eHarmony Affiliation with Commission Junction Could be in Jeopardy

Update: As of Monday, August 20, 2007, eHarmony was back in good standing with Commission Junction and it has been removed from the Deactivated Advertisers list.

(Online Dating Industry Journal) eHarmony's relationship with Commission Junction could be in jeopardy after eHarmony failed to deposit, by the deadline, funds to cover July's affiliate leads. This means that the thousands of Webmasters that promote eHarmony through Commission Junction could see payments delayed (or lost) this month for leads they sent eHarmony in July unless eHarmony makes a payment to cover the affiliate leads.

Under Commission Junction, eHarmony saw a greater than 50% growth in affiliate sales; an increase that eHarmony commented about in 2005:

"It's very important that our brand be consistent across all our marketing channels. With the help of Commission Junction, plus the remarkable enthusiasm and support of the publishers in its network, we've been able to maintain our premium brand image while driving growth in our subscriber base," said Steve Hartmann, director of online marketing at eHarmony.

Commission Junction is keeping quiet about the current situation, but has asked eHarmony affiliates to temporarily disable eHarmony ads until the situation is rectified. If not resolved quickly, the move could further hurt eHarmony, which came under attack by Chemistry.com in Spring with a series of "rejected by eHarmony" commercials. Chemistry.com is owned by Match.com.

If eHarmony fails to pay its affiliates, then Commission Junction could completely deactivate the online dating service from its network, creating a drastic decrease in sales for eHarmony. The last major online dating service to be deactivated by Commission Junction was True.com.

Edit: Image below added at 9:13pm on August 17, 2007. Click image to enlarge it.

Comments

[affiiliate of affiliates]

What are you talking about, Joe? I think you're over-reacting a bit. eHarmony is up and running and business as usual. I've been sending eHarmony leads for several years now and have recieved payment on time every month. My leads past 24 hours have been tracked in my reporting. You probably shouldn't make assumptions.

[Joe Tracy]

Affiiliate (sic) of affiliates,

All the information we presented is both accurate and correct. It was confirmed with those "in the know". You would have known too if you allow emails to be sent to you about Deactivated Advertisers. Commission Junction sent out a Deactivated Advertiser Notification at 6am this morning to eHarmony affiliates who receive Deactiviation emails on advertisers. If you had followed the directions in that email and went to your CJ account to check the Deactivated Advertisers report you would have seen that eHarmony was temporarily deactivated as of August 16.

With that said, all it takes is one payment from eHarmony to bring the account back up to date and in good standing then all traces of them being deactivated disappear... and if you weren't paying attention before, you would probably never know it happened. eHarmony isn't the first company to be put in temporary deactivation status, nor will they be the last. Sometimes these things fall through the cracks.

Since your comment, I've posted an image that shows eHarmony.com in the "Deactivated Advertisers" list (click on the image to enlarge it).

In addition, you should know that when you post comments on blogs, your IP address (which administrators can see) is traceable to the server you sent the message from. So I know where it came from, but won't post it here for your sake.

I am a fan of eHarmony (even met the girl I've been dating for the last two years on eHarmony). However, that doesn't hinder me from objectively reporting news about eHarmony (or any other service) based on facts I've gathered and confirmed sources. And this is important for people to know because it has the potential to affect thousands of Webmasters, if it isn't quickly rectified, who are promoting eHarmony through Commission Junction. If it was a simple oversite and eHarmony (or CJ) lets us know that, then we'll post that information.

[Dave Osman, VP Client Development, Commission Junction]

Hi Joe,

Your post just came to my attention and I wanted to let you know that the information above is inaccurate. eHarmony has been with CJ for six years, the program remains live with us, and they have no plans to change that, especially since the program is thriving and growing significantly year over year thanks to the hard work of the CJ affiliate partners.

[Joe Tracy]

Dave,

I appreciate your comments, but we stand 100% behind the post. At the time of the post, eHarmony had been deactivated. I have confirmation from two sources within Commission Junction about this. I have the email sent to eHarmony affiliates, and I have posted an image grab of the deactivation status. Dozens of other eHarmony affiliates also posted about this in various forums (shall I post links?).

Here are the facts from the post:

1) At the time of the post, eHarmony had been deactivated.

2) eHarmony affiliates were delayed one month in receiving July's commissions from eHarmony due to a deposit not being made by eHarmony (eHarmony affiliates in various Webmaster and Affiliate forums have confirmed their money from July's eHarmony commissions was not given to them in August and was moved to "Locked").

3) eHarmony has seen tremendous growth since joining Commission Junction.

4) If a company fails to pay its affiliates through Commission Junction and doesn't deposit any more funds then they are eventually removed from Commission Junction.

5) Via the update added several days ago: eHarmony is no longer in the Deactivated Advertisers list.

So which of those facts are in dispute by Commission Junction?