FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Ebay ending cash back June 16
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Old Jun 16, 2011, 10:11 am
  #12  
cordelli
In Memoriam
 
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Easton, CT, USA
Programs: ua prem exec, Former hilton diamond
Posts: 31,801
Just a datapoint on the official reason they stopped it (though I agree it was probably to get a handle on the abuse out there)

JJ McCarthy, head of eBay's U.S. Partner Network, explained that the move is only provisionary as the company reassesses the business value of its cash-back programs, noting that they could be reinstated once it crunches the numbers.

"One of the challenges associated with running a large-scale affiliate program is understanding the incremental value of each individual partnership," McCarthy said in an emailed statement. "In recent weeks, we have been studying our cashback and loyalty publisher segment in detail in order to feel more comfortable with the ROI we are receiving from those partnerships. After careful analysis and thorough internal debate, we decided that the only way to gain a definitive (quantified) understanding of the value of these partnerships is to conduct a "go dark" test.

"While we understand that administering such a test in the live environment will create hardship for our Loyalty partners and their users, we feel this is a necessary step in order for us to maintain our confidence in this marketing method. The goal of this exercise, in the end, is not to reach a binary decision between continue/discontinue this form of partnerships, but rather to quantify the incremental value of these partnerships and to price them properly so that we can all continue working together with full confidence going forward."
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