72 Kilowatts Internet Marketing

Ethics and the OPM

As a former OPM (and if New York has their way, maybe a future one as well), I did a lot of thinking about the grave responsibility that comes with having the kind of data available to us that we did.  As what amounts to being a liaison between merchants and their affiliates, we had sales statistics, valuable keyword information, and perhaps most importantly, a list of all affiliates in a program, and the ability to contact them.

That brings up, in my mind, one of the critical ethics issues in affiliate marketing, which is ownership of data.

I heard a very popular OPM once remark, in a roundabout way, that they had used a list from one of the merchants they represented in order recruit for one of their other merchants.  I would argue that in fact that data doesn’t belong to the OPM, and therefore should NEVER, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, be used in such a regard.

An OPM contract should be no different than the contract of any other contractor.  Intellectual property discovered while under the auspices of that contract belongs solely and exclusively to that merchant.  I wonder how a merchant would feel if they found out their list of affiliates was being utilized to divert attention from their own programs.

Brian Littleton touches on it in their excellent pledge:

We expect that OPMs managing programs on ShareASale show due respect for the affiliates of the network and merchant program.  We expect that OPMs understand that each individual merchant program is its own entity and that OPMs should not utilize ShareASale tools to recruit  an affiliate from one program that they manage to any other program.   ShareASale goes to great lengths to protect the privacy of affiliates on our network and thus we expect OPMs to uphold that integrity.  When using the ShareASale interface, newsletters and such should be specific to the merchant program and not be utilized to recruit to other programs that are managed by the OPM or general recruitment.

He goes on to discuss keyword mining, which is a genuine and critical concern of affiliates.  It’s another set of data that I feel is too dangerous to be made known to a third party.

When I was OPMing, I did look at referal links of all transactions.  At the same time, I created no spreadsheets that contained this data, nor did I in any way let it leave the Shareasale interface.

With so many OPMs now acting as affiliates themselves, this problem becomes exponentially worse.

While SAS’s pledge to keep that information hidden for certified affiliates is a positive step toward alleviating this, I consider the vast amount of referral data that Linkshare passes on.  In it, almost every ounce of a transaction is transparent to the merchant, and therefore the OPM.  In Linkshare’s case, their protection of their merchants comes at tremendous peril to their affiliates.

This is something I’d very much like to see an industry association address, be it the Performance Marketers Alliance or otherwise. OPM ethics are rarely discussed, even at Abestweb, who is well known for their ability to uncover any potential issue that could affect the privacy or intellectual property of their affiliate members.  There have been some discussions on it their, however, normally in the form of deploring OPMs that act as affiliates as well.