Many online businesses use affiliates to drum up business. The affiliate finds a lead somewhere, passes it to the business, and gets a commission if the lead turns into a sale. Web based affiliates are relatively uncontroversial, but affiliates who advertise by e-mail are a chronic problem due to their propensity to send spam, both spam as normally defined and as defined by CAN SPAM. Is it possible to do legitimate e-mail affiliate marketing? Maybe.

CAN SPAM makes it pretty clear that a business is responsible for the actions of its agents, which includes ensuring that they follow CAN SPAM and other laws. Most of the CAN SPAM requirements are handled the the same way by affiliates as if the business were doing its own mailing — headers must not be misleading, mail must have a physical mailing address, and so forth. By far the trickiest requirement for affiliate ads is the opt-out rule, which says a business must follow a recipient’s request not to send any more ads. This means that every time an affiliate mails for a business, the affiliate has to remove all the addresses of people who’ve told the business not to mail to them. Furthermore, people who send opt-outs in response to the affiliate’s mail have to be added to the business’ opt-out list. This is a pain in the neck, but as I read CAN SPAM, it’s not optional.

What makes it tricky is that affiliate marketing is full of sleazeballs, and both the businesses and the affiliates have good reasons not to trust each other. If the business provides the list of opt-outs to the affiliates, the affiliates are likely to steal it and mail to it. (Mailing to it could even be legal under CAN SPAM so long as it wasn’t promoting the same business, although it does seem like a poor idea to mail to a list of people whose common characteristic is that they’ve gone to the effort to say they don’t want mail, I know people who’ve provided tagged addresses that have gotten spammed from ex-affiliates.) So perhaps the business can provide a listwashing service, where the affiliate sends them the list and they send it back minus the opt-outs. No, that’s no good, a sleazy business could steal the list on the way through. The same problem applies to affiliates sending opt-outs back to the business — it’s far from unknown for people to resell opt-out lists as verified live leads and the like.

There’s no perfect solution. One possibility would be to use a neutral third party to handle the opt-outs. That’s what Unsubcentral does with some success, although they’re limited both by the fact that they don’t do it for free (affiliates hate to spend money on anything that isn’t going to turn into revenue) and trust issues of yet another party in the mix.

Another possibility is to use lists of address hashes, one-way scrambled versions of addresses. If you have a list of hashes and a list of addresses, you can make hashes of the addresses on your list and compare to see which of your addresses are in the hash list, but you can’t otherwise tell what hashes correspond to what addresses. This means that if a business provides a hashed opt-out list to the affiliates, they can use it to scrub their lists, and they’ll know what addresses got scrubbed, but since those were addresses they already had, the opportunity for extra mischief is limited. Going the other way, if the affiliates provide the hashes back to the business, the business can scrub its own lists, and provide the hashes in turn to other affiliates, but at each level, they don’t learn about any addresses that they don’t already have. (A sufficiently determined bad guy could go get huge lists such as the ones on Millions CDs, then hash and scrub those to see what addresses he recovers. It’s not perfect, there’s no way to provide information to someone you don’t trust and be 100% sure he won’t misuse it.)

Whatever a business dues, literal lists, third party, or hashes, they have to do something. I would go so far as to say any any affiliate e-mail program that doesn’t include opt-out management clearly can’t be CAN SPAM compliant.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands -  May 30, 2008 - International business hosting services firm, LeaseWeb, for over six months, has been recognized in the first position on the list of the world’s fastest growing hosting companies.

LeaseWeb is an international supplier of hosting products and services that specializes in both Microsoft and Linux, and focuses primarily on the professional market. The company is among the top 30 hosting providers in the world and provides services such as web hosting, dedicated hosting, colocated hosting, VPS and streaming, as well as technical support. LeaseWeb owns a first-class Cisco-powered network offering a bandwidth of over 160 Gbps, which extends across five data centers in the Amsterdam region via the major telecom carriers. LeaseWeb is also present on internet exchanges in Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Frankfurt, New York, Vienna , Stockholm, Warsaw, Zurich, Prague and Madrid. Founded in 1997, hosting provider LeaseWeb now manages 11,000 servers. Its customers include Starbucks, Hyves, Telegraaf Media Groep, Koninklijke Joh. Ensched, PricewaterhouseCoopers, AVRO, Direct Wonen, and University.

They are all gorgeous in their own way and some are just down right hot. The pay-per-click industry has come a hell of a long way over the past few years. Some actors have been cut, others left to stagnate in the same old role and still others have been slowly written off the show forced to endure a cold, long hard death.

Regardless though, there seems to be a never ending stream of takers that are eager to join the club which continue fuel this maturing industry. Most of the aspiring are left at the door with their mouths watering, all buggy eyed and stuff, but there are a few that make it in and actually get on stage. Out of those lucky enough to stand next to the bold and the beautiful, only a few last longer than it takes an advertiser to say cut! They are the young and the restless. It is from this group of apprentices that some may grow to take center stage; to play the leading role of pay-per-click service provider.

We all know who the bold and the beautiful are; Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Google’s strong masculinity has taken the leading role for quit some time. It has a strong advertiser interface, huge distributorship and literally tons of cash which allows it to take care of a threat one way or the other. While Google is clearly still a one role performer, it does very much aspire to be more. Whether it will be successful or not still remains to be seen. It is clearly trying to write its own script however. The fact that it has billions in the bank could lead some to believe that it will be that way forever. Let’s see its standings several years from. Will it successfully transition into other roles or not?

Yahoo! is sexy. No two ways about it. It’s cultured and aggressive yet subtle and soft. And very importantly, it is entertaining. If Yahoo! was a woman it would be Julia Roberts; a mature, intelligent, skilled and very hot professional who knows what she wants and has the intellect to apply patients to her way of doing business. Google on the other hand reminds me of Robin Williams. Also very smart, intelligent and skilled, but a bit immature and still finds his ultimate strength within a very well defined space. Yahoo! is the queen of online search. This is smart and a strategic advantage over its competitors.

MSN, now here’s an interesting performer. For decades it has dominated the software market and now arguably the gaming industry.With its recent entry into the pay-per-click auditorium many, including myself, were worried that it would end up like Kramer (Michael Richards Seinfeld character), stumbling over something new and making a complete ass out of itself.To the contrary, it has taken on a slow, steady entry into the space and does have a very nice advertiser interface and beneficial supporting features.MSN reminds me of Nathan Lane. A very charismatic, smart, highly skilled professional of which makes a successful run of virtually everything it attempts.This is why Bill Gate’s call back average is so high. The roles MSN chooses to play usually end up lucrative for it.There is little doubt in this mind that if it so chooses MSN will end up as one of the all time greatest pay-per-click and performance based advertising companies.

The bold and the beautiful are strong and demand much of the spotlight.But there are many leading actors out there that are also worth your time. They may not yet demand the enormous paydays that the big 3 do, but they are young, they are restless, they are generating revenue and are a risk to the B.A.T.B. Their red carpet is smaller but it is growing.

ABCSearch; now here’s a strong youngster with lots of moxie and the intelligence to know which direction to take.ABCSearch is a supporting actor, but if it stays the course it may just find itself in a leading role. ABCSearch reminds me of a young George Clooney; well defined, handsome and ready to take on the issues. It quite hasn’t made it to the big time revenue game yet.Its Click Shield product is a bold move to openly face-off against click-fraud. More importantly it is the correct move. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.Click-fraud will always be around. It is a part of doing this type of advertising online. For non-CPA based pay-per-click advertising, what is needed is not a cure. There isn’t one. What is needed is a very strong actor that can consistently stand up and get the crowd going again every time click-fraud appears in the audience and brings it down. ABCSearch is openly taking on that challenge and if successful it will enter onto center stage and earn the big money.

MIVA is not quite young, but it is restless and it is looking for a rebirth.Formerly FindWhat.com when it was at the top of its game, MIVA is a struggling cast member. It is slowly seeing its call back ratio drop as its respect throughout the guild deteriorates. It reminds me a bit of Robert Downy Junior, a strong force on the stage but always finds his way into trouble and can not seem to break the cycle.MIVA is still struggling, does not demand the eyeballs and thus the revenue and has trouble getting the most meager of partners to promote its goods. Whether MIVA will evolve into a Kiefer Sutherland remains to be seen. In this minds eye it is doubtful.While it would be a nice story for company, I don’t think the story will be written.

LookSmart on the other hand has the potential to become the pay-per-click equivalent to Kiefer Sutherland. It was once very strong, quickly devolved into obscurity for a while and is now showing some signs of a true career recovery.No it is not Kiefer yet, but it is heading in that direction.There is something about LookSmart that has always given me confidence in its ability to rewrite the script. So far it is heading in that direction. Perhaps it’s the management team.Perhaps it’s the revenue model. Perhaps it’s the branding. Or perhaps it is all of the above. It has always given me a sense of “I’ll be back” and it looks as though it may just happen one day.

In the next article, read about the understudies and how they are surviving in the brutal world of pay-per-click advertising.