Check All Your Income Access Links Regularly - many won't work

**webanalysissolutions** · 1 August 2014, 4:55 am

Over the years I've had numerous problems with Income Access based advertisers. The problem - media links don't track or become invalid.

We recently put in place our own complex tracking on our side to see if our measured clicks align with affiliate system stats and found that a massive 80% of clicks were missed with some Income Access based advertisers.

The reason for this is that the Income Access software/system allows an advertiser to create and then at a later date, delete media and links! So, you may have selected a link 2 months ago, put it across your websites and then find that all of a sudden when clicked it goes to a valid HTML page that just displays the message "Invalid Link". This makes checking links difficult because if you're using a traditional bad link checker it may only check for 404 or other non HTTP200 responses. The "Invalid Link" page Income Access inefficiently provides is a valid HTTP200 response page.

I mentioned this major bug in the Income Access system to Louis several years ago and he acknowledged that it was one of the biggest problems with the system. 3 years on advertisers continue to just delete links in their systems and affiliates go untracked and waste time advertising.

Our latest experience is with BetVictor. We're doing a massive advertising overhaul ready for the new season and found that around 50%!, of all our BetVictor Income Access links were invalid.

Income Access - please, please, please! stop advertisers deleting links. Why can't you just develop a feature that disables or suspends links and forces the advertiser to enter a valid redirect/replacement link that will mean that affiliate referrals are still tracked?

On another point, we've found that deep linking with Income Access is terrible and tracks randomly. Many advertisers will provide you instructions to take a link, click it, and then take the resulting btagid from the URL and use it for deep linking. However, you can do this, but further down the line the advertiser then modifies or deletes the media and your deep link no longer works.

Because many clicks on links are all massed into aggregate statistics it's often difficult to know what is working and what isn't without going through a laborious process of testing every link and creating test sign ups.

Compared to the likes of people like bet365, where you can trust that every affiliate link you use will work and will not ever become redundant, it's impossible to have 100% confidence in many Income Access based advertisers.

Now we have our own systems on our side we're tempted to test each clicked link before referring the visitor, then redirect any Income Access deleted link to a non-Income Access/bookmaker's competitor to penalise them for doing this.

**-Shay-** · 1 August 2014, 5:41 am

I've noticed this with one program in particular - and to be honest, before this post, I thought that I was bordering incompetent when updating my site.

This issue definitely needs fixed, as I may well refuse to take on any new program using IA going forward until it is resolved.

**webanalysissolutions** · 1 August 2014, 6:47 am

Originally Posted by -Shay-

I thought that I was bordering incompetent when updating my site.

Us too, especially when you contact an advertiser saying "these links don't work" and provide the URLs and they reply in a roundabout way saying you must have not taken them from the affiliate system!

I suppose they twist the truth sometimes because replying and saying "we deleted those links several months ago and none of those links have tracked for you" would be a bit too honest.

I'll be writing a program to test all my income access links, and any that come up with the "Invalid Link" page I suggest we post the media ids and advertisers here.

For a start, put these media ids in your BetVictor affiliate links, and they don't work anymore. We've got many more examples:
1334
2489
3994
4099
4293
4297
5761
6562

**-Shay-** · 1 August 2014, 7:03 am

Naming and shaming is a great idea. I'll do the same when I come across them manually.

**webanalysissolutions** · 1 August 2014, 7:27 am

Originally Posted by -Shay-

Naming and shaming is a great idea. I'll do the same when I come across them manually.

Not trying to name and shame really, just would be useful if there was a thread of links to check that have become inactive, because it happens across many programs. That way you could quickly copy and paste them into your system and overcome faulty links.

Ideally the advertisers could email affiliates saying - "we've removed/disabled these links", and even more ideally links shouldn't be deleted, just replaced with working redirects.

I'm sure if Income Access wanted to they could program in functionality to a) stop the deletion of media/links b) provide a disable/suspend facility for media, and c) force an advertiser to put in a working URL to redirect to if the disable/suspend function was used on a particular media.

Alternatively if they really want to keep the delete function they could put in a screen on the system that allows the affiliate to view the latest deleted media, like an audit trail. They already do it with the "Recent Creatives" link in Get Your Promotional Materials. If there isn't an audit trail for deleted data then that's a bit shoddy really from an IT development perspective having worked in that area for a few big companies myself.

**webanalysissolutions** · 1 August 2014, 7:34 am

Originally Posted by -Shay-

I've noticed this with one program in particular

Which Income Access program did you have issues with? To be honest I've seen it across almost all programs, but SportingBet were notoriously bad at deleting links, and just removing you from their "merchants". At one point I realised I'd been promoting them hard for weeks on our valuable South African traffic (they're pretty big there), without working links.

**-Shay-** · 1 August 2014, 7:43 am

United Commissions has been our problem brand for this problem. One time, I recall finding an "invalid link", fixing it on a Thursday, and then discovering on Monday that it was either bad again or I did not properly change the link.

When you made this post, I went back to my change log that I keep and can confirm that it was in fact changed.

**webanalysissolutions** · 1 August 2014, 7:58 am

Originally Posted by -Shay-

United Commissions has been our problem brand for this problem. One time, I recall finding an "invalid link", fixing it on a Thursday, and then discovering on Monday that it was either bad again or I did not properly change the link.

When you made this post, I went back to my change log that I keep and can confirm that it was in fact changed.

Thanks Shay, I'm thinking of developing something shortly that will basically get the responding page to any affiliate URL, check its status and content (as HTTP 200 response doesn't always mean a successful link as in the above case), and logging all errors. This way I can automatically disable links that are not working and redirect them to another advertiser. Once developed I'll report all missing media on the Income Access part of the forum so that other affiliates can benefit and keep ahead of advertisers that are a bit too quick to delete media and links. Without advertisers or Income Access providing this functionality/warning links will be deleted, then this is the next best option.

**Louis - Income Access** · 1 August 2014, 2:56 pm

Hi Guys

Thanks for your thoughts on the link disabling feature. As Webanalysissolutions mentions, we have discussed this with affiliates and operators in the past, though I wouldn’t agree that it’s a problem with the system. We’ve included this feature for a reason, which I will explain below, and if properly used it should not create any issues.

To clarify ?the system allows any creative (link) in the system to be set to one of three statuses:
1) Active (fully functional)
2) Inactive (hidden in the system but still functional)
3) Disabled (Link no longer clicks through)

Disabling links is an important functionality that brands need ?as temporary campaigns expire they tend to create clutter in the banner manager unless they are set to disabled. Many brands have creative inventories in the 10,000s or more, so keeping the banner manager organized is essential.

With that being said, we make every effort to educate our clients on the proper use of this feature;
we recommend that brands only disable a creative once there are no affiliates using it. Campaigns that are no longer valid can be set to inactive, then a communication can be sent to affiliates encouraging them to change over, then the member report can be used to identify which affiliates are still sending traffic to that link. Once the link is no longer actively used, it can be set to disabled.

We understand that it’s never convenient for affiliates to have to switch links ?to that effect, we provide numerous automation tools that make it easier for brands to update landing pages, banner image file, etc, for a given link, so that it doesn’t have to be disabled (this has gotten even better with our ad serving tool). However, there are still going to be incidences where disabling is the best strategy. In this situation, as long as the affiliates are given a suitable time window to change links, it should be manageable. Make sure you let your affiliate program manager know that disabling links without proper time window or communication can result in lost business for both parties ?we also provide this information to our clients but hearing it from an affiliate might be helpful.

In terms of deep linking ?speak to your account manager about getting a link ID that will not likely be disabled, such the general text link to the main landing page of the brand. Since you can deep link with any creative ID (assuming deep linking is enabled), this is the best way to ensure that the link is not later disabled.

Hope this helps ?since our business model is based on revenue tracked through affiliates, we have every incentive for our links to remain enabled, so we’re happy to have this conversation with you. If either of you guys want to get on a call and discuss particular programs or how we can better educate clients on best practices, we're happy to do so. PM me and we'll set something up.

Thanks

**webanalysissolutions** · 1 August 2014, 3:22 pm