Exploring Risk and Fraud Scenarios in Affiliate Marketing Technologies from the Advertisers perspective

TL;DR

This paper examines the risks and vulnerabilities in affiliate marketing technologies from the advertiser's perspective, aiming to develop solutions to mitigate fraud and security issues in e-commerce systems.

Contribution

It identifies key risks in affiliate marketing and provides a technical background, laying the groundwork for building a prototype to test risk mitigation strategies.

Findings

Identified major risks and vulnerabilities in affiliate marketing systems

Provided technical background on fraud scenarios

Laid foundation for prototype development and testing

Abstract

Affiliate Marketing (AM) has become an important and cost effective tool for e-commerce. There are numerous risks and vulnerabilities that are typically associated with AM. Though a well-planned AM model can greatly benefit the e-commerce strategies of an enterprise, a haphazardly implemented system can expose a business enterprise to major risks and vulnerabilities, which can lead to great financial losses through fraudulent activities. This research-in-progress has identified some of the risks and the technical background of those scenarios. The research will now move on to build a functional prototype of an AM network to design and test solutions to control the identified risks.