They pretend (or pretended) to have coupons that you needed to click in order to reveal. Often upon clicking, the coupons were invalid. Perhaps some were never real. But upon clicking, a pop-under would launch which would drop their cookie.
So a user who was already committed to buying, and in the process of doing so, who simply checked for a coupon while going through the checkout process, would end up generating an affiliate commission for RetailMeNot even though RMN provided no value to either the customer or the merchant.
This is basically a scam that pretty much all coupon sites pull, which is why many companies ban coupon sites from joining their affiliate programs.
I run affiliate programs for my businesses, none of which have a box for coupon codes when you sign up. Despite that, nearly every day new coupon sites sign up for the affiliate program.
They usually have a webpage full of "coupon codes" offering discounts that don't exist made up, ready to add the referral link to. I remove all these sites from the program, some leave the pages up anyway.
Even coupons.com has a page for my business with several "Click to Save" buttons that do nothing. They're publicly traded as well.
Some of the sneakier coupon sites will put up other, competing products that do have affiliate programs to try and flip people into a product where they get paid.
The scam back in the day* was that they would bid on their retailer's own keywords. Their ads would send that traffic through their own affiliate links and get paid on any revenue generated. The ads looked legit and appeared to point to the retailers so most folks never even knew. So they cannibalized their retailer's own paid traffic and made it more expensive to bid on their own keywords.
*Back in the day was nearly ten years ago. Things may have changed.
I see other folks have already explained what I would call the "pop-under" approach where a new window is opened from RMN's site to the retailer in question. This is nefarious but in a slightly different way than the above.
Most affilite programs forbid this, but you can find that some clueless program runners allow it... usually because of site owners who are too cheap and clueless to bid on their own keywords anyway.
They don't actually refer anyone (usually you don't look for coupons before you're at the checkout window), but in order to view a coupon you need to click a link that gives you the RetailMeNot referrer cookie, giving RetailMeNot a cut for doing basically nothing.
RetailMeNot started out as WhaleShark Media and changed its name in 2013 after acquiring RetailMeNot.com, an Australian-based coupon site founded in 2006.
It actually started as RetailMeNot, a website run by two Australians. Whale shark media bought it, and then renamed their company to RetailMeNot. The website has always been RetailMeNot.com.
Huh, totally forgot about that! This was at least partially due to the fact that "WhaleShark Media" had become synonymous with large-scale fraud in some affiliate programs around this time.
RetailMeNot means don't charge me retail price and rather give me the discounted price by use of coupons found on the RetailMeNot website. It was a wordplay of BugMeNot.
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Once upon a time RetailMeNot was just a fly-by-night operation that scammed retailers using PPC ads and affiliate links. Look at them now.
In what way were they scamming retailers?
They pretend (or pretended) to have coupons that you needed to click in order to reveal. Often upon clicking, the coupons were invalid. Perhaps some were never real. But upon clicking, a pop-under would launch which would drop their cookie.
So a user who was already committed to buying, and in the process of doing so, who simply checked for a coupon while going through the checkout process, would end up generating an affiliate commission for RetailMeNot even though RMN provided no value to either the customer or the merchant.
This is basically a scam that pretty much all coupon sites pull, which is why many companies ban coupon sites from joining their affiliate programs.
What you're describing is cookie stuffing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing). People have been prosecuted over this: http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-the-fbi-shawn-hogan-and-.... I'm surprised about your claims that a public company would be doing this.
I run affiliate programs for my businesses, none of which have a box for coupon codes when you sign up. Despite that, nearly every day new coupon sites sign up for the affiliate program.
They usually have a webpage full of "coupon codes" offering discounts that don't exist made up, ready to add the referral link to. I remove all these sites from the program, some leave the pages up anyway.
Even coupons.com has a page for my business with several "Click to Save" buttons that do nothing. They're publicly traded as well.
Some of the sneakier coupon sites will put up other, competing products that do have affiliate programs to try and flip people into a product where they get paid.
It blows my mind how many companies still eagerly work with coupon sites given this has been true for over a decade.
The scam back in the day* was that they would bid on their retailer's own keywords. Their ads would send that traffic through their own affiliate links and get paid on any revenue generated. The ads looked legit and appeared to point to the retailers so most folks never even knew. So they cannibalized their retailer's own paid traffic and made it more expensive to bid on their own keywords.
*Back in the day was nearly ten years ago. Things may have changed.
I see other folks have already explained what I would call the "pop-under" approach where a new window is opened from RMN's site to the retailer in question. This is nefarious but in a slightly different way than the above.
Most affilite programs forbid this, but you can find that some clueless program runners allow it... usually because of site owners who are too cheap and clueless to bid on their own keywords anyway.
They don't actually refer anyone (usually you don't look for coupons before you're at the checkout window), but in order to view a coupon you need to click a link that gives you the RetailMeNot referrer cookie, giving RetailMeNot a cut for doing basically nothing.
Especially when, more often than not, the coupon code was invalid.
huh so thats what happened
It actually started as RetailMeNot, a website run by two Australians. Whale shark media bought it, and then renamed their company to RetailMeNot. The website has always been RetailMeNot.com.
It started out as bugmenot, for sharing logins to web sites to deal with mandatory signups.
Yep. This is actually the secret to their (initial) SEO success.
That's really interesting. Can you elaborate?
ya know, thats exactly how I read the statement I quoted........
Huh, totally forgot about that! This was at least partially due to the fact that "WhaleShark Media" had become synonymous with large-scale fraud in some affiliate programs around this time.
RetailMeNot is a weird name isn't it? "don't sell stuff (to me)" for a site for selling stuff (to me)!?
RetailMeNot means don't charge me retail price and rather give me the discounted price by use of coupons found on the RetailMeNot website. It was a wordplay of BugMeNot.
If you read it as "don't sell me stuff at retail price" then it makes more sense.