I had a follow up call with Commission Junction today, who contacted me regarding my postings on the topic. Kerri Pollard, Todd Crawford & Kevin Joyce where on the call and I posed some interesting questions to them.
What was basically said, was that their policy was implemented due to the fact that they monitored employee earnings as an affiliate, due to an earlier company policy in which they encouraged their employees to become affiliates, as part of understanding the business. This was back in the days as a startup, but now as part of a listed company, they realise what the implications of this could be, and the possible conflicts of interest. In implementing the policy, they took a wait and see approach, and after all the postings last week, they have contacted a few affiliates to try an allay their concerns, yours truly included. After some of their affiliates started earning commissions equal to or close to their salaries, the policy was debated and they decided to remove the grey around the policy, which prompted the departure of the account managers concerned.
My biggest concern was referring URL data, which essentially gives CJ the data of which keywords we are bidding on, and what’s converting. From our discussions, it seems clear that this data is tightly controlled and access is only granted on a need-to-know basis, for example, Network Quality, in order to detect trademark infringement.
I applaud CJ for being forthright in discussing these concerns with me, and it has made me feel more comfortable as an affiliate. I challenge other networks and search engines to present their case around conflicts like this and the respective data integrity issues.
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