In a recent blog post called “Affiliate Tax – Can You Hide?” I asked the question if affiliates could maintain relationships with advertisers through third party systems like VigLink even though some advertisers would like to sever their relationship with certain affiliates who reside in states that have enacted the affiliate tax. In that article I pointed to a blog post on VigLink’s website that literally said they would help affiliates keep working with advertisers who deactivated them due to affiliate tax issues if those affiliates used the VigLink platform. The original blog post has been removed by VigLink after discussions with their advertisers/merchants, affiliate networks, and attorneys. The new blog post corrects their stance on this issue. I am flattered that readers of our blog felt compelled to join NETexponent and echo our concerns. In addition, I give a lot of credit to the folks at VigLink for admitting their mistake and moving quickly to correct their stance based on the feedback of their clients, partners, and advisors. Our industry moves quickly and we all find ourselves in positions where we need to take a step backwards once and a while to reassess our positions.
My parents always taught me to try and understand both sides of a discussion before forming an opinion (that has helped me numerous times in building,NETexponent, a client service focused agency). In order to do that I reached out to VigLink to hear their thoughts.
VigLink CEO Oliver Roup quickly jumped on a call to explain his perspective on this important issue. He admitted that they were a bit aggressive in their prior stance on this issue and were glad it was brought to their attention so they could amend their position. Oliver assured me that they do not want to do anything that would go against the wishes of the merchants they work with. He assures me that if a merchant wants to stop working with an affiliate in a certain state that VigLink will remove those affiliates. At the time of our talk (last week) they had not collected information on the states where affiliates reside but planned to gather that info. (critical info if they plan to help advertisers avoid tax nexus. VigLink is not going to proactively seek out information about advertisers who remove affiliates in certain states but if an advertiser does contact them and ask them to remove affiliates in certain states they will comply.
So if you are an advertiser working with VigLink and you have removed affiliates due to tax nexus concerns you should definitely reach out to them today and make sure they comply with your policy.
Okay, so it looks like the folks at VigLinks have moved to help protect their merchants. (Kudos*) What about the similar companies like SkimLinks and other CPA ad networks out there?
* yes, I do love my old time sayings
3 Comments
Hey Peter,
I’m Alicia Navarro, the CEO of Skimlinks. Thanks for raising this contentious topic, it’s one we have kept a close watch on, and feel for the affiliates in the affected States for their lost income.
Our stance on this topic is as follows: we do not encourage or invite affiliates in affected States to use Skimlinks. We also respect the wishes and concerns of affected merchants, and will remove any publishers from merchant programs that request their removal.
At the end of the day, our merchants have the right to be in control of the situation and they have the final say on which publishers are permitted on their program.
Happy to answer any further questions you may have on this topic.
Kind regards,
Alicia
Thank you very much for sharing your position Alicia. I will definitely reach out to you directly. Would you mind telling our readers if you currently track what states your affiliates are in and provide that info to merchants you work with?
I love this discussion and would welcome all others in this field to chime in.
Yes, we do know where our affiliates are based (this information is required in our registration process) and our merchants are able to control which sites they work with through our interface.
Alicia