uh oh... celebrity method forbidden?

I got this email from a cpa network i'm with, i believe it was sent out to all members BTW, not just me:

Please be advised that for all ******* campaigns the use of Celebrity
endorsement (Ex. Oprah, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian etc. ) is strictly
prohibited in all ads, unless specified otherwise in the ad description
or approved by your Affiliate Manager. This includes the use of
celebrity images, and any other ad copy/creative. This is a serious
legal matter and we greatly appreciate your cooperation. For any
violations found, those affiliates will have their commissions withheld.
Please let your Affiliate Manager know if you have any questions.

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any way to get around this if you are doing something like the celebrity method that was posted in another thread?

Just hide your traffic source well and you shouldn't have a problem. =)

What about if an affiliate manager is scouring the torrents looking for things like this. If you ad pops up to get a password or whatever, then your screwed.

that is why methods like these should never have been posted out in the open like it was.

BHW is a much larger place then it was a year ago, and too many people have ability to see it. Most threads here show up with a simple google search in the top 10 listings

it should have been kept to the more secure sections of BHW, jr vip or higher

IMO this site should not be indexed at all.

Double Meta refresh should do it

Yah of course the DMR will do it, BUT, if your actual method of promotion is found and incentivized and using celebs then you are screwed. I can see a cpa security team being formulated by companies to protect themselves from this sort of thing.

chachinga said:

Yah of course the DMR will do it, BUT, if your actual method of promotion is found and incentivized and using celebs then you are screwed. I can see a cpa security team being formulated by companies to protect themselves from this sort of thing.

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Also, although i dont use this method, but when they find out none of your leads are converting, they will scrub your leads and probably boot you from the offer pretty quick (even if using incentivzed offers).

I also agree even though im not a vip etc that most bh stuff should be kept under wraps its just too easy for anyone to find out info and start abusing/using teqniques wrongly thus bringing attention to them and the tecqnique, im all for sharing but some people will never give anything back and will just leach all the info and ruin the current methods, I think there should be some sort of filtering system so valuable info is not posted for all to see.

I saw that message on one of my CPA networks also. I had a good laugh and yes they probably caught on after seeing it posted here. I doubt the main forums would never be indexed, that kind of defeats the purpose of having a forum where users constantly generate fresh content and you get good rankings?

This is just life. It is time to think about new things.

I was surprised myself to see it being posted on the open board...

For some reason, I don't read that statement the same way. There's no way the method we're talking about could be construed as celebrity endorsement. If you're advertising Paris Hilton Nude, that's not the same as saying,"Click Here To See Oprah's Favorite Nude Celebrity Site" or "Kim Kardashian Says, "I love to masturbate while filling out these offers...click here to find out why!"

Am I reading that wrong or what? These people names are public domain. You just can't say "Michael Jackson Has Abandoned The Pepsi Generation And Now Diddles Little Boys While Drinking Resfreshing Coca Cola...Click Here For A Free Case"

Diabolik said:

For some reason, I don't read that statement the same way. There's no way the method we're talking about could be construed as celebrity endorsement. If you're advertising Paris Hilton Nude, that's not the same as saying,"Click Here To See Oprah's Favorite Nude Celebrity Site" or "Kim Kardashian Says, "I love to masturbate while filling out these offers...click here to find out why!"

Am I reading that wrong or what? These people names are public domain. You just can't say "Michael Jackson Has Abandoned The Pepsi Generation And Now Diddles Little Boys While Drinking Resfreshing Coca Cola...Click Here For A Free Case"

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i agree with you on this thinking, it is not the same thing at all

but i still stand by my earlier post. when people start getting their commissions withheld from these methods (and they will, its only a matter of time, could be weeks or months, but at some point it will happen) you can pretty much guarantee its because some AMs caught on to it because its posted right here in the open.

Of course you're right, that's why you should hide as best you can. See, I would never do anything like this, I'm just proposing ideas for the bad apples out there.

double metafresh would be fine dont worry about that.
btw its time members here should start confining these methods to jr.vip

gts6 said:

but i still stand by my earlier post. when people start getting their commissions withheld from these methods (and they will, its only a matter of time, could be weeks or months, but at some point it will happen) you can pretty much guarantee its because some AMs caught on to it because its posted right here in the open.

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I disagree entirely. I don't believe one bit people will get thier commissions withheld because these methods are posted in the open. I do, however, believe people might get their commissions withheld when they fail to correctly hide their source of traffic.

Tommy said:

I disagree entirely. I don't believe one bit people will get thier commissions withheld because these methods are posted in the open. I do, however, believe people might get their commissions withheld when they fail to correctly hide their source of traffic.

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if you are caught using this to incentivise not incentable offers, they can hold your $ and boot you off the network.

and you can be caught whether you hide your traffic or not, the info is freely available here, and after reading it, any AM can easily start searching for "nude pics of [insert name of famous slut here]" and see whose ads show up, follow the links and see who it is. its not brain surgery. hiding your traffic is only one part of the equation.

not saying not to use the method, by all means go ahead, im just saying that when the day comes, that will be a big part of the downfall.

I'm not familiar with running CPA offers or campaigns. But based off everything I read here, isn't the whole point of campaigns like these (incentvized offers) is to mask all the traffic that you're sending over to the CPA (as much as possible of course)? The way I see it is like this:

When running a black hat campaign, the whole idea is to create an illusion with smoke and mirrors. We want what we're doing to appear normal and legit, when really it's not by an AM's standards (the TOS agreement). I'd like to think that when I do things that I am doing my best to run with them to maintain at the very least a shade of gray. Although it could very easily appear to be very questionable, but it sometimes could be easily justified with a quick response depending on the loophole they find in your campaign.

Of course, I believe there are groups/teams that go digging for this kind of traffic and people feel the wrath one by one. I just don't believe a simple DMR is the only thing I would consider needed. Massive testing should always be done.

Based off of provided information on this very forum, there are many other variables that go into the equation to decide who is a safe target before a redirect to a CPA. There are cloaking methods based off of IP, referers, and browser behavior detections.

Again, I'm not too familiar with doing these, it was just my diarrhea at the mouf.

gts6 said:

if you are caught using this to incentivise not incentable offers, they can hold your $ and boot you off the network.

and you can be caught whether you hide your traffic or not, the info is freely available here, and after reading it, any AM can easily start searching for "nude pics of [insert name of famous slut here]" and see whose ads show up, follow the links and see who it is. its not brain surgery. hiding your traffic is only one part of the equation.

not saying not to use the method, by all means go ahead, im just saying that when the day comes, that will be a big part of the downfall.

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Indeed, the key factor is still you being caught. You wont get banned exclusively because over at BHW we talk about blackhat techniques. You need to get caught implementing those techniques.

I will concede that if an AM wishes to blindly try to find your webpages ads it is possible, and doing so it is possible to be caught that way. However, IMO, they wont do this unless you have been doing something (or not doing enough) to make them suspect.

Personally, I'm not going to stop implementing a technique because maybe one day I will get caught and banned.

Somebody once posted an interesting point and I think it pertains to this. What happens if an AM asks you the source of your traffic? If you are blanking the referrer and your traffic is BH (torrent, incentivized etc), does this mean you should have some sort of page set up for every offer you are pimping? What methods should you implement in order to cover your tracks?

Even if your AM doesn't discover your ads, with the flow of traffic coming through to an offer, it could raise that question...

Tommy said:

Personally, I'm not going to stop implementing a technique because maybe one day I will get caught and banned.

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i never suggested anyone stop using it, read my original post.
i said it should've been locked up tighter (jr vip section) instead of out in the open where anyone, AM's included, have access to it. im not personally using it, but i know a lot of people are, because its a good little method, but it should have been kept tighter to make it last longer for the people who are using it, which is what i said in the original post when people said they thought the networks were on to the method. either way, im sure they DO know the method already, because many AM's are members here. Most probably look the other way because they like to earn money like everyone else, and they get a piece of it. But when advertisers start complaining and they are forced to crack down on people from their higher ups, they will know right where to look for you

so to sum it up in one line: someone was surprised that the networks may have caught on to the method, I pointed out that it was posted here in the wide open, so naturally im sure they already know