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PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

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Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#141

Post by birdyrooster »

BLanen wrote: post #124
gamblor956 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't steal affiliate commissions. They capture the most valuable sales--i.e., those made with the immediate intent to purchase--and direct those purchasers to the cheapest site in exchange for a commission. It comes down to a question of what is more valuable to the seller. The blogger may have created the intent to purchase the product but Honey created the intent to purchase from the specific seller . And to…

Thanks, Honey PR.

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Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#142

Post by gadders »

danShumway wrote: post #12

How does Honey make money, aside from the obvious data collection? I know a few people who use it, and I've cautioned them in the past that I can't think of any savory business model that would make this profitable. Is there one? Is it just tracking purchases for advertisers, or is there some other monetization strategy I'm missing? Their main site says they make commissions, but I don't know how to square that with…

I don't know, but recently they saved me £20 on a £60 purchase, so I'm a fan :-)

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#143

Post by squeaky-clean »

tzs wrote: post #49
danShumway wrote: post #12

How does Honey make money, aside from the obvious data collection? I know a few people who use it, and I've cautioned them in the past that I can't think of any savory business model that would make this profitable. Is there one? Is it just tracking purchases for advertisers, or is there some other monetization strategy I'm missing? Their main site says they make commissions, but I don't know how to square that with…

What they claim on their "About" page [1] is: > Our Business Model > We earn a commission from stores when you find savings. What we don't do is sell or share your data (you can read our Privacy Policy here) > We're building a better way to shop, one that saves you time and money, even if there's less in it for us. If this sounds like a new way of doing things, you're right. [1] https://www.joinhoney.com/about

They're very specific about the actual meaning of "your data". By any basic understanding of "selling your data", Honey does exactly that.

> We may also share information in the following cases

> with your express consent

> in an aggregate or anonymized format that does not identify any specific person;

These cases are ORs, not ANDs. Whenever any company sells your personal info, it's always anonymized and aggregated. I can't just buy Facebook or Google data of a specific person, and I think almost anyone would agree those companies do "sell your data."

Also the 5th item in that list says they may sell your data if:

> with a buyer or successor if Honey is involved in a merger, acquisition, or similar corporate transaction. If that happens, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on the Website of any change in ownership, as well as any choices you will have as a result.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#145

Post by 55555 »

mmanfrin wrote: post #75
sturgill wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rewards and coupon websites are notorious for leaching off the affiliate process without driving much incremental revenue. In the heyday of ABestWeb.com they coined the phrase ParasiteWare for places that stuff cookies like this. The overall affiliate channel has become increasingly challenging to manage profitably from a merchant perspective. But it’s very easy for a “manager” to see all of the sales affiliates “dri…

> that stuff cookies like this. It should be noted that cookie stuffing is a term for a specific process where a site will inject cookies for thousands of sites with their own referral code on pageload of a landing site they control. It is highly illegal and people have served jail time for it, as it is considered fraud. What coupon sites do is they tend to hide codes behind a button that onclick will load the retail…

Sure, you can note that, and that's helpful, but other than in the strict legal sense, many coupon code sites do engage in other forms of coupon stuffing. For example, many display fake coupons which don't exist or which they know are expired, and which you must click to reveal. Upon clicking, the target site opens in a new window, and a cookie is dropped. The user was already buying the product anyway, and perhaps another affiliate was set to get the referral commission, but now this accidental popup has stolen it for the coupon site, and there's no coupon to be found. No value delivered for merchant or customer, but the coupon site makes money.

There's a lot of forms of cookie stuffing that are legal, or at least grey, and still seem to me like cookie stuffing, even though they aren't standard, clear-cut, illegal cookie stuffing fraud.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#147

Post by patd »

wongarsu wrote: post #140
patd wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coupons affiliates typically get a lower rev share than others. It may be cheaper for retailers to have them if they don’t care about pissing off their others affiliates (most are too small to get their voice heard)

But if the other affiliates are more valuable then merchants do care if they piss them off. After all they want those high value affiliates to continue doing what they are doing

90% of affiliates are very small players that don't have any bargaining power. In most modern platforms, all the referrers are tracked.

I'm pretty sure that big players do complain and they'll get a "first cookie" or at least partial attribution for the sales they make.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#148

Post by ChaitanyaSai »

We worked on an open-source price comparison for a while https://github.com/OpsopiDev/extpricext

You might find this useful: if you are worried about what's happening with your data with an alternative like Honey, or you actually want to compare prices while shopping on Amazon (which clamps down on anyone trying to offer price comparison or price history graphs)

Please note that this is quite rough, and can do with a number of feature improvements (we haven't had the time to get back to it)

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#149

Post by Reason077 »

danShumway wrote: post #12

How does Honey make money, aside from the obvious data collection? I know a few people who use it, and I've cautioned them in the past that I can't think of any savory business model that would make this profitable. Is there one? Is it just tracking purchases for advertisers, or is there some other monetization strategy I'm missing? Their main site says they make commissions, but I don't know how to square that with…

> ”How does Honey make money, aside from the obvious data collection?”

Online retailers typically pay a “referral fee” to websites that direct traffic to their store using affiliate links.

There has long been a whole genre of “cashback” websites which take advantage of this by paying the referral credit (or some of it) back to the end user. This UK link lists some and explains how they work:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/cashback-websites...

Honey is a bit different, because they pocket the referral fee for themselves, but attempt to save the user money by automatically checking/applying coupon codes that they scrape from the web.

Honey claims they do not make any money from selling data to third parties.

Honey also does not, in my experience, attempt to redirect you to other retailers as some other comments have suggested.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#150

Post by Reason077 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #108
jartelt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read that part of what they do is effectively steal affiliate referrals from other websites. Say you click on an affiliate referral link from a blog that takes you to retailers website. Normally that blog would get a cut of whatever you buy at that retailer. However, if you then use your Honey extension, their affiliate link takes over and gets credit for the sale. Honey can then give you a small discount that i…

They don't steal affiliate commissions. They capture the most valuable sales--i.e., those made with the immediate intent to purchase--and direct those purchasers to the cheapest site in exchange for a commission. It comes down to a question of what is more valuable to the seller. The blogger may have created the intent to purchase the product but Honey created the intent to purchase from the specific seller . And to…

> ”and direct those purchasers to the cheapest site in exchange for a commission.”

This is incorrect. Honey does not redirect you to different/cheaper retailers.

Honey is a browser plugin which applies coupon codes (scraped from the web) to reduce the cost of the purchase from the retailer at the checkout phase.

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