Nada Collar

Shoemoney has an article about these sites that promise free stuff and then make you fill in ton’s of forms and shell out money to sign up for things. The article was written be someone who wished to remain anonymous and sent it to Shoemoney to print. He seems to think that these companies might be owned by ValueClick, but there is no reason why that association is made (other than the fact that ValueClick don’t seem to be in this market).

I’ve done some digging and I think either Mr anonymous is wrong, or multiple people have the same software that is generating the same code.

First take a look at the source code of these sites. They are obviously all related as they have the same source code, the same terms and conditions, and yet as Shoemoney points out they have different domain registration information. Why would you do that? Maybe if you have something to hide?

taken from Shoemoney’s article:

1) http://www.consumerdirectsavings.com

Registered to:
Inner Concepts (innerconcepts@gmail.com)
297 Kingsbury Grade #D
PO Box 4470
Stateline, NV, 89449-4470
US
775-588-0161

2) http://www.freelawntractor.com

Registered to:
eSolutions Media (admin@esolutionsmedia.net)
4001 Kennett Pike
Suite 134
Greenville, DE 19807
US
866-670-9043

3) http://www.webrewardscentral.com

Registered to:
Inc., MarketLabs.net (admin@marketlabs.net)
MarketLabs.net, Inc
40 East Main Street
#333
Newark, DE 19711-4639
US
866-348-3896

Now I started searching for some of the things in the code and tada. I got a hit. Search for get_demographic and you get a nice link from the FTC. Oh look its about a similar company, bestrewardsaround.com. Same code.

The link shows documentation of ads that don’t conform to some settlement from a company called Zango Inc. And guess who owns it…. None other that Mr Keith Smith and Daniel Todd, formerly known as 180Solutions Inc. Sounds about right.

Seems to me they are trying to hide from their past as it might frighten too many victims.

Of course there always was a relationship between ValueClick and 180Solutions. Maybe Shoemoney has more information than I have found.

There must be people dying for this to happen. It was announced a while back, but we still haven’t heard much about it.

Maybe that performing arts degree will finally make more than minimum wage?

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has a deadpool of companies that have backed up and gone home. Are tradional music label’s about to fall out of the sky all around us and into the deadpool?

I just read at Mashable about Snocap and Pump Audio getting together. Snocap (from Napster dude Sean Fanning) sell mp3’s and provide revenue sharing for MySpace users and imeem users for their help in selling songs. Pump Audio provide licensing etc for independant artists.

I’m not sure that this venture in itself is going to destroy any big music labels, but I can see the mix of independant artitsts and revenue sharing totally destroying the music industry as we know it.

MP3 provided the means, but revenue could provide the power. Think about it, what do music labels provide right now? Advertising and networks. They can pull the strings to get the music played. They can spend the $$$ and get people to know about it.

With music marketing going down the affiliate route, companies like Pump Audio providing the help on the legal side, and Snocap and others providing the distribution, whats left? Nada.

Bye Bye Mr Music Label. Let the Google bidding war begin (well no more so that it already is).

I’m not sure whats going on with YouSayToo.com and TrendyFriendy.com. They/It seem to have a multiple personality disorder (look at the About page). YouSayToo and TrendyFriendy seem to be the same site, but can’t decide which name they would rather.

Anyway, its a social site for writing random crap and commenting on other random crap. But they have a revenue sharing model so its worth a mention. Similar to most forums (which they kind of are) its a 50% our Adsense, 50% your Adsense. They have a rating system and if you fall below a certain level then your adsense account is no longer used.

Not too bad although I would think tying Adsense accounts to your own content would help increase the general usefulness of the content.

I have just read an article on TechCrunch about online booking companies. These are companies that are trying to be more than just online table booker’s (like OpenTable). They are aiming to provide a service for the many types of business out there that require bookings.

Anyway, it got me to thinking. What benefits could restaurants (and other businesses, buts lets just say restaurants for now) get from online booking. The obvious is more bookings, but I thought, well they only have so many tables (or employee’s since all service businesses are constrained by employee’s). So why would they want to pay money to get reservations when they already get them for “free” over the phone?

Then it occurred to me, imagine if you could be an affiliate for a restaurant. Suddenly it could be well worth the effort of some personality to recommend a restaurant. Suddenly a restaurant could be booked 2 weeks, 2 months in advance. That means suddenly you could charge twice as much for a meal, attract the type of people that spend more on everything. Profits could double, triple, quadruple. Well you get the idea.

Since I wrote my thoughts on Google’s Pay-Per-Action I’ve been trying to think of some PPA ideas outside the box and have come up with a few. But the most interesting thought I’ve had is using PPA/CPA in place of CPC. What if I can determine if a reader came to my site via a PPA link? (I must be able to otherwise how would PPA work). I could make that my action. Sounds stupid since its just CPC. But what could I do with that added control?

• I can know at any second EXACTLY how much money I have spent.
• I could try and filter what I believe to be click fraud. It might affect my ranking, but I can weigh the pro’s and con’s and find a balance. At least my money is going to those who deserve it.
• I could pay for traffic that actually wants my site (ie by waiting for 3 internal page views, or something similar) . That way I can control the relevance of traffic I am paying for.
• I could dynamically adjust how often I notify Google to keep my ranking exactly where I want it. That way I only pay what I absolutely have to pay. Why get top ranking if 4th or 5th is better (and where I want to be).
• I could only notify Google if my visitor clicks on an Ad (makes aggregation a sure thing doesn’t it)

Some of these sound great and… well those last few just open up a can of worms now don’t they? I don’t want to even think about what I could do if I wanted to push the ethical bounds even further.

update: I already mentioned this in my first post, but it seems to be a common misunderstanding around the blogosphere, so let me address “basic” action fraud as Michael Arrington did. Google ranks ads by how much money it makes them, so CPC and PPA can exist together and Google can still decide which one makes them more money. So, if I don’t tell Google about the actions with the hope that I can get free advertising, then it’s the same thing as having a 0% click through ration (CTR). That will never get you any traffic. I am trying to point out that you can now control that click through ratio.

Right now I can see five solutions for these last problems:

• PPA never makes it to search. Probably not something Google would prefer.
• A publisher has direct control over what ads run. Seems like they already do, but its not a great solution from Google’s perspective as its not the most efficient. (and its just not the Google “algorithmic” way of doing things)
• Two tiers of affiliates, those that must use a Google supplied action page, and those that are big enough to trust that can supply their own actions. Ouch.
• Strong filtering of PPA landing pages to try and remove any unwanted activity.
• Hope that the positives outweigh the negatives and live with it.

None of them are great, and I think the last two are what we are going to get. It seems to me that Google might have a product that is much less scalable than Adwords. Of course Adwords has click fraud but yet it has been a phenomenal success, so maybe we will just have to live with PPA schemes.

Looks like an opportunity to me.

Google have just announced a Pay-Per-Action product which is currently in beta testing. It has generated lots of interest and possibly for the first time some people are doubting Google. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch thinks Google will kill the current big players, but many of his readers disagree.

I am taking the middle line. I don’t think current big players will be killed, the market will just grow (although current smaller players will be killed). It seems to me that Google is taking on the big hole that currently exists in CPA. The advertiser-Network relationship is a big hurdle right now and limits affiliate networks to big players.I think most people that are in the affiliate market are thinking about the current market and stating that Google will not affect CJ, Linkshare etc. Which is probably true. The big advertisers might be more than happy where they are.

But the market is about to undertake a dramatic change. New ideas/markets that no one thought of (or did but couldn’t get past the affiliate hurdle) are about to open up because now, in 2 hours of work they can start a campaign. I suspect that existing CPA networks have avoided the small market because of the action fraud issue. They want big players who they can trust and develop a relationship. But Google have essentially removed this fraud because of the auction process. And THAT is the secret ingredient that will change the landscape of CPA (or extend the landscape).