Pinterest quietly modifying users links to generate affiliate revenue
1–10 of 71 posts
Re: Pinterest quietly modifying users links to generate affiliate revenue
#2They should disclose this, but it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It's a good way to make a little money that costs the users nothing (except for users who've attempted to use their own affiliate links).
Re: Pinterest quietly modifying users links to generate affiliate revenue
#3It appears that Pinterest is violating the Amazon Affiliates operating agreement.
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement...
Specifically:
“Prohibited Paid Search Placement” means an advertisement
that you purchased through bidding on keywords, search
terms, or other identifiers (including Proprietary Terms)
or other participation in keyword auctions. “Proprietary
Term” means keywords, search terms, or other identifiers
that include the word “amazon,” “endless,” “Kindle,”
“smallparts,” “myhabit,” or “Javari,” or any other
trademark of Amazon or its affiliates ( see a non-
exhaustive list of our trademarks), or variations or
misspellings of any of those words (e.g., “ammazon,”
“amaozn,” “endlss,” “enldess,” “smalparts,” “kindel,” and
“javary”). “Redirecting Link” means a link that sends
users indirectly to the Amazon Site via an intermediate
site or webpage and without requiring the user to click on
a link or take some other affirmative action on that
intermediate site or webpage. “Search Engine” means Google,
Yahoo, Bing, or any other search engine, portal, sponsored
advertising service, or other search or referral service,
or any site that participates in any of their respective
networks.
In addition:
Section 10 requires affiliates sites to state they are an affilliate:
You must, however, clearly state the following on your
site: “[Insert your name] is a participant in the Amazon
Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising
program designed to provide a means for sites to earn
advertising fees by advertising and linking to [insert the
applicable site name (amazon.com, endless.com,
smallparts.com or myhabit.com)].”Re: Pinterest quietly modifying users links to generate affiliate revenue
#4It appears that Pinterest is violating the Amazon Affiliates operating agreement. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement... Specifically: “Prohibited Paid Search Placement” means an advertisement that you purchased through bidding on keywords, search terms, or other identifiers (including Proprietary Terms) or other participation in keyword auctions. “Proprietary Term” means keywords, search ter…
Depends on if they have a business agreement with Amazon that excludes them from those terms. At their size, they very well might.
Same way large AdSense customers are treated completely different and have their own contracts with Google.
Re: Pinterest quietly modifying users links to generate affiliate revenue
#5It appears that Pinterest is violating the Amazon Affiliates operating agreement. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement... Specifically: “Prohibited Paid Search Placement” means an advertisement that you purchased through bidding on keywords, search terms, or other identifiers (including Proprietary Terms) or other participation in keyword auctions. “Proprietary Term” means keywords, search ter…
You're totally off base on the first part.
1) Prohibited paid search placement: This only applies to bidding on placement on search engines. Pinterest has not bid on terms on their own site, so that section has no relevance even if Pinterest itself could be considered a search engine.
2) Redirecting links: This prohibits placing links that point to an intermediate page that then redirects to Amazon. Pinterest is linking directly to Amazon (with affiliate identifiers in the query string), not to an intermediate page that performs any redirection.
Re: Pinterest quietly modifying users links to generate affiliate revenue
#6I don't really see the problem here. At most it should be an update to their TOS and call it a day.
Re: Pinterest quietly modifying users links to generate affiliate revenue
#7They should disclose this, but it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It's a good way to make a little money that costs the users nothing (except for users who've attempted to use their own affiliate links).
Why do you think they should disclose it? (I'm actually curious). The only users affected are those using their own affiliate links so it would have no effect on the vast majority of users.
It seems to me that companies are being asked to disclose more and more these days even when it doesn't really affect users and the company has no reason to disclose the information.
Re: Pinterest quietly modifying users links to generate affiliate revenue
#8It appears that Pinterest is violating the Amazon Affiliates operating agreement. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement... Specifically: “Prohibited Paid Search Placement” means an advertisement that you purchased through bidding on keywords, search terms, or other identifiers (including Proprietary Terms) or other participation in keyword auctions. “Proprietary Term” means keywords, search ter…
You're totally off base on the first part. 1) Prohibited paid search placement: This only applies to bidding on placement on search engines. Pinterest has not bid on terms on their own site, so that section has no relevance even if Pinterest itself could be considered a search engine. 2) Redirecting links: This prohibits placing links that point to an intermediate page that then redirects to Amazon. Pinterest is link…
Any idea what the "redirecting links" clause means for URL shorteners and other redirect-based services?
Re: Pinterest quietly modifying users links to generate affiliate revenue
#9The article is almost 1000 words, but the title of HN post is more than enough to describe what's going on.
Re: Pinterest quietly modifying users links to generate affiliate revenue
#10Don't see why they should/would disclose this to users. Does not affect the end users experience unless they are in fact adding their own affiliate links. I find the point the author made about bloggers disclosing the use of affiliate links a stretch. I can see his point but pinterest is not a blog, they're a business and want to/should produce revenue.