Since we’re still fresh off of a wonderful few days in San Francisco at AM Days, I wanted to take the opportunity to share the slides and recap the presentation I delivered at the event. I thought this could be a useful reference—whether you were able to attend the talk or not. For those of you that couldn’t be there, I’ve provided a synopsis of my points below (along with my slides). You can also feel free to connect with me over LinkedIn or send BrandVerity a note!

A lot of the time, detecting potential bad actors in the affiliate world can be hard: these guys are smart, and it’s in their best interest to hide (and hide well) from brands, affiliate managers, and honest affiliates.

But sometimes they come right to you.

We’ve been hearing recently that someone had been aggressively marketing an adware platform to numerous people in the affiliate industry--including, ironically, a lot of folks who work on the front lines of affiliate compliance and who have little patience for adware.

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend my first ever Affiliate Management Days conference in San Francisco. I was thrilled to be there—everything from the location (I don’t get to visit the bay area enough!) to the expert-level content created a positive atmosphere for networking and learning. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the experience, I wanted to share some of the key themes and moments that I remember. I hope this recap will prove useful for you—whether you were at the conference or not!

March was a big month in FTC developments! We give our quick take on some of those most relevant to our readers.

A few months ago, as part of our Lead Gen Series, we published a post about pay-per-call sites and the questions they can raise about where exactly those calls are going. In that post, we didn’t delve into the possible FTC and FCC violations that these kinds of ads can give rise to, so we’re going to do that today as part of our FTC Compliance Series!

One of the major takeaways from both editions of BrandVerity’s Branded Keywords Report has been that Download & Toolbar sites, which bundle free versions of software with other products, such as toolbars, malware, or adware, are a major problem for software technology companies. In fact, in our study covering Q4 2014, nine of the top 10 advertisers on branded technology terms were Download sites.

We’re thrilled to be featuring the first guest post in our FTC Compliance series, written by attorney Richard B. Newman. Richard has been a great source for us at BrandVerity as we’ve developed our knowledge regarding regulatory issues, as well as a noted leader in the field, working on the Performance Marketing Association’s Blogging and New Media Disclosures Guide and contributing frequently to publications including mThink, OfferVault and LeadsCon.

Our office observed Pi-Day today. Christopher led the team in a blind tasting of five store-bought frozen apple pies.

The Candidates:

• A: Mrs. Smith's Original Flaky Crust Dutch Apple Pie ($5.99): The box art highlights 'real' butter and they are quite proud of their flaky crust.
• B: Safeway Select Dutch Apple Pie ($4.89): The cheapest pie on the list. The box doesn't describe much else about the pie, other than that it is 'select'. The only pie without a web page to link to.
• C: Sara Lee Oven Fresh Dutch Apple Pie ($5.00 reg. $8.99): Kind of funny that Sara Lee uses the phrase 'Oven Fresh' to describe a pie that you buy frozen.
• D: Grand Central Bakery U-Bake Apple Pie ($16.95): Grand Central Bakery is a popular bakery a few blocks from our office in Pioneer Square. A few of us remember when President Obama had lunch there.
• E: Marie Callender's Lattice Apple Pie ($6.49 reg $8.99): This pie even has you sprinkle sugar on midway through the baking process.

FTC Compliance is not a new topic for the BrandVerity blog--in fact, our first post after announcing our launch touched on FTC issues! And we’ve added a fair bit more content since 2009. In 2013, Sam Engel explored .Com Disclosures with the help of law professor Eric Goldman and looked at how well affiliates on Twitter were complying with those standards. We also recently took a look at e-cigarette companies and the potential for the FTC to enact further regulation in that space.

Did you know there’s a new digital marketing podcast in town? Digital Strategy Insights, a podcast hosted by Sarah Bundy and produced by All Inclusive Marketing, launched this February and is already doing exciting things. Sarah will be interviewing experts in the search, digital, and social marketing fields to provide insight and information regarding marketing strategy for brands, digital marketers, and affiliate managers.