The Grand National is over for another year and whilst there were a number of affiliate marketeers celebrating Tony McCoy’s success but there wasn’t too much protestation over the annual “change your content for a few days” rules from bookmakers. In previous years the free bet offers have been removed or in some cases CPA payments dropped over National weekend.

The lack of comment from affiliates perhaps suggests that things have settled in this area, maybe as some bookies have adapted their stance, or it’s become accepted as the norm that bookies will be a pain at this time, or perhaps there’s just an element of “there’s no point complaining”?

Or, as is more likely, many affiliates have become wise to the event and are taking advantage well before the actual day of the race.

For example, if you get an email at the end of March from Ladbrokes saying “We ask that you remove any reference to free bets on your sites during Grand National Day. Unfortunately any affiliates who do not comply with this request will see their revenue for the whole month of April withheld”, the best thing to do is send out “free Grand National bets” promotions in the interim period with a message saying there won’t be any available on the day.

That all seems fair and sensible to me!

However, any affiliate publishing that “Ladbrokes will not offer freebets on Grand National day this year” would have been in the wrong. That’s because they offered Sun readers who visited their high street bookies a free £1 bet – details here! Now fair enough it’s not online, but it’s still a free bet.

Furthermore, a forward thinking affiliate could have used this information to offer extra promotion for the bookmaker, had they provided it. With this in mind, it makes you wonder if affiliates would respond better to “please ensure you tell your users they’ll be no free bet via the online site but you are welcome to mention that there are these offers offline” rather than the “remove any reference to free bets… [or have] … revenue for the whole month of April withheld”.

For example an affiliate may want to tell their visitors “if you pick up a copy of The Sun you’ll get a £1 free bet from Ladbrokes, but if you’re not able to get out today there’s no free bet offer but you can place your National bet at Ladbrokes.com”. It gives visitors truthful information, it’s useful and valid, plus offers promotion and links to the merchant. It also combines the merchant’s other advertising channels together with affiliate marketing.

Is that unfair on the bookmaker? Would that be worthy in a penalty for the affiliate?

What do you think?