a few of the policy violations that make these ads eligible for takedown:

• Trademark Policy — unauthorized use of trademarks in ad copy
• Display URL Policy — mismatch between display domain and landing page domain
• Arbitrage Policy — promoting websites whose sole purpose is to show ads
• Parked Domain Policy — promoting websites without any valuable content

Chances are slim that these parked domains receive any organic, legitimate traffic, so eliminating their paid search traffic will effectively nullify their revenue. With such clear support from the policies above, you’re likely to get some real traction by submitting these ads to the search engines for takedown. If you’re a BrandVerity user, our Send to Engine tool can help streamline this for you.

A Few Other Details

At this point, we suspect that whoever is behind trackerpath.com is responsible for the brand bidding, arbitrage and user manipulation we’ve detailed here. We have also reached out to SmartName with our findings. A representative from their team said they are investigating the issue further, so we will update this post if any new information arises.

If you have any questions about how to start monitoring for this type of brand bidding, feel free to ask us. Familiar BrandVerity users can certainly develop a monitoring policy on their own within their account, but—as always—we’re happy to help you along in the process.

This post originally appeared on the BrandVerity at New Brand Bidding Tactic: Search Arbitrage with Parked Domains

We found an example where the toolbar was deceiving users by presenting a competitor’s coupon disguised as a merchant’s own coupon. Here’s the sequence of events that we recorded.

1. User loads the homepage for Ticketmaster.com
2. A small coupon box hovers over the page promoting what appears to be a Ticketmaster coupon
3. User clicks “Get Coupon”
4. User is passed through an affiliate link and then sent to TickCo.com
5. After landing on TickCo.com, the user is once again presented with the coupon—just placed beside the TickCo logo instead of the Ticketmaster logo

Instead of reloading Ticketmaster’s website after clicking “Get Coupon,” the user is actually sent over to tickco.com. Notice from the screenshot below how we simultaneously see the Ticketmaster logo, the offered code, and “Waiting for www.tickco.com…” in the browser.

What This Sequence Looks Like

Here is video evidence of exactly what we saw. We followed up by using the same sequence of clicks, but added some investigative tools to the mix.

What’s Going on Here?

After looking into this more closely, here are the basic facts we identified:

• Ticketmaster and TickCo have no business relationship with each other, and compete with each other
• “ORDR10TC” and “ORDR20TC,” the two codes displayed in the box, work just fine at TickCo’s site, but DO NOT on ticketmaster.com

Ticketmaster doesn’t pay commissions to coupon affiliates—so the affiliate engaging in this behavior would have nothing to gain by linking to Ticketmaster. But if the affiliate is successful in tricking the user, then they would likely get a commission from any sale on the TickCo website.

By laundering HTTP referers as we noted last time, TickCo remains unaware that the traffic originated on ticketmaster.com.

Manipulation of Web Visitors

More frustratingly, the affiliate has done this by tricking users. The users believe they are receiving a Ticketmaster coupon code, and have no idea that the code is invalid or that their session will be diverted to another website.

Such unrequested in-browser manipulations are almost certainly a violation of user trust. While the hovering coupon box itself may simply have ranged from being a mild distraction to a cautiously welcomed source of information, this practice is based on outright deception.

Is This Intentional?

There are a number of parties involved in this transaction. We have the Yahoo Toolbar, the Coupon Camp app provided by Visicom media (installed in the Yahoo toolbar), and finally the affiliate itself. In this particular instance, it certainly looks like the affiliate is at least aware of the abuse—and quite possibly originating the abuse. Here are some notable details from the page load sequence:

1. Before the user clicks anywhere, the Ticketmaster logo is served from the affiliate’s website: http://www.couponwinner.com/images/merchantimages/3909_Coupon.jpg
2. Once the user clicks on the coupon, the toolbar again makes a request to the affiliate’s website: http://dynamictoolbar.couponwinner.com/r.aspx?CCID=172562&aid=100
3. The affiliate then redirects users to their affiliate link, including sub-id tracking that indicates the source of the click was likely a Ticketmaster misdirection: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-3775473-10506573?sid=DYNACCT-100-10Ticketmaster
4. As shown above, the link is actually a tickco.com affiliate link

Together, these indicate that the affiliate is certainly aware of what’s happening on the Ticketmaster site and likely tracking the performance of the deception. In our view, that may not condemn this affiliate in every single program—but it would be plenty of reason to keep a careful watch on the affiliate.

Who Else Is Involved?

While Yahoo doesn’t look like the source of the deception, it is their software and their brand being presented to users. They ultimately bear some responsibility for the user deception. After all, the Yahoo toolbar can be downloaded from Yahoo directly, and is aggressively bundled with plenty of popular software promoted in Yahoo search and made available through download.yahoo.com. Clearly the toolbar already has a weak reputation, as it sports a 2-star rating on the Firefox add-ons catalog.

However, Yahoo is not the only brand with responsibility here. Yahoo’s toolbar was built using the Dynamic Toolbar framework from Visicom Media. Visicom Media also provides a toolbar plugin (Coupon Camp) to third parties that develop on their platform. Plenty of other organizations use the same framework for their toolbars, and a subset of those organizations have the Coupon Camp app activated. For example, we’ve seen the same experience using the Panda Security Toolbar and the Verizon toolbar among others.

Cleaning This Up

This practice most likely predates Marissa Mayer’s tenure at Yahoo. So we see this as an opportunity for Yahoo to take the lead in decommissioning it.

Looking ahead, we’ll be keeping a close eye on how this resolves. Hopefully change comes swiftly. If you notice any new developments or any similarly suspicious behavior, we’d be very interested to hear from you.

This post originally appeared on the BrandVerity at Yahoo Toolbar Redirecting to Merchant’s Competitor

Ben Edelman has detailed this trend rather extensively. Recently, he presented an interesting analysis of the Ask Toolbar, demonstrating some questionable practices with respect to how Ask is bundled and handles ad clicks.

Toolbars generally monetize themselves by modifying paid search in some way. This ranges from the somewhat innocuous resetting of the default browser to the questionable practice of ad injection.

Going Beyond Search Results

Today’s case is a little different. Instead of modifying search pages or search engine settings, the latest Yahoo toolbar for Firefox has been operating as a coupon affiliate, inserting affiliate links on merchant websites.

More specifically, the toolbar presents a small box that hovers over the normal merchant site, prompting the user to click for coupons. Once the user clicks, a coupon code is revealed and the user is redirected through an affiliate link to another page on the merchant site.

Here’s an example that we found on iStockPhoto’s site:

After clicking, the user does actually receive a legitimate coupon:

Broad Targeting of Merchants

We quickly started testing this on some other major retailers’ sites. After looking up featured deals on some popular coupon affiliate sites, we knew which merchants would make good targets.

The majority of sites that we tested fit the same pattern as iStockPhoto: coupon pop-over with an affiliate link. A few sites did not present any visible changes at all. Overall, we noticed this activity on these merchants’ sites:

• Kohl’s
• McAfee
• Travelocity
• Sears
• eHarmony

Does This Practice Add Value?

Using toolbars and software to display website-specific coupon codes is nothing new—affiliates have been doing this for a long time. We’ve found Adam Riemer’s discussion of affiliate software particularly comprehensive and useful. We would encourage you all to review it in detail.

This case isn’t perfectly clear-cut, but we suspect that a good portion of merchants would have some concerns upon learning of it. Here’s a troubling sign: the affiliates involved have not disclosed their relationships with the Yahoo Toolbar. So, any merchants working with the affiliates have no idea that these affiliate links are being distributed by Yahoo.

Furthermore, the affiliates are laundering the traffic. The clicks generated by the Yahoo toolbar are being modified to appear as though they originated from one of a collection of coupon sites. We would assume the sites are related, although they operate using different IDs within the same network.

It’s also nearly certain that other affiliates would be frustrated by this. Due to last click attribution, many hard-working affiliates may be losing commissions on account of the practice. And unlike with other coupon affiliates, where users must open a new tab and actively seek out coupons, these are presented right on the page. That means plenty of last-second cookie displacement.

Who’s Behind This?

We checked these affiliates’ IDs in our affiliate database. The results: our system showed that a good number of these affiliates were associated with paid search abuse in the past. So if there are confirmed cases of bad behavior by these affiliates, it’s very possible that they’re not acting in the merchants’ interest.

Curious about whether these affiliates are in your program? We’d be happy to discuss and share more information if you send our team a note.

This post originally appeared on the BrandVerity at Affiliates Redistributing Coupons through the Yahoo Toolbar

On Sunday Night, about 40 million Americans watched the awards show—a little over a third of the Super Bowl’s viewership—as did millions of others around the world. That’s a pretty good indication that the event was relatively buzzworthy. And when something is buzzworthy, it’s a wave that many advertisers will want to ride.

So we looked into the Oscars trademark policy. Luckily, the Academy’s copyright and trademark policy was relatively easy to find on their site. Here’s the most pertinent clause for our purposes:

3. “OSCAR®,” “OSCARS®,” “ACADEMY AWARD®,” “ACADEMY AWARDS®,” “OSCAR NIGHT®,” “A.M.P.A.S.®” and the “Oscar” design mark are trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and may not be used except in accordance with these regulations or under a special written license from the Academy.

Any use of the marks “OSCAR®,” “OSCARS®,” “ACADEMY AWARD®,” “ACADEMY AWARDS®,” “OSCAR NIGHT®,” “A.M.P.A.S.®” and the “Oscar” design mark must include notice of trademark and service mark registration and credit the Academy as the owner of said marks (“®”), except as provided in section 20 below.

Section 20 goes on to describe editorial use, such as on news sites and this blog.

Interestingly, although the Academy is somewhat lenient as far as who they allow to use their trademarked terms (anyone can if they follow the policy’s stipulations), they’re very strict about associating the registered trademark symbol (®) with those terms. That gave us a perfect set of criteria to look for in paid search.

So We Developed a Monitoring Policy

After selecting a set of keywords related to the Oscars trademark terms, we let the results pour in. In just five short days, from the Thursday before the show to the Monday after (2/21 through 2/25), we tallied 730 unique ads. Those ads appeared a total of 5,696 times on our searches alone.

Searches were conducted using 18 total keywords—the same set being used continuously throughout our monitoring. Our policy searched the following engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, Ask and Google Mobile.

Our Findings: Mass Disregard for the Academy’s Rules?

Many brands chose to leverage the event’s popularity for their marketing efforts. But of those brands, very few seemed to perfectly adhere to the Academy’s policy. The most common deviation: not placing the registered trademark symbol (®) after trademarked terms.

Almost none of the advertisers uncovered by our monitoring seemed to be in compliance with this stipulation. In fact, we only saw two examples of total compliance: Apple and Dolby. Everything else looked like this:

As you can see from this example on AOL, all five of the advertisers for this search used the Oscars trademark in some form or another. None of them used the registered trademark symbol. Furthermore, none of them seem to have any sort of sponsoring relationship with the awards.

It remains possible that the Academy granted special privileges to certain advertisers. But given the range we see in this crop of ads alone, that’s unlikely to be true in every case. Perhaps the Academy thought Fandango was relevant enough to earn permission, but we doubt that they’d give special treatment to search arbitrage (which occurs multiple times above).

What About Official Partners?

After seeing potential violations by these unaffiliated advertisers, we wondered about official partners. Would they exhibit the same behaviors? The results we found were interesting:

Samsung, the only advertiser we found to claim official sponsor status, follows the same pattern set by all the other advertisers. No registered trademark symbol. Even ABC—with exclusive rights to the broadcast—doesn’t include it in their ad.

Of course, official status can often bring special permissions with it—which would nullify any violations by the advertisers. Such an agreement wouldn’t be surprising in this case. But unfortunately, we can’t know without getting some privileged information from the advertisers or the Academy.

More Clear-Cut Cases

There’s one asset that the Academy may consider even more valuable than any of its trademarked terms: its award statuette. In its policy, the Academy specifies that it “has the sole and exclusive right to reproduce, manufacture, copy, sell, display images of and publish” the statuette.

Clearly, it’s not beneficial to the Academy when manufacturers pass off their likenesses as official replicas. It can easily dilute the brand—or at least reflect on it poorly. But that’s exactly what we found some advertisers doing:

The awards actually being sold here are probably legally distinct from the copyrighted and trademarked statuette. But to pretend that a knockoff is in fact a genuine replica would almost surely be a violation. These sellers would clearly be attempting to profit from a trademark they don’t own and don’t have the right to use.

Time to Update the Policy?

As we observed in our Super Bowl trademark post, it can be difficult for organizations to respond to the use of their trademarks in different advertising media. Especially when an organization is more accustomed to being featured in traditional advertising on television and in print.

Interestingly, much of the Academy’s fine print governs the use of statuette photography, symbology and other visual imagery. While that’s definitely an important aspect of the trademark, the policy might be lacking some additional clarity when it comes to text-based media like search ads. The resulting vagueness probably contributes to the results we found above.

In certain areas of the policy, such as section #4, the Academy seems to hint at such regulations. But they place their emphasis on symbols (statuette, plaques, etc.) rather than trademarked terms. At the very least, these sections of the policy seem worthy of revisiting.

This post originally appeared on the BrandVerity at The Oscars Trademark in Paid Search

In human psychology, the price anchoring effect is one of the strongest instincts in a person’s general behaviour. It’s a heuristic.

As stated in the Psychology Dictionary, “a heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently. These rule-of-thumb strategies shorten decision-making time and allow people to function without constantly stopping to think about the next course of action. While heuristics are helpful in many situations, they can also lead to biases.”

The price anchoring effect as an entity of a heuristic forms part of the decision process when making a purchase. It’s linked with neuroscience where the brain’s pain center is activated when one is considering buying a product. Should the prices increase; so does the ‘buying pain’ associated with them.

How to Market a Product Deemed Priceless?

However, in order for this to resonate among consumers, there has to be a value assigned to a product / set of products so that the price anchoring effect is triggered. How can you determine value if the product is priceless? An example being buying a unicorn – nobody has ever bought one before so what do I pay for it?

Let’s look at a few examples of how the price anchoring effect influences purchase decisions.

Price Anchoring is Fundamental to Today’s Marketing Techniques

This is a fundamental part of marketing, and has been for years. The misconception is that you are rationally analyzing all the products you see, before making a final decision on which product to purchase, or which product you perceive as the best value. The truth, actually, is that you are being given a perceived value by a marketer, in order to create a contextual environment that activates your ‘buying pain’.

Back to the phrase ‘fundamental’ – what is the MSRP (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price) or RRP (Recommended Retail Price) actually for? I think you’ll find it’s to trigger your price anchoring heuristic!

A keynote session on Behavioural Economics in Affiliate Marketing by Ogilvy UK Chairman Rory Sutherland talks about how the price anchoring effect lasts about 40 minutes.

One additional example, which is of the ‘comparative effect’ he shared included how a luxury holiday website were high sellers of televisions via banner adverts that appeared on the holiday website. Why? “There’s one really simple explanation If you’re a behavioural economist. If you spend 40 minutes looking at $3,000 holidays online, a $900 television actually seems ok in comparison.” He made a similar comparison to selling Rolls Royce cars. “You shouldn’t try and sell them at car shows, you should instead sell them at a show where you can buy lear jets and 40ft yachts.”

Other Heuristic References?

There’s plenty out there. A great case study to read is one on a simple website change that massively impacted sales, increasing revenue to $300 million. There’s also a book by Dan Ariely called Predictably Irrational that delves into human behaviors.

About Chris Johnson

Chris Johnson is Content Director & Conference Programmer for A4u’s first stateside Performance Marketing Insights conference to be held in New York City, March 12-13.

In addition to managing conference programming for events across the UK, Europe and US, Chris is a regular content contributor to the Performance Marketing Insight Portal A4u.

He gathers talent and performance marketing leaders from around the world, and delivers a global perspective in each of the conferences offered by A4u.

This post originally appeared on the BrandVerity at Guest Post: The Price Anchoring Effect within Affiliate Marketing