Goose and Gander 

Written by Brook Schaaf

Ben Edelman is on a roll. Following close on the heels of his extended research into Phia’s violations, he highlighted a most inappropriate recommendation by ShopMy. This time, he didn’t even need to test anything; it was in print on their own FAQ:

We recommend deduplicating ShopMy orders against your affiliate network, and canceling duplicates within the affiliate network, not ShopMy. Since ShopMy provides a more direct brand-to-creator connection, this approach helps preserve creator relationships and campaign performance.

Presumably, ShopMy posted this as an FAQ because it was, indeed, frequently asked; my guess is that it was asked by smaller merchants who lack the sophistication to implement deduplication as a matter of course when they implement two or more tracking platforms.

As you can see on archive.org, the longer explanation is somewhat confused because it names Honey (an affiliate) as a network, along with Rakuten, which is on its way to becoming an agency. It also seems to indicate ShopMy may not consider itself an “affiliate network,” though a creator or influencer network is basically the same thing with a different focus and marketing. Perhaps this was written by someone more junior who didn’t understand the intricacies or know better than to put this in writing? It has since been removed.

This ties into last week’s blurb on affiliate misbehavior because both relate to trust in business practices. It’s important for us to remember that it is not just affiliates who may push and cheat. Here, a network advises something that is good for itself but is clearly unfair to others. This is an atypical example; usually networks look the other way when it comes to affiliates’ misconduct and, it seems, they often don’t even bother looking when it comes to merchants.

Moonpull, which bills itself as “The world’s only affiliate tracking audit platform,” often finds publicly visible merchant cookie-setting errors on landing pages, which means affiliate traffic might not be commissioned at all.

Years ago, there was a panel of network executives at Affiliate Summit West. The most popular audience question was whether they would do anything about deadbeat merchants who left commissions unpaid on one platform only to spin up another elsewhere. The panel agreed to do something about it, after which, of course, nothing happened. Much later, an insider told me there were too many legal concerns. This is understandable, but the point is that we shouldn’t pretend trust in tracking is one-way or one-sided.

So is this material? Probably in most cases, definitely in some.

With an assist from FMTC’s program database, Edelman created a list of merchants operating dual programs on ShopMy and other networks. There is meaningful overlap. He points out that he “found [no other networks] that permit a merchant to cancel a commission so that it can pay ShopMy when the other network’s click came last. To the contrary, networks routinely limit when and why cancellations can be reversed.”

According to ChatGPT, Esq., this could make them liable for tortious interference. It’s amusing to imagine Honey as a plaintiff in such a case.

Next week we’ll talk about solutions to this problem, however widespread it is.