Let's talk about the same question flipped the other way, you know, how do you trust
the publisher, right?
I'm sure Fraud is, you know, something that you see a lot of attempts at, certainly.
What, you know, how does that plan to how you work and just give me your thoughts on
the problem?
Um, yes, so I'm kind of in the legion business of Fraud, the application has happened and
can't happen.
Um, we're very aware, obviously we log in to look at our reports every day, if there's
any publisher that kind of pops up and there's some trends, we can tell by traffic, clicks,
impressions, conversion rates, we look for these sorts of red flags and we'll reach out
to the publisher and try to acknowledge them through email or through the phone.
We kind of have a series, you know, a follow-ups and if we don't follow about their certain
period of time, we have to freeze, if we don't get back, if they don't get back to us,
we have to freeze an activity, freeze payment, and that's worked well for us because most
publishers that want to work with us, I understand a lot of them are very busy, but we'll
get back to it's using them in a two-week period and they definitely want to receive their
chat for me.
So it's something we take very seriously and we've got to be cautious of, but we do have,
you know, kind of different things in place to kind of protect ourselves.
Gary?
Yeah, sit on open and now know where we have systems in place, where our own teams are
in full stock for all of them.
Again, part of it is the question we have with the advertisers that we're very aware
of on top of what's happening, that it's usually very obvious when you can see certain
spikes happening that we're on top of that and we work in tell, we have been sort of
forced to decide that it makes us clearly identify certain things that we're suspicious,
especially someone maybe even overriding cookies, that they shouldn't be in, we have the
internal team that deals with that, and then it comes into, again, because we have such
a good support system where there are advertisers that we can quickly identify and fix that
issue very fully and suddenly pops out.
Now, if I actually end right, you pay most out of CBA, but yes, entirely, yes, yes.
Well, we have a lead generation program, such a generation program, and that could be
separate to that, but yeah, the affiliate sites, it's mostly on CBA sites.
So it clicks to come through, you know, the Roblox or something, they're not going to
mind anything, so you don't have to worry about that.
So what does fraud look like, is that people who place orders and don't fall through,
or is that?
It's a little bit like that.
I think most of the times it would be quickly, if you see an affiliate, someone who's
come from nowhere who's spiking very quickly, that's an example, that's usually a clear
indication.
We've got to keep an eye on someone because most of the time we hope it's just a great
publisher that's coming, but sometimes we have to just be aware of that kind of stuff,
and that's the union that we have as a service, we can, we click to identify that, we get
on top of it, we monitor it, you know, because we have had emerging publishers who've
been great performers very quickly, you know, have introduced a new technology that's
helping them drive traffic, but we're very much on top of it, and a lot of the time we're
very familiar with some familiar players that we've done this before, and then in turn
we have systems to force it, so we're always aware of what's going on, and then we
work very closely with advertisers, if they have anything that they seem on there, and
then this is issues now.
So we work closely with those they have you seen and you can be as dry, this traffic
that's been driven, what do you see in their use of the, and that's how it works.
Right, you work both CBN and CBC, right?
So there must be some additional challenges there, all about those.
Well, I like what Bay said, first of all, about number one is there's a technology standpoint
protected from fraud, but, and Link Trust has a myriad of technological features that
help to prevent fraud, hopefully before it happens, as well as detected as if it's occurring,
but you can't ignore the most important thing, which is really not the technology, it's
the personal relationship, it's the man-content, and, you know, I've seen networks come and
go because of fraud, and by and large, the ones that go,
it's because they don't manage anything personally, they just sign up whoever signs up,
they run whoever runs, they don't watch these spikes, and, and they expect the technology
to, to just tell them exactly who the fraudulent publisher is, the technology is only so good
as you can configure it, and even when you configure it properly, you still need to have
a personal relationship.
So my, my thoughts on this topic has always been, know who you were, speak to them on the
phone, never cut a check to somebody you haven't personally spoken with, phone, or have
a relationship with, and, again, because this industry is so relationship-based, it's
not hard to find out about people, right, and it's very easy to discover who's worked
with this person, what is their reputation in the past.
Let's shift to the future a little bit.
But one of the things coming, what's the, what's the next big development, you know,
that's just going to happen in the industry?
Well, I think one of the next ones is already here, and that's mobile, mobile tracking,
mobile offers, mobile to mobile advertising, you know, mobile now is what internet tracking
used to be eight years ago, it's in its infancy, but it's exciting, and it's really taken
on. We've found that we've had a great amount of demand from new clients who are trying
to get into the mobile space, trying to track mobile app downloads, or trying to track their
conversion rates from one mobile app advertising into another mobile app to advertising.
And so, to me, that's very exciting, because obviously mobile devices are exponentially
getting larger, larger, larger across the globe, and vastly outpacing the PC and the desktop
and things like that. So, that, to me, is one of the most exciting new ventures in our environment.
Cool. I can't agree more about that. I think that's exactly what we're seeing. It's one of
those just becoming more and more relevant, and, you know, I mean, overall, as an industry,
I mean, you've got to remember, the we're seeing as a network, we're outpacing what the
e-commerce growth is doing, you know, and that's a wonderful thing, overall, for the affiliate
marketing world. So, that's a great thing as well. People start to see the value of the affiliate
marketing. It's not so much of an education process now, and certain marketing teams are looking
online, and that's a great thing for us. But I do agree, adding mobile, especially,
is we're seeing some exciting things there, and we're very well equipped to do with that,
and we're always looking for publishers who are very strong in that. And a lot of the publishers
that we already work with are starting to see that, and that's their roadmap for this year,
especially, to really get strongly involved. Because most of our advertisers are really
developing and asking for it with more than one to sit on the side of it.
Go on. Go on.
I mean, mobile, no doubt, is a hot topic right now. It's, if we have a mobile app as an advertiser,
but we don't anticipate folks completing an application on their mobile device, but what we do is
we collect basic census data, shoot them in emails, so when they do get to a map or a PC,
they can complete the train action there. But can you give them a fully credit
back to that publisher to grow? We're working on that. We're working on that.
That we haven't launched it yet. We're trying to tie up the tracking internally,
so that we can work with our networks on that, but we're headed that direction
when we're working quickly on that. But that's the fact to your original question.
That's really the hot topic that pops into my line of tablets, mobile, everybody's on the
goal on the go, everybody's here in the area, reports, whatnot, that's that.
So last question, if I'm a publisher, I've watched this and I understand now,
okay, I can write about specific products and link out to them in a special way and get paid,
but I'm still a little confused. Give me one tip of how I can become an expert.
What should I do? Who should I talk to? What should I read to get better as a publisher?
Industry conference is kind of confident tomorrow. One of my mentors,
Sean Collins, has a conference on the affiliate summit. Really, any of those types of
industry conferences can be good to go out, go to the workshops, maybe find some books on the
affiliate marketing that are pretty recent, even the older ones are pretty recurrent.
That would be my tip. Awesome. Gary? Yeah, it has links to your
recommendations. What we do is we have a lot of education programs that we've decided to provide,
and they're from webinars to really help the publishers develop, and like I said before,
we haven't very dedicated their development, even once you've developed within our network.
And we're always looking to learn about it and publishes to come in. I agree, come to a lot of the
trade shows and seminars and things like that. We have our own symposiums that we do that
one in June, perhaps in the East in New York, which is always great. I really get you so visible
out there and I'll feel it well. That's the best way to do love what's going on.
Okay, Brad, last part. You know, I think for me it's about finding a mentor,
finding somebody who's successful in the space, and that might be somebody that you met in the show.
But finding somebody who is willing to share some of their information with you and believe it
or not, there's a lot of people that are willing to do that. They're willing to spread the message
of affiliate marketing. They're willing to share some of the secrets of what they have done,
because in the end, the more that affiliate marketing grows, the more benefits those who participate.
And so I think, you know, just in my business contacts with Link Trust, I found that I've
been some fantastic business owners and entrepreneurs. Some people you would never expect,
but yeah, they're so successful. It is just amazing. And those types of people I like to learn from,
find out what they're doing this different and how are they doing? And they're more than happy
to share that information. So I would say, finding somebody that you trust, finding somebody that
you look up to that's doing well in the industry and and speak with them, talk with them and learn.
Great, thank you. Can't help but get a little plug from Big Link here. If you want to learn more
about affiliate marketing as a publisher, come check out Big Link. We may be able to help you as well.
This has been another future of publishing Amazon. Thanks very much for joining.