72 Kilowatts Internet Marketing

Hot Charity, or why your favorite coupon site is losing money.

[Source of this info, and a great read for anyone who understands how the mechanics of visitor tracking works:  Abestweb on LinkShare, Rakuten, and OneCause.]

Apart from being a great Rocket from the Crypt offering, Hot Charity seems to be par for the course at Rakuten these days.  Rakuten, for anyone that ambles by here and doesn’t know, is the the parent company of LinkShare, a major affiliate marketing network.

At issue here is the means by which charitable funds are collected, and not the charities they are delivered to.  We all know that charity is a good thing, when administered properly, so in no way should this post be viewed as a sign that I don’t support the idea of charity, or the charities that this Rakuten subsidiary represents.

At issue more specifically is OneCause.  OneCause offers a toolbar for you, the consumer, to download and install on your PC.  The toolbar sits up near the top of your screen when you have Firefox or Internet Explorer open, and then reminds you when you are shopping that the merchant is willing to donate to a charity if you make a purchase.  You then click a little button, you go back to OneCause’s home page, and then you are re-directed back to the merchant to complete your purchase.

On some levels, this isn’t really an issue, and you might think that it doesn’t affect you at the end of the day, as a consumer.

It get’s complicated when you consider the means by which this collection takes place.  OneCause uses a marketing channel known as the affiliate marketing channel to track these purchases (the tracking is actually done by LinkShare, another Rakuten company).  The original idea behind this channel was to allow pay for performance advertising for merchants and affiliated sites.  An example of an affiliate would be some of those coupon sites, or product review sites, you all like to visit.  In order for those coupon sites to stay profitable, they count on commissions paid to them as affiliates by the merchants they refer you to, or give you a coupon for.

However, if you’re then clicking on that toolbar from OneCause in order to make your donation, guess where that commission goes?  You guessed it:  OneCause, who then give a percentage to charity.

So the coupon site, or product review site, or your favorite blogger, or WHOEVER loses out.

So what’s the solution?

Simple:  Get the charity based companies out of the affiliate channel and into their own channel.

Until this happens, small valuable websites will be run under by these toolbar monsters, and larger sites that you use everyday will be a bit more cash strapped as well.

And it does affect you, the consumer.  While OneCause at least donates a percentage to charity, there are other toolbar monsters out there that keep it all for themselves.  Imagine!  So by charging the merchant a commission to make a purchase you were going to make anyways, they are adding a layer of cost that YOU will end up paying for.