We ran an article on Flightmapping last week about dropping adverts for Flybe, because they has asked for all affiliate marketing activity to be suspended. The reason for this was quite clearly stated - they were approaching the financial year end, and the budget had reached its limit.
Then they told us that it was all a mis-understanding, they just wanted affiliates (sites like ourselves) to cool things down a bit, and actually we could carry on advertising them, but could we just tone down any suggestion about them being short of cash?
We made a few small changes to the story, but they then wanted us to go further, explaining exactly how we’d made this mis-understanding, and adding some general comment about what a nice airline they were.
Unfortunately, we just can’t do that, and our commercial arrangements with them are suspended by mutual disagreement, with immediate effect.
For further details about this (from the perspective of the affiliate industry), please see my personal blog post on the subject.
[...] See also: Flightblogging (Flightmapping’s blog) comment on this - from the consumer perspective. var bz_url=’http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jamesavery.co.uk%2F2007%2F03%2F24%2Fwe-will-not-be-censored%2F’; [...]
Pingback by James Avery Blog » Blog Archive » We will not be censored — March 24, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
[...] Well, if you haven’t already guessed it, I do have a bit of a Flybe in my bonnet at the moment, and I haven’t quite finished just yet. Perhaps I should just shut up, but this blog has had more traffic today than on any other, so if there are enough squirmy affiliates reading this who have far too much time on their hands, and who don’t have the nouse to actually earn some real money by promoting ASOS, or some of Michael Anthony’s interesting finance programmes, then I suppose it is worth continuing. [...]
Pingback by James Avery Blog » Blog Archive » What a week — March 25, 2007 @ 6:10 am