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When I read the post on the A4U forum tonight that Play.com have decided to remove MyVoucherCodes.co.uk from their affiliate program “with immediate effect”, I had to ask myself what their motivations were for announcing this to the general affiliate community.
Now before we go on let’s get one thing straight, Play’s decision to remove MyVoucherCodes from their affiliate program is their own and im not arguing for or against this decision, my concern is about the way their agency have publicised it.
I spent almost 3 years managing the affiliate program for IWOOT and my understanding of our affiliate channel was that this is business, and some things in business should stay between the involved parties. This is not a group of youths seeing who can p*** highest up the wall, this is a multi £million (£billion?) industry and the integreties of business should remain the same.
Whilst at IWOOT I had the unfortunate pleasure of removing a number of affiliates from our campaign, some for promoting the site alongside adult content, others for breaching PPC terms and conditions and bidding on brand and for a wealth of other reasons. But at no time did we ever announce this fact on our blog or on the A4U forum … We did name and shame merchants who were leaching off the brand terms, but as we wern’t in business with these people and they were taking liberties, it’s a bit of a different situation.
When a merchant accepts an affiliate onto thier program, a business relationship is formed and in my own opinion, the integrities of a business relationship should exist, Confidentiality and Professionalism being amongst them….
And that brings me full circle to what the motivations were for Play.com’s agency to announce this removal to the affiliate community. If MVC are removed from their program then theres more chance cookies will survive customers heading off during the checkout stage to find a voucher code, given the timing of the announcement (peak xmas period) it would appear this announcement is little more than to gain favour amongst the majority of the affiliate industry, by telling them what they have been crying out to hear for the last few months.
My personal opinion is that this should have remained behind closed doors and play.com could do with hiring MyVoucherCodes PR agency to look over future announcements, it’s just not very professional at all.
Now before we go on let’s get one thing straight, Play’s decision to remove MyVoucherCodes from their affiliate program is their own and im not arguing for or against this decision, my concern is about the way their agency have publicised it.
I spent almost 3 years managing the affiliate program for IWOOT and my understanding of our affiliate channel was that this is business, and some things in business should stay between the involved parties. This is not a group of youths seeing who can p*** highest up the wall, this is a multi £million (£billion?) industry and the integreties of business should remain the same.
Whilst at IWOOT I had the unfortunate pleasure of removing a number of affiliates from our campaign, some for promoting the site alongside adult content, others for breaching PPC terms and conditions and bidding on brand and for a wealth of other reasons. But at no time did we ever announce this fact on our blog or on the A4U forum … We did name and shame merchants who were leaching off the brand terms, but as we wern’t in business with these people and they were taking liberties, it’s a bit of a different situation.
When a merchant accepts an affiliate onto thier program, a business relationship is formed and in my own opinion, the integrities of a business relationship should exist, Confidentiality and Professionalism being amongst them….
And that brings me full circle to what the motivations were for Play.com’s agency to announce this removal to the affiliate community. If MVC are removed from their program then theres more chance cookies will survive customers heading off during the checkout stage to find a voucher code, given the timing of the announcement (peak xmas period) it would appear this announcement is little more than to gain favour amongst the majority of the affiliate industry, by telling them what they have been crying out to hear for the last few months.
My personal opinion is that this should have remained behind closed doors and play.com could do with hiring MyVoucherCodes PR agency to look over future announcements, it’s just not very professional at all.
November 12th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Completely agree, the relationship between merchant, network and affiliate is a confidential one. Nobody discloses commissions, earnings, keywords, conversion etc in public and this shouldn’t have been published on a public forum. If your working with this agency how safe do you feel knowing that they could do this to you?
November 12th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I personally am delighted that MyVoucherCodes.com, owned by dodgiest and most disliked person person in a m, Mr Mark Pearson, have been publically kicked off the Play.com program.
As am an affiliate, I will be giving Play.com more prominence on my sites because of this.
November 12th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Well I have posted in the thread. I’m not going to pour further oil on the water unless truly necessary however I have spoken to Mark at length tonight to ask for his account. All I shall say is that a positive response was conducted within 25 minutes of him receiving an email and changes were made, despite the fact the email was received late in the afternoon on the day in question. This was before the affiliation was terminated.
There was absolutely no need to air this issue between Summit, MVC and Play on a public forum.
Having discussed the new guidelines coming into effect in January regarding discount vouchers with Mark, one of the very first sites which shall be fully compliant is MVC. Others shall always find issues with individual affiliates at one time or another. Perhaps it’s the nature of the beast. However regardless of our views of the working practices of an individual, I find it maloderous that a business relationship is discussed in such fine minute detail on a public forum.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Most people know my stance, and to be honest it falls in line with many others who disagree with promoting offers that do not, and never have, existed, but I have to agree.
Mark hasn’t been treated in a business like manner. I personally think he should have been dropped and that was the matter closed. If an affiliate had an issue with any Play.com codes he was promoting (or not), then they should have spoken to the network/merchant/agency direct where maybe then, those who expressed concern, were told that the affiliation had been dropped.
To announce publicly I think was a bad move.
November 14th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I’m not sure I entirely agree. Confidentiality is there to protect the legitimate interests of each party, not to provide some sort of diplomatic immunity to those who break the rules.
Once those rules are broken, the relationship ceases to exist.
It’s a harsh comparison, but if you were a shopkeeper and there was a shoplifter in the area, wouldn’t you want someone to tell you about it?
Play.com were quite clear that this move was made after ‘persistent’ warnings and repeated rule-breaking, and if their programme was being damaged they are right to announce that the issue has now been removed, just as they would if they improved tracking, removed phone numbers or any other change to the programme that can help other affiliates.
Just maybe, other affiliates who stick to legitimate offers might now decide to promote Play now their cookies have a better chance of survival?
November 15th, 2008 at 11:19 am
This is again is all smoke and mirrors, who actually knows any of the facts. Only one side of a story has been told here. Should it have been made public like this. No.
Has made summit media look highly unprofessional and the fact they have put their client play.com in this situation publicly has left them open to legal action for liable.
November 15th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
IF MVC and Mark abide by the rules in January then good on him and I applaud the guy. HE bent some none existent rules and now he is conforming as the rules appear.
Well done Mark
Doug