Stats Changing

I found it strange that in some affiliates network (small brands of Income Access), I am having Commission Problems

For example at A affiliates
This month Income (Yesterday) XXX Pounds (3digits)
Yesterday earning XX Pounds
This month Income (Today) XX Pounds


at B affiliates (No Negative commission earned )

This month Net Revenue xxx Pounds, Commission Zero

Last Month Net Revenue xxx Pounds, Commission Zero

I have emailed the affiliate,but didn't got any response for the last 7 days

Sent a private msg to Income Access


Anyone facing the same problem, I read some whr that Income Access stats are not updating ...but for me they are changing stats and not updating commission on other.

Hi SSG,

Thanks for sending me a PM, as discussed I have reached out to the programme B above, and will also look into your stats and give you an update.

Can you please PM me any information regarding what you are referring to for "A Affiliates"? Would be happy to help with that as well.

cheers,
Allan

Thanks for getting back, PM you programme A details

Had a similar issue here. Won't name the operator, but they're Income Access based, probably the same one that SSG is having issues with. The first 14 days of April showed some good commissions - we were £1500 up, then overnight every days worth of stats for April was changed, and we're now £-100 for the month!

I know it's probably some sort of error in the commission calculation (and it worries me that an advertiser can send a data file to IA and IA import it without basic checks, like is the commission the correct percentage of net revenue), and the latter figure may be correct, but it's unnerving that stats can change over night, and historical ones too. I would recommend anyone regularly take a screen shot of their earnings report, and see if historical days change, because it seems that historical data for the month can be overwritten by the latest feed of data from an advertiser to Income Access.

To give you an idea of the data errors, some days we were for example generating net revenue of, let's say £-200, yet our commission was showing up as +£300! Bizarre.

I'm not even interested in looking into it - this sort of swing in data just leads me to not trust this operator, and if I had any trust left in Income Access it has quickly evaporated, and the said advertiser will be dropped from our sites shortly. It's a shame that some good brands are on Income Access, because the level of shoddy data errors and lack of data integrity I've seen does not make it feasible to advertise them anymore.

Hi all, newish member here, about time I posted something.

I'm fairly sure that I've had the same issue discussed immediately above. Started the month well, into 4 figures after the Grand National weekend, only to see it almost all vanish overnight earlier this week. Without even thinking there was an issue, I had a quick look back at the reports, expecting to find a large winner had eroded it right back down. However, this wasn't the case and I then realised that it didn't seem to quite tally up.

Presumably you should be able to run a player report from 1st April - 12th April and see the same income reported as the month to date figure on the morning of the 13th? This wasn't the case, it was a figure close to what it is today. If my understanding of the reporting function is correct, the only way this could change would be if the earlier figures had been updated again? If this was to correct an earlier error then fair enough I guess, just would have been nice to be advised that this was indeed what happened. I haven't heard a thing, although I haven't queried it either.

I don't intend to drop the brand, but it would be nice to get to the bottom of what happened and receive some assurances that everything is working properly moving forward. Not sure if / how this could happen, but I can provide further details if it helps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ds1999

Without even thinking there was an issue, I had a quick look back at the reports, expecting to find a large winner had eroded it right back down. However, this wasn't the case and I then realised that it didn't seem to quite tally up.

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Exactly my approach, but I had a screen shot of earnings from before, showing 3 figure earnings each day, so I knew something was fishy when I ran the earnings report and saw totally different figures and some negatives on days. We check our stats daily and when an account is doing well we monitor it closely to learn from the reasons why it's doing well. However, other affiliates don't check stats that regularly and may have experienced our issue but would not have noticed it.

This business of not name dropping brands is harmful to affiliates in general.

If a brand is either shaving, cheating, manipulating data accidentally, under reporting, or hell - even over reporting and this is merely fixed behind the scenes --- what's to say it is not a manual fix? If accounts are fixed manually on a case by case basis, the likelihood of you or someone else encountering this "error" again is greater than if we simply name drop and collectively work together to name programs and call for a fix to all of these misreporting issues.

When we find things and we remain in secrecy, we as affiliates do not win. As affiliates, we deserve accurate tracking and accurate, honest, thorough, & complete reporting on the traffic we send.

Agree with you Shay, but I've learnt that naming people then gets you shut down by these operators because they don't like bad press and don't like the myriad of problems aired in public.

Would love to do something for the greater good, but don't want to be a martyr and have my account shut down when it's earning good money.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by webanalysissolutions

Agree with you Shay, but I've learnt that naming people then gets you shut down by these operators because they don't like bad press and don't like the myriad of problems aired in public.

Would love to do something for the greater good, but don't want to be a martyr and have my account shut down when it's earning good money.

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I completely understand that line of thought. I believe that such things are "counted on" by the program and the related companies they do business with.

Framed another way, if they steal from me a little bit, that is OK when the other option is that they cut me off and steal the entire pot.

The better way - if fearing for the entire pot to be stolen, might be to find a more discreet way to get the word out there.

If thieves, liars, and programs with honest errors/oversights are identified, then we (as an industry) stand a better shot of correcting these errors and oversights and preventing the thieves and liars from doing business.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by -Shay-

I completely understand that line of thought. I believe that such things are "counted on" by the program and the related companies they do business with.

Framed another way, if they steal from me a little bit, that is OK when the other option is that they cut me off and steal the entire pot.

The better way - if fearing for the entire pot to be stolen, might be to find a more discreet way to get the word out there.

If thieves, liars, and programs with honest errors/oversights are identified, then we (as an industry) stand a better shot of correcting these errors and oversights and preventing the thieves and liars from doing business.

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I like to think a lot of these guys aren't stealing, although Income Access being a thrid-party system that advertisers have to send a data file to each night does open it up to corruption, editing, skimming etc.

The real problem is the errors, bugs and features of Income Access that allow the advertiser to make mistakes that are detrimental to the affiliate, and the bugs that mean that data is not displayed or calculated, or imported correctly.

What's more frustrating is that the advertiser rarely can answer your questions about problems, because they're working with a third party system they don't know much about. IA are just middle men, and attempt to solve your problems, but inevitably you don't get anywhere when there are problems because as one affiliate you're a small fish in a big ocean, and there are plenty of others out there sending traffic and players to these guys.

There's always going to be corruption, mistakes, whatever. However, my view on it is that the strong will weed out the weak over time. We've already done it, we don't advertise weak advertisers, and blankly refuse to when they keep begging to come on our sites and tell them the reasons. The good advertisers get rewarded, and the fittest survive.

Hi Everyone,

Can you please PM me the brand you are referring to so I can look into this?

I understand reasoning for not wanting to publicly mention the brand, if you can please let me know which brand you are referring to I can look into this for you.

Cheers,
Allan

I also like to think that they are not stealing either - at least not directly or actively.

In the case of the duplicate suppression software, my strong suspicion is that this software prevents numerous players from being tagged, tracked, and credited to affiliates via the affiliate tracking software. One of the members here at GPWA did a test with Anthony from Coral (from my understanding - meaning I did not take part in the teat and did not personally see the results) and the results were that Anthony was able to see both players registered, but the registration and activity did not get credited to the affiliate account via the Income Access software.

If something such as duplicate suppression is going on and preventing accounts from being tracked to affiliates --- but the intent of the software is not to "steal" from affiliates (instead it is to safeguard against multi-accounting, bonus abuse, and the like) - is it technically "stealing" from a personal action point of view? No, not intentionally or willfully at least.

However, that doesn't mean that affiliates are not getting full credit for all player activity.

Without push back, if the net result is less in payments to affiliates from programs - what real incentive is there for anyone (who "can") to fix the problem?

I agree that by your model, the strong will survive. I also agree with your policy of not using "weak" (regardless of the reasoning for weakness) advertisers. I still prefer to name the programs where there are issues/suspicion of shaving/shorting affiliates for whatever reason.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Allan_IncomeAccess

Hi Everyone,

Can you please PM me the brand you are referring to so I can look into this?

I understand reasoning for not wanting to publicly mention the brand, if you can please let me know which brand you are referring to I can look into this for you.

Cheers,
Allan

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But by PMing you and a brand being contacted, they'll just look at this forum and then close accounts of those complaining. This brand has done it a lot before, so this level of mistrust just leads to zero transparency. Instead, why don't you run a report across your brands and see which ones don't have the correct revenue amounts according to the percentages?

got a reply from Brand B (saying that after Welcome bonus offer my account haven't moved to normal commission structure.) therefore showing me a zero commissions for the last few months and now they will calculate the commission manually and sort the issue at the earliest

Agree, naming a brand on public forum will not helps any good, as many times they are honest reporting / feeds error

Quote:

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Originally Posted by webanalysissolutions

Agree with you Shay, but I've learnt that naming people then gets you shut down by these operators because they don't like bad press and don't like the myriad of problems aired in public.

Would love to do something for the greater good, but don't want to be a martyr and have my account shut down when it's earning good money.

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Shay is right - you should name the firms involved. They can state if there was an error that they needed to correct. They have a right of reply on this forum.

Shay hits the nail on the head - the real problem is manipulation of the data and Coral is guilty of this. They have 'duplicate suppression software' and now an end of month 'reconciliation report' as well. Take some screenshots towards the end of the month and then after they have run their shaving software at the end of the month. Watch those figures drop.

To me this is a damn shame.

Affiliates afraid of naming a program for fear of getting shut down. WTH. I don't blame them! This is 2015 and we are still in the wild west.

How many IA threads do we need before something happens here? It's back and forth and one blames the other. It's the programs fault; no it's IA's fault. Pass the buck. You'll never get any answer.

There is a lot of control IA has. For example, RTG affiliate software does not allow removal of players without guidelines. Operators can pretty much do as they please with IA. My biggest concern is the shaving on affiliates knows no bounds. The sky is the limit. How much have affiliates lost?

I am filing a formal complaint to GPWA against IA. I am a long time member and I am frustrated seeing multiple threads about shoddy IA stats. There was supposed to be a fix in Q2 which has never been followed up on as well.

My final straw is affiliates afraid to name programs. Seems we are held by the short hairs. There is fear here to speak up and I am confident the GPWA doesn't want that.

I am reporting my own post.

Hi Mojo,

The development we are finalizing is in response to feedback regarding the ability to operators to "disable" banners. This development is in the final stage of testing and will be released shortly.

We would like to help out affiliates on this thread that are mentioning potential problems they are having with a particular brand, and would need the appropriate information to do so.

Cheers,
Allan

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Allan_IncomeAccess

We would like to help out affiliates on this thread that are mentioning potential problems they are having with a particular brand, and would need the appropriate information to do so.

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Read my post two back, which names a brand and tells you how that firm manipulates the data.

It is just PR lip service and damage limitation from Income Access (hence you ignoring my post that gives specifics and then ask people to name the brand, like I had never written it). There is no genuine desire for the stats that appear within your software platform to be accurate because the firm shaving those figures is your client and the Income Access software allows it, condones it and facilitates it.