PayPal’s Honey browser extension is under fire from creators and publishers who say it is skimming their affiliate link profits. Esbconnect’s Suzanna Chaplin believes an industry-wide over-reliance on last-click attribution is to blame.
Critics allege that Honey, a web extension that automatically finds and applies relevant discount codes when a consumer visits a brand’s website, is committing an affiliate marketing scam.
The app has been replacing original affiliate links with its own at checkout, therefore redirecting commissions that should have gone to content creators and publishers who contributed, perhaps more meaningfully, to the sale. Creators are furious, filing a class action lawsuit and calling this “the biggest influencer scam of all time”.
Without wishing to diminish their outrage, the controversy has a very familiar feel for those in the performance marketing world, where, based on a last-click attribution model, those media vendors and publishers who focus on the last click …