Methods and arrangements allow merchants to set up advertising campaigns that distribute special offers or discounts and allows users to forward the special offers to friends. The forwarding of the offers could expose merchants to offering more discounts than budgeted and this is a concern. The invention addresses this by having the forwarded offer check with the merchant server or advertising server to see if there is enough budget in the campaign left to allow the issuance of the forwarded offer, and if so, the server issues a new identifier. If not, the user receiving the forwarded offer receives a message saying the campaign has expired. Since every offer has its own identifier, the forwarding of the offers can be tracked, as well as the redemption, which allows for social metric collection.