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Once upon a time RetailMeNot was just a fly-by-night operation that scammed retailers using PPC ads and affiliate links. Look at them now.
by knownothing 10y ago
Once upon a time RetailMeNot was just a fly-by-night operation that scammed retailers using PPC ads and affiliate links. Look at them now.
- elastic_church 10y ago> RetailMeNot started out as WhaleShark Media and changed its name in 2013 after acquiring RetailMeNot.com, an Australian-based coupon site founded in 2006. huh so thats what happened
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoRetailMeNot is a weird name isn't it? "don't sell stuff (to me)" for a site for selling stuff (to me)!?
- elliottcarlson 10y agoIf you read it as "don't sell me stuff at retail price" then it makes more sense.
- alaskamiller 10y agoRetailMeNot means don't charge me retail price and rather give me the discounted price by use of coupons found on the RetailMeNot website. It was a wordplay of BugMeNot.
- knownothing 10y agoHuh, totally forgot about that! This was at least partially due to the fact that "WhaleShark Media" had become synonymous with large-scale fraud in some affiliate programs around this time.
- RileyJames 10y agoIt actually started as RetailMeNot, a website run by two Australians. Whale shark media bought it, and then renamed their company to RetailMeNot. The website has always been RetailMeNot.com.
- nerfhammer 10y agoIt started out as bugmenot, for sharing logins to web sites to deal with mandatory signups.
- elastic_church 10y agoya know, thats exactly how I read the statement I quoted........
- omarchowdhury 10y agoIn what way were they scamming retailers?
- 55555 10y agoThey pretend (or pretended) to have coupons that you needed to click in order to reveal. Often upon clicking, the coupons were invalid. Perhaps some were never real. But upon clicking, a pop-under would launch which would drop their cookie. So a user who was already committed to buying, and in the process of doing so, who simply checked for a coupon while going through the checkout process, would end up generating an affiliate commission for RetailMeNot even though RMN provided no value to either the customer or the merchant. This is basically a scam that pretty much all coupon sites pull, which is why many companies ban coupon sites from joining their affiliate programs.
- rcarrigan87 10y agoIt blows my mind how many companies still eagerly work with coupon sites given this has been true for over a decade.
- ipsum2 10y agoWhat you're describing is cookie stuffing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing). People have been prosecuted over this: http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-the-fbi-shawn-hogan-and-brian-dunning-2013-4?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-the-fbi-shawn-hogan-and-.... I'm surprised about your claims that a public company would be doing this.
- dangrossman 10y agoI run affiliate programs for my businesses, none of which have a box for coupon codes when you sign up. Despite that, nearly every day new coupon sites sign up for the affiliate program. They usually have a webpage full of "coupon codes" offering discounts that don't exist made up, ready to add the referral link to. I remove all these sites from the program, some leave the pages up anyway. Even coupons.com has a page for my business with several "Click to Save" buttons that do nothing. They're publicly traded as well.