Overture Affiliates Issues

Problems associated with overture affiliates.

[JohnCanyon]

Curious if any of you have had the same issues as the following, and if so how you went about getting it corrected with overture. Our current advertising budget with Overture is about $10k / month and recently we have noticed large amounts of "junk" traffic coming in from Overture affiliates. I use the term "junk" traffic to describe traffic that products less then .1% ROI. Our average ROI from yahoo.com and its major partners ranges from 4-5%.

We have identified a certain affiliate sending us large amounts of "junk" traffic that we have estimated has cost us roughly 1.5 - 2k month for less then .01% ROI. We have contacted Overture several times regarding this matter and still have not received a response from them, furthermore we are unable to locate any feature within the DirecTraffic Center that would allow us to turn off affiliate traffic.

If anyone has ideas on how we can get this resolved I would greatly appreciate it, as if they cannot stop this from happening we will be forced to terminate our account with them.

Cheers,

John

[JohnHammer]

John:

Have you given Overture the hard data evidence in writing? As in, date/time of clicks, the search phrase used for the clicks, and how many clicks the IP's made?

This data makes a massive difference in my exp. to prove the case.

I too have been looking for a way to turn off affiliates and we are getting defrauded, but we're pesenting hard data each month and get refund credits.

It sucks to have to do that, but they have no incentive to really stop it. A terible conflict of interest.

JH

[JohnCanyon]

We do have all hard data concerning clicks etc., the clicks that are coming through are not from actual searches, they are from links, which is also very bothersome. I have sent numerous complaints to Overture and they have done nothing, including sending them hard data.

As you can see by the ROI values something is definitely amiss here. If you want I can sticky you the major culprit here and you can tell me what you think.

Thanks,

John

[JohnCanyon]

I just sent Overture a massive list of fraudulent information. I also know several other vendors in my position that are experiencing the same issues from the same affiliate.

Quite a few of the IP's that I have tracked have been from outside the United States, which is extremely iritating since we only do business within the US.

You would think, that Overture would take necessary steps to ensure quality affiliates, obviously this is not happening. It seems all they care about is the bottom line. I just wonder how many poor suckers out there are getting defrauded and dont even realize it because they are not tracking incoming clicks. I would assume Overture makes millions a year from that.

[beren]

Yes. Overture seems to have added affiliates in the past few months, and they aren't good. One in particular started showing up in late December and by mid-January there was one day when they provided more clicks than all other Overture affiliates combined. (It was a very minor search site, too.) This was so blatant that even Overture had to agree it was fraud and they refunded us about a week's worth of spending.

Clicks from that affiliate have slowed to a crawl.

However, our overall spending at Overture is still up, and it isn't because of Yahoo, MSN, and other quality affiliates. It's due to a plethora of junk sites.

[ByronM]

why not just limit yourself to search results?