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Originally Posted by The Walrus
Excellent answer, and I will be hitting you up on Monday to discuss a few things if that is ok with you (business wise).
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Thanks! Happy to talk to you!
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Who is to say that isn't a PPC campaign set to run only during certain time frames because statistically those are the best join times for Brand X's niche from my many years of tinkering?
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This is only one of a multitude of possible problems with my proposed approach... if, for example, we are running various specials for affiliates and the monitoring software doesn't know about it, it would also trigger unusual pattern detection, and I'm sure there are other possibilities (such as very sophisticated algorithms in the malware designed to evade detection) that would make this difficult. However, I do believe that sponsors who put the energy into it can come up with some ways to combat and limit this sort of fraud, even if it isn't 100% eradicated.
Honestly, though, I would like to believe any sponsor who is on his game would know something about the affiliates who are sending larger amounts of traffic. If the malware is in fact sending/stealing a substantial number of joins, then that affiliate should be noticeable... and if the sponsor asks questions and gets evasive answers, that, combined with whatever information can be had from statistical analysis should provide a reasonable indication of which affiliates are the likely problems.
I can also imagine a scenario wherein something akin to a handshake or checksum or unique identifier could exist between the ad, the affiliate who placed that ad, and the software (such as NATS) at the receiving end, such that if the click comes through, but with a mismatched handshake or checksum, then the software can identify the join as stolen. Of course, there's no existing mechanism for that within current affilate marketing technology, but that sort of trusted-source handshaking technology certainly exists and it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt it for use in the adult industry.
Yes, it's a pain, but this industry is remarkably adaptive and I suspect if the crooks are getting to be a big problem, it's just time for the sponsors and affiliates to work together to find a solution.