I just want to first state I don’t consider myself an expert on this subject at all but I do know a bit about it and I have mixed views on it.
When I first heard about scrubbing I thought it was horrible and immoral but I don’t feel that way anymore.
I remember jumping to conclusions about advertisers scrubbing my leads if one day my conversion rate dropped…I think a lot of people make this mistake.
Since I’ve started running and building my own lead gen offers in the last 6 months I completely see why scrubbing is necessary.
I’m not saying I agree with it completely but there are circumstances where it is OK.
For instance let’s say you start running a new email submit, you would be stupid to do more than 200 leads a day on it for the first week or so. If you do more expect your 50% conversions to go to 15% the next day. The reason for this is the advertiser needs time to evaluate if your leads will back out or not, they don’t want you killing the offer right away doing 10000 leads a day. The best thing you can do is run it under 200 leads a day for the first week then ask your AM to contact the advertiser and ask if they like your quality, if they do then feel free to pump it.
Sometimes things seem wrong until you realize the big picture. It’s not like advertisers scrub just because they are evil, we all want to make money and if your traffic doesn’t back out for the advertiser than they have no choice but to either scrub your conversions to where it does back out or simply ask you to stop running it.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Depends on the issue. If traffic isn’t backing out, then hell yes, scrub-a-dub-dub. Unfortunately, as an affiliate, you are the lowest level on the food chain though, so you are at the mercy of the scrubbers.
Also, shady ass advertisers that scrub without reason is really stupid and gives all advertisers a bad name.
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Next post should distinguish between scrubbing and shaving and how they relate
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Good to hear you have experienced this on both levels. I also agree with the above post to an extent in regards to shady advertisers. However, there are plenty of shady affiliates as well. Bottom line if the quality is good everyone wins.
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Bryn Youngblut Reply:
May 13th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
You are spot on.
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Actually, as someone who is both an affiliate and an affiliate consultant for a major dating advertiser, I definitely don’t agree with the practice of scrubbing.
With the offer I work on, we specifically avoid scrubbing anyone without notice. We have set the per lead price to an amount that works out based on “average” traffic (even though it does scare off some people who expect scrubbing) and we watch the traffic carefully. If someone is up to no good (fraud, spam, flogs, etc.), we get them off the offer immediately.
If the problem is that the traffic’s not backing out, we talk to the network and see if we can use the affiliate’s SUBIDs to tell them what’s working and what isn’t…we ask what they’re doing and try to figure out a way to make the traffic back out. If we can’t do that, we might start to talk about a lower payout or a scrub percentage to make it profitable (assuming that it stays profitable for the affiliate at those levels. The problem is that some networks don’t even want to go to this much trouble unless it’s a super high volume affiliate, as it involves so many unnecessary “in between” people because the networks are so afraid that the advertisers are going to steal the affiliates and go direct (nevermind that I typically know the identity of the top affiliates on the offer anyway).
Scrubbing is just shady, and I think it’s a shame that more advertisers can’t just set a payout and give bumps or cuts based on performance.
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Scrubbing is a factor of the business. If the advertisers don’t make money, we all lose in the long run. As for me, I try and keep things under the radar by rotating across many networks. I also think the more legit you are, the better and more targeted your traffic will be. Just goes toward better quality.
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“if your traffic doesn’t back out for the advertiser than they have no choice but to either scrub your conversions to where it does back out or simply ask you to stop running it.”
They could just pay you a lower CPA and not scrub. As Stephanie above mentioned, networks dont want to go through all the trouble of evaluating lower volume pubs and back and forth with the advertiser, but they could figure out a way to make it easier.
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I’ve never understood that saying of the “traffic doesn’t back out”.
This all assumes the advertiser has got a rock solid system for follow up.
Take dating, as an example. Advertiser pays $2 a lead for a “sign-up”. If I have a dating site promoting gay dating in Arkansas and people fill in the application and I get a “lead” if the advertiser can’t turn them into a paying customer to recoup the $2 then they say it is not backing out, when really what they are saying is the user had a bad experience based on their interaction with my database.
Why the hell should affiliates be penalised for advertiser incompetence?
Why not have a much lower base payout for “everyone” and the if affiliate A has a higher conversion rate than affiliate B, then, pay affiliate A a over-ride/bonus/bounty/accelerator for the higher conversion.
Scrubbing and shaving are things that should only happen in the bathroom or a barbers.
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Yeah, scrubbing is wonderful! /sarcasm
Scrubbing is bullshit. If the leads aren’t backing out then the advertiser just needs to boot the affiliate. Plain and simple.
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Great post. I agree, in the end if the advertisers are not making money no one is.
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Great info…
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Scrubs are very valid in the leadgen world. If you’re buying leads from someone to call those leads and the phone numbers don’t work. Those most likely are going to be scrubbed out. I always try and negotiate up front with an advertiser a fixed scrub %. Typical in the debt, mortgage world is around 10% scrub max. So what we’ll do sometimes if we can is negotiate a guarantee’d 3-5% up front scrub. This we my media buyers are guarnatee’d the return. There will be no clawback/scrubs after the fact to bring a campaign you once thought was profitable into the red.
For emailers they often prefer the after the fact scrubs but for media buyers I think the pre-negotiated is the way to go.
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If the advertiser is not seeing results than he should email scrub so he can get better results for what he is paying for.
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I also fully agree with this blog post. To the newbie, scrubbing would seem like an immoral action to hurt their possible sales, but in actuality I see it as a necessary action for businesses to take. Keep up the great work with your site!
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It happens and you get over it I guess. If you truly want to get over it just get your own offers and run them yourself, no middleman needed.
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if you are doing volume with an aff network on an email/zip submit (and they are direct on the offer, not brokered) the network will be very transparent with you about your quality. if they aren’t, ask them after you do 100 leads or so and they will let you know and adjust your payout accordingly.. it’s a quality game, like everything else in the _performance_ industry.. I think the zip/email submit has received a bad name in the industry from n00bs who don’t understand the quality aspect of the CPA space
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Good Points Bryn.
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I’ve had one a CC submit offer, where I was making $200-300/day. Then 3 weeks later, it randomly and completely stop converting. It wasn’t a gradually drop-off, just 300$ it when from $0 for the next week, then I dropped the offer. Super Strange.
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Interesting point of View….
Let me add one more point…If you have a direct relation with the Advertiser and if your Tracking mechanism is good..like in with us we give the option for the advertiser to put daily capping per affiliate and per Program, duplicate IP filters,Timely Cookie blocks etc….You really do not have the necessity to scrub.
But your point holds good if you are dealing with a third party advertisers through some other networks.
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I am just starting out in affiliate marketing but if they scrubbed my list I would look for an alt provider. Doesn’t seem fair that you give them the info .. they keep it and you not get credit
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