• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 9, 2015

While many marketers are consumed by internal -- or at the very least, intramural -- battles concerning the attribution of customer behaviors (especially sales), BookRenter.com Director of Customer Acquisition & Retention Jean-Michel Boujon said he’s more interested in some shadier characters getting attribution for his email marketing efforts -- you know, the grey or black market of the digital attribution world: malware, adware, and their ilk.

Speaking on the “attribution” panel at the Email Marketing Summit Tuesday morning, Boujon said he calls them “toolbars,” because that’s how many of his consumers view them, but what happens behind the attribution scenes is where the real problem lies, he said, noting that even when BookRenter.com initiates a consumer action, the malware or adware purveyor essentially redirects and hijacks it, getting credit for it.

“This is not right,” Boujon said, noting that is a far bigger issue than the infighting that occurs between email, search and other digital -- and even offline -- marketing teams over who should get credit for generating a user action.

“Isn’t that fraud,” commented panel moderator Jeanne Jennings, Managing Director, Digital Marketing, Digital Prism Advisors LLC.

“That’s called affiliate marketing,” quipped panelist Dave Hendricks, president of Liveintent.

Call them what you want, Boujon said of “all these toolbar affiliates,” they are “stealing” from SEO traffic and getting “credit where they don’t deserve it.”