Optimise specialises in reward marketing—such as 'refer a friend' schemes—as well as affiliate network marketing, where companies advertise on third-party websites.

The criminals can be members of more than one affiliate network and some have boasted of earning more than $100,000 a day.

The network distributes targeted campaigns on behalf of advertisers through its affiliate network of website, paid search, incentive, lead generation, subscriber email, and co-registration publishers.

Utilizing one of the common website correlation methods may provide clues about the affiliate network.

Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban certain adware publishers from their network.