I know Google does the same, but it's not an example to follow.
When Google decides that clicks were invalid, they remove the commission and also remove the charges from the advertiser. The fact that they do this, and aggressively fight click fraud, is one of the major reasons they have so little real competition.
In the case of Amazon I'm not sure how they could do that...do they cancel all of the orders under the old agreement? Give customers their money back and ask for stuff to be shipped back?
As an aside, Amazon's Affiliate program is one of the big vehicles of noise on the net. When authors suddenly decide to write a big blog entry about the best headphones, or the best coffee grinders, etc, invariably you find that it was 100% affiliate fee driven. That might seem like a "well they might as well capitalize", but the corrupting influence of peddling commission goods is unavoidable.
When Google decides that clicks were invalid, they remove the commission and also remove the charges from the advertiser. The fact that they do this, and aggressively fight click fraud, is one of the major reasons they have so little real competition.
In the case of Amazon I'm not sure how they could do that...do they cancel all of the orders under the old agreement? Give customers their money back and ask for stuff to be shipped back?
As an aside, Amazon's Affiliate program is one of the big vehicles of noise on the net. When authors suddenly decide to write a big blog entry about the best headphones, or the best coffee grinders, etc, invariably you find that it was 100% affiliate fee driven. That might seem like a "well they might as well capitalize", but the corrupting influence of peddling commission goods is unavoidable.