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

**webanalysissolutions** · 4 August 2014, 10:44 am

Originally Posted by Louis - Income Access

Disagree with the recommendations about keywords. Obviously you shouldn't keyword stuff, but you still need to optimize headers, page titles, permalinks, etc.

I don't recall talking about keywords, headers, page titles at all in my previous posts.

**webanalysissolutions** · 5 August 2014, 6:09 am

To give them credit, BetVictor have been working hard on resolving this issue over the past week or so and called today. Going forward we now have a better understanding of what actually happens on Income Access and on their side, so we just need to keep an eye on how we advertise and manage links. The key points, and new things we've learnt that will help us going forward:

As confirmed by Louis, links on Income Access for any IA based advertiser can be Active, Inactive, and Disabled.
Links/media DO get disabled from time to time - the argument is that when a particular media isn't generating traffic/revenue it can be disabled. Or if it's for a particular event it can be redundant once the event is over. I would argue this isn't ideal, but the advertisers argue that they need to use this feature to "clean up" the media on the system. I did say that bet365 links work forever, and all links to our sites work forever because we use redirects, but I don't think that was quite understood.
If you're deep linking on IA, and in particular on BetVictor, I've learnt that clicks track on the advertiser side (so you will be rewarded), but they don't show on the IA system - the data doesn't pass back to IA. If you take a link from the IA system, run it in your browser, and view the resulting generated btagid, you can put on the end of advertiser URLs to deep link and add to bet slip (exact instructions can be obtained from BetVictor). It's supposed to work in that clicks are tracked, but the counted clicks don't get passed back to IA for reporting. Not ideal if you're counting x hundred clicks on your side and only seeing a handful on IA. You also don't know if links have become disabled in the meantime until you see a drop to zero in your registrations or FTDs, which could take time to realise.
If you do generate a btagid from a link on the affiliate system then that remains valid as long as the media isn't disabled. So, as stated earlier in the post (I think by Louis), the best way around this is to "choose" a link that is unlikely to be disabled, like a text link to an advertiser's homepage. Not saying that's the most ideal solution.

In summary, I know advertisers and IA don't like the deficiencies being voiced openly, but I feel it's important for everyone to understand what they're working with so they can make the most out of their ad space. Other advertisers and systems definitely do this better.

Check your links regularly, decide to use a few links only if you're worried about stuff getting disabled, time your links in your code for special events so that you don't display them when you suspect they won't be valid anymore (e.g. a world cup link).

BetVictor have set us up a new link on the affiliate system from which we will generate our btagid to use in our bet slip and deep linking. Because it has been specifically created that gives us a bit more confidence that it won't be disabled in the future and doesn't relate to a special event for a media that will become unusable further down the line. That said, if click counts are not passed back to IA as stated above, what's to stop someone further down the line thinking this link isn't getting any traffic and disabling it?

All in all, not ideal, not as good as other advertisers and affiliate systems, but that's what you've got to work with if you want to advertise IA based advertisers.

Happy to be corrected / open to debate on the above points if others think they're not accurate - it's our understanding to date, which is more than we knew a couple of weeks ago and hopefully useful information.

**Louis - Income Access** · 5 August 2014, 3:33 pm

Good to see that there is some positive progress.

BetVictor have a great team and I'm not a bit surprised that they took your feedback seriously and responded.

I know advertisers and IA don't like the deficiencies being voiced openly, but I feel it's important for everyone to understand what they're working with so they can make the most out of their ad space. Other advertisers and systems definitely do this better.

For our part - we value the feedback we receive on this forum, and try to participate as much as possible to keep a pulse on the industry. To affiliates' credit, many of our software features were developed in part or completely based on affiliate feedback. I can assure you that we take this feedback seriously and are looking into the options.

I don't recall talking about keywords, headers, page titles at all in my previous posts.

Sorry - Looks like a message I was trying to post in a separate SEO thread got crossed into this thread.

**universal4** · 5 August 2014, 5:39 pm

If a banner or creative is no longer effective, CHANGE IT!!!

Disabling the link associated with the creative is just plain wrong and does your affiliate partners a dis-service.

Rick
Universal4

**webanalysissolutions** · 6 August 2014, 2:40 am

Originally Posted by Louis - Income Access

For our part - we value the feedback we receive on this forum, and try to participate as much as possible to keep a pulse on the industry.

Appreciate your input Louis and explanation of Income Access "features", even if they're not very efficient at times. It gives affiliates a chance of learning the quirks of the current system and working around them. In this case although I've seen links stop working over the years with a number of IA advertisers, now that it's confirmed that links can be disabled then we can take steps to ensure that we never send a customer to a disabled link (and redirect them to bet365 instead!!

). I think a number of other affiliates have been able to learn from this post too. For an affiliate, as Gooner eluded to above, perhaps limiting your use of the range of media and links in IA is the best option at the moment as it reduces risk of links stopping working.

**webanalysissolutions** · 6 August 2014, 2:43 am

Originally Posted by universal4

If a banner or creative is no longer effective, CHANGE IT!!!

Disabling the link associated with the creative is just plain wrong and does your affiliate partners a dis-service.

Rick
Universal4

My thoughts too Rick - there are two things here - the media and the link. Both do not need to be disabled.

Yes, media can be out of date - there's no point keeping banners alive that show Cheltenham 2010.

The link should always remain. That's hard to understand for a lot of advertisers, but as I put it, whenever we find a broken link linking to us on our Google analytics reports we do everything we can to redirect that incoming URL to our homepage or appropriate page, as we don't want to lose the traffic or SEO value.

**universal4** · 6 August 2014, 5:01 pm

Agreed,

If the link continues to work and someone has an old, not very effective banner up and some visitor just happens to click on it and follow the link to the site, IF IT ARRIVES to the casino home page or whatever, at least the casino and the affiliate have a shot at the visitor converting.

So what if it is a 3 or 5 year old banner? If it gets the visitor to the site, they should still be able to join and gamble right?

If it goes to a 404, how impressed is that visitor gonna be?

Obviously, you don't want us assuming that this is by design and a cookies isn't set so they can land on the home page without credit....right?

And to clarify, I do NOT think that, as I think it is more foolishness to disable the link, then trying to get free traffic. (but I do know that some affiliates love the conspiracy part of it)

Rick
Universal4

**justbookies** · 28 August 2014, 4:21 am

I have had Income Access links showing clicks but not tracking referring clients for three major companies in the last few months. The third I just discovered this morning after two weeks of no registrations. Did a test sign-up yesterday and it wasn't tracked.

**justbookies** · 26 September 2014, 1:14 pm

I want to give this important thread a bump. All I will say is that if you have income access links that show clicks and that are not showing referrals do a test referral yourself and check it shows in the "registrations" (also called "referrals" depending on operator) column of the "earnings report" of the income access system when it updates the stats the next day. Do not assume that because the link lands on the landing page, drops a cookie and measures clicks that the referrals show up in the stats.

**webanalysissolutions** · 26 September 2014, 1:24 pm

Originally Posted by justbookies

I have had Income Access links showing clicks but not tracking referring clients for three major companies in the last few months. The third I just discovered this morning after two weeks of no registrations. Did a test sign-up yesterday and it wasn't tracked.

Out of interest, which advertisers did you have issues with? IA includes functionality to cause this to happen, but some advertisers are worse than others at using this badly designed functionality

**justbookies** · 26 September 2014, 1:39 pm

Originally Posted by webanalysissolutions

Out of interest, which advertisers did you have issues with? IA includes functionality to cause this to happen, but some advertisers are worse than others at using this badly designed functionality

I don't want to name names. But I have categorically seen this with three separate very big names that use income access. One corrected it quickly, one admitted a problem with that particular link and compensated via CPA for the period affected, one has given an external reason for it I don't quite believe (and then swept the problem under the carpet even though the stats still look odd), while a fourth is under suspicion and may or may not have a problem. However, in all these cases the links measured clicks and appeared to work.

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