Home > Articles > Claria Cheats Other Affiliates

The following report should be taken from the context that it was reported in May 2003, but is still relevant to anyone who is an affiliate of a merchant who also utilizes Claria (a.k.a. Gator or GAIN) as an affiliate. The following is not an isolated case, but is quite common when Claria, and other similar companies are employed as an affiliate to merchants.

It is not known whether or not Claria (formerly Gator) still uses URL redirection of affiliate links which ultimately caused a loss in affiliate revenue for other affiliates. Claria does use popup ads with the end result of lost site revenue for sites that generate revenue via their own affiliate referral links. When people click the Gator popups, your own site's ad revenue can or does get reduced. We think it's unfair that Gator acts as a parasite of our sites.

WhenU claims they do not redirect affiliate links. However, when their ads are displayed over your sites, you can still lose affiliate ad revenue when people click on their ads instead of your affiliate links (which has essentially the same end outcome of affiliates losing affiliate referral commissions).

From: Robert McRackan
Subject: Overture Gator

If there is any way that I could be more shocked at Mr. Schneider's pro-Gator letter, I'm not sure how!

Not only have I never seen or heard about a single positive comment of Gator and the GAIN network (prior to his letter), but I can also personally attest to the damage it does to PCs and the damage it does to business.

My last job was as the Affiliate Account Administrator at a dot-com with an in-house affiliate program of over 40,000 people. (The company still has a lawsuit pending with GAIN so I'll not say their name.)

Within a week of Gator / GAIN signing up, their profits skyrocketed and the profits of all other affiliates plummeted by a comparable amount. When 4 out of our top 5 affiliates noticed the sharp and sudden decline in their profits, I asked our IT team to look into it.

After much frustration, our IT team discovered that computers with Gator software installed on them were replacing any tracking referral IDs with the one they signed up with. Basically, my site "abc.com" has an affiliate program, the progress of which is tracked with affiliate ID numbers so that they work even if cookies are disabled.

A surfer visits an affiliate of ours: "site.com" with referral ID 123. Gator has ID 987. When the surfer (with Gator installed on their computer) clicks on an affiliate link on site.com to abc.com?ID=123, Gator replaces the ID number and the visitor goes to abc.com?ID=987.

This means that even though our affiliates were responsible for bringing us new clients, they earned nothing and Gator earned their commissions. Gator claimed this was simply a tracking feature of a plug in they installed.

With the consent of my manager and VP, I froze their account due to suspicious behavior. Justice served? Not really. Before I left the company almost a year ago, they still had not decided a fair way to compensate those cheated by Gator.

Robert McRackan
Programmer Analyst, IT Systems/Projects
MarketSmart Interactive, a ThinkPartnership Company
http://www.marketsmartinteractive.com/