[lifeisstillgood]

The coupon thing seems crazy - Walmart must be spending real money to reward sites that actually did not provide a coupon.

i mean i know it's all about consumer surplus, but all walmart knows is that someone on the internet wanted to get a discount, did not get it, and now walmart pays random SEO cash. They lose margin, the buyer is frustrated cos they paid full price, and walmart knows nothing about surplus because the client paid full price - no differentiation no price signal.

how is walmart winning here?

[fabricexpert]

Walmart only pays if they make a sale, so long as the commission isn't greater than their margin it's just a customer acquisition / marketing cost that drives sales if they have it and takes them away if they don't.

This is like saying "Most people who watched the TV ad didn't buy anything, how is Walmart winning?"

The age old saying is that you know half of your marketing budget is wasted, you just don't know which half. It still applies now even if you can track users.

[lifeisstillgood]

But it's not a channel.

if i turn up at the till with coupon clipped from the tv guide, then putting coupons in the tv guide is a viable channel to reach me

if i turn up with a cookie from whichever SEO happened this week to be on top for "gardening gloves", but there is no legal coupon just a cookie, then what has walmart learned? that google is a channel ? it's too big to be useful

[lapnitnelav]

Not dissing on all affiliate marketing folks out there - whether it's the review website or similar professionals trying to make an honest living from the service they provide.

But affiliate marketing as a whole is one of the shadiest internet industry. The coupon thing is one of the many tricks in the book to get your cookie everywhere and earn $$ without providing any value.

There's an awful lot of fraud like that but somehow the benefits seems to outweigh it because the industry is still alive and kicking.

Having seen numbers for some affiliate channels, my guess is that it's probably grossly overvalued but people still buy into that because the numbers look good, from afar, especially if you compare them to Search or Social. But the pricing model (CPA > Cost per Acquisition / Conversion) is different so I guess both sides are fine with that.

It's a mouse and cat game that is the usual playbook between the "good guys" and "bad guys", as you'd see in security, pirating, etc ...

---

Also, this is hardly a secret but it's actually really hard to properly estimate the ROAS / ROI of advertising in general and most of it is like a black box.

You pour some money in, get more money out if you play your cards well. Maybe you nailed your strategy and execution, maybe you'd still have made the same money without advertising.

[mrhappyunhappy]

Don’t worry, affiliate marketing folks won’t be offended. They typically have a skewed moral compass. Source: was an affiliate marketer.

[southerndrift]

Or Walmart makes a profit because they dupe the real referers.

They can identify and cancel those SEO accounts and deny payout. Meanwhile, the real advertisers have lost their cookie and don't get their deserved payout.

[ComputerGuru]

I don’t know. The biggest shady coupon sites have been around for a long time now.