Comments from the Dark Side: Angry Readers Defend Fraud
I’m amazed by some of the comments I received by those defending the brokering of advertising, without permission from the advertisers. Several people posted several times under different names defending the practices, not realizing they had the same IP address. One guy emailed me and threatened to expose that I’m also selling advertising, claiming that somehow having advertising on my blog (about advertising) was a conflict of interest – which I assume he doesn’t believe advertising should be on most of the internet then.
“Personally I welcome research and enforcement if it is done in a professional way, not half-baked, off-the-cuff and incomplete. OK, you saw some ads run incorrectly. maybe it was done wrong intentionally, maybe not. perhaps the advertiser was fine running a video in a 300×250, maybe they did know it was going to be “syndicated” and maybe not. But do the work, find out and report it instead of throwing-up half-baked posts that could do some damage that cannot be undone.”
I love the word “syndicated” here as if there is some legitimacy of these practices. Let’s be honest here, there is not a single brand agency that buys advertising that is ok with any policy that says “Put the advertising wherever you want, anywhere on the page, here’s a bunch of money now have fun.” That is patently absurd, and maybe someone is just trying to make themselves feel better and sleep at night for ripping of their advertisers. Similarly, I’m pretty damn sure there isn’t a media kit that reads “Who knows where your ads will show up.” Also, I contacted all parties involved — from the start, all of them said that there were issues, but were not at fault. No one said that what was happening was “Ok.”
Like many scammers, instead of addressing the issue, and finding a way to fix it, they are sending anonymous posts criticizing the writer.
“ How about the fact that the agency may be fine with the RightMediaExchange and other exchanges? Pace never seems to look at the fact that the advertising may perform very well and as such, the advertiser reaches the end result desired. Aren’t most video players around the 300×250 size? Maybe the advertiser knows that Break runs this on their own site as well as sites across exchanges. Isn’t that what the ‘audience extension’ model is all about?perhaps the Exchange allows the advertiser to reach that desired user again but on another site using the Exchange model. Is this bad because Pace says so? Did he inquire at all on this? Perhaps Break does a good job getting the media out and in front of the most responsive eyeballs and the performance warrants getting the video to as many unique users as possible. Lets stop blowing everything out of proportion Pace.”
Do you really believe what you wrote? Again, does anyone really believe that these agencies booked on a website, and expected that it would be brokered 5 times, the ad size changed so it fit into a banner and then put on an exchange where it would show on any possible site? People pay for pre-rolls to be in content, not to be on the bottom of some T&A site playing automatically. Why would an agency pay $15 CPM, so that it would end up on the RightMedia exchange for $1 CPM? If they wanted their ads to be on the RightMedia exchange, why didn’t they just do that? Comeon!
Again, this is about transparency. No agency buying brand media is ok with ads showing “wherever.”
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2 Responses to “Comments from the Dark Side: Angry Readers Defend Fraud”
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(C) 2010 Pace Lattin. It is the policy of this blogger to not edit or remove any content and comments, unless it is specifically attacking a protected group or irrelevant to the conversation, such as a spam. These are the OPINIONS of the respective writers, posters, commentators. All DCMA Notices shoudl be sent to pace@pacelattin.com
If this comment makes it to the article I'll be shocked.
What I find ironic is the people who most bitch about fraud and "stand up to fraud" are/were the biggest perpetuaters of it. From the dumbass facebook groups, to the advertiser blacklists, to the people bitching about not getting paid, to what I see on my network, the same companies and the same names keep popping up.
I recently had a sit down with a black hatter who not only explained to me IN DETAIL how he perpetuated fraud and who helped him, but also showed me the operation. I got to see spreadsheets of companies with weak fraud prevention, companies that were supportive of black hatters, and who the contact was there. Same names, same companies of those that are "fighting against fraud and dead beat networks".
It's no wonder that those with legitimate traffic and legitimate offers all have "no affiliate network traffic" clauses in their contracts. Most of these companies have no clue how to
I used to buy online ad media for a direct marketing company years ago. Mostly email lists, although there were some networks involved. Back then, it was all about ROI. We didn't really care who or what the advertisers were or did; as long as we sold enough product within a campaign to make a return on our advertising investment we were good. If we didn't get enough ROI, we either demanded make-goods or dropped the advertiser entirely.
We were pretty successful with this because #1, we never relied on anyone else's tracking solution alone. We always provided our own tracking links via our own solution and compared it against the others. And #2, we always started with a small test that, if it yielded sufficient results, preceded a full rollout. Other than that we never checked references nor paid attention to an advertiser or network's qualifications.
However, we sold actual product shipped to the customer, and this was before all those free offers, drawings, contests, surveys, lead gens, fast cashes, grant or loan applications, co-regs and other ridiculous hooks became really popular. When that happened, almost no one was interested in us or advertising a solid product anymore. I watched the entire online advertising landscape change from selling merchandise and services to fleecing customers out of their personal info that's resold/reused in other ad campaigns. Simply because it was more lucrative for these advertisers to do so. It was pretty sad to see the industry head in that direction, and now these types of ads are pretty much all I see these days.
So in a nutshell, It's my personal opinion that anyone who creates and/or runs these types of ads are frauds who care nothing for the end customer.