Integrations - Affiliate Safelisting

Introduction

Reward Gateway has two types of savings on offer through our SmartSpending™ product - buying vouchers at a discount, or receiving cashback after following a specified tracking link.

Cashback is usually tracked via a cookie through trusted partners known as 'affiliate marketers', who sit between Reward Gateway and the retailer and facilitate the tracking of cashback. We have a range of trusted partners across the countries we do business in. 

User Experience

When browsing SmartSpending, users will see an offer to Earn a % when shopping with a retailer. 

An example Cashback offer

Selecting the button will take you to a handover page that explains how Cashback tracking works;

At this point, the user is redirected briefly through an affiliate marketing partner who sets a tracking cookie in order to be able to track the cashback, before quickly arriving at the actual retailers website.

It's at this stage that an Ad Blocker or web security product may interfere and block the access. This is understandable as affiliate marketing companies are heavily involved in retail advertising, hence we prompt users to disable their Ad Blockers temporarily if they wish to have their cashback tracked. 

Read more about the technical details of Cashback Tracking in the article: How does Cashback track purchases and is it secure?

Safelisting

If your organisation runs Ad Blockers or a web security product that actively blocks 'Advertisements' by category, there is a high chance that these affiliates will be blocked and your employees will not be able to take up our cashback offers. If you are investing in our SmartSpending™ product, we strongly suggest discussing this with the team responsible for your IT in order to remove those restrictions in order to achieve the maximum return on investment and engagement from your colleagues. 

Although some of these domains may seem 'strange' at a glance, they are all run by large, reputable affiliate marketing companies that we have a commercial relationship with. We do not insist that you proactively add these domains to your allowlists, rather that you check with your internal teams to see if that may be necessary. Most of our clients do not need to allowlist these domains. 

FAQs 

Where are the other links?

The list above is just for intermediaries that are used to provide Cashback. Reward Gateway does not provide a list of the final URLs (for example, Marks & Spencer leads to www.marksandspencer.com) because it would change too often. 

Why are some of the links highlighted by online reputation tools?

Malware and adware have used affiliate marketing links to make money.

By forcing users to visit merchant sites through an affiliate marketing link, the author can make a commission on any purchases made. This is often to the detriment of the merchant and other honest affiliates (like Reward Gateway).

This has led to some online reputation tools highlighting the links involved as related to malware. It is not because they host anything malicious.

How do you ensure that none of these links are malicious?

Reward Gateway uses an automated tool to test every link stored against Google's Safe Browsing List.

If a link is identified as being insecure because of malware/phishing, the affected link is immediately disabled on all Reward Gateway sites. A notification is also dispatched to the Information Security Event Log so that it can be investigated further.

How do you ensure the reputation of who you link to?

Affiliate marketing is different to traditional advertising models.

With affiliate marketing, the affiliate network acts as an intermediary allowing affiliates and merchants to form relationships. Without these relationships, it is not possible for a publisher to promote a merchant – the network will not allow the transfer.

This is in contrast to traditional advertising models, where the advertising network promotes merchants to everyone, regardless of whether the affiliate has any relationship in place.

When we decide to work with a merchant and promote them, it is because our Partnership Manager is happy with their reputation.