FTC ruling holds marketers responsible for their affiliates`actions

[mandy]

A recent Federal Trade Commission settlement with the operators of several porn sites sets out stringent affiliate-monitoring requirements. And while the settlement applies only to the companies named in the complaint, many see it as the FTC’s way of putting online retailers and others on notice that they will be held responsible for the actions of affiliates.

Stephen Cohen, an FTC staff attorney, characterizes the affiliate-monitoring provisions as “best practices, some good guidelines” for the industry. But he also warns that online retailers would be considered initiators of e-mail sent out by their affiliates and thus would be liable for any violations under the CAN-SPAM Act...

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=17155

[valleygirl]

online retailers would be considered initiators of e-mail sent out by their affiliates and thus would be liable for any violations under the CAN-SPAM Act...

The message is hire a good lawyer before starting an affiliate program.

[bargainbloodhound]

In the settlement, the FTC ordered the operators of the porn sites to collect detailed information on affiliates, including name, address and telephone number and, in cases where affiliates are corporate entities, names, addresses, and telephone numbers of persons owning, managing or controlling the company.

I'm surprised that site owners don't collect that information from their affiliates. You really need it in case there is a problem (i.e. one of your affiliates spams 5 million people or your affiliate generates fraudulent clicks/sales leads and you want to sic your lawyers on them). When we used Commission Junction and Share-a-sale to run our affiliate programs they collected all of that information from people (although let's just say the screening processes CJ used then were far from adequate)

. “It’s very easy for marketers to find their offers are being presented on web sites with questionable content

That was one of the problems we had too, and that was 5-6 years ago.  The problem is much worse now and the search engines are filled with affiliate site crap (affiliate site defined here as one whose content is 100% affiliate links/and , or products).

I think the FTC rules are needed, but the requirements are going to make it impossible for small "mom and pop" businesses to run an affiliate program for their business unless they join an affiliate network like Commission Junction which is out of the price range of smaller businesses.

I don't think the FTC ruling will have any effect on stopping the affiliates of the biggest affiliate marketers (i.e. eBay and Amazon) from continuing to abuse the system. Both eBay and Amazon have turned a blind eye to the actions of their affiliates for years and their affiliates (along with Google's) account for a huge percentage of the problem

[jezebel]

How do you police a few thousand affiliates? Spammers aren't going to stop just because you say no.

[valleygirl]

You can't prevent affiliates from spamming. Only retailers with good lawyers and big piggy banks to pay the fines will be able to run affiliate programs.