Great Zango slashdot article
 

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/05/21/1415242.shtml

Seams more then just adult is developing a problem. Wonder if will76 is going to team up with this guy.

"In particular, these programs show ads that overcharge affiliate merchants -- especially by claiming commission on organic traffic merchants would have received anyway."

"...browsed Blockbuster. Observing the requested traffic to Blockbuster, Zango opened a popup sending traffic to Roundads.com. Roundads redirected to Performics and then back to Blockbuster. To a typical user, this pop-up is easy to ignore -- just a second copy of the Blockbuster site, which users had requested in the first place. But the pop-up has serious cost implications for Blockbuster: If the user signs up with Blockbuster, through either window, then Blockbuster concludes it should pay a $18 commission to Roundads via Performics. That's a sham: Were it not for Zango's intervention, Blockbuster could have kept the entirety of the user's subscription fee, without paying any commission at all."

"...I arrived at the unshakeable conclusion that people in marketing businesses are relentless assholes who can only see things with dollar signs and care nothing about collateral damage they may cause. You can apply this to printed free papers who often litter the streets of many urban and suburban neighborhoods with their distribution boxes and papers flying through the air. You can apply this to spammers who are still convinced among themselves that they are not bad people and only annoy people a little. Just about anywhere there are marketing people, you will see them pushing over the edge of what is acceptable practices and behavior... not every marketer is like this, but the "successful" ones are definitely of that breed."


http://www.benedelman.org/news/052107-1.html

this is where lars and others are out of the loop on the whole scam, they are actually paying more cost to affiliates than need be .. and on top of that ripping off the advertisers that actually promote the product, all that happens is real affiliates drop the sponsor and zango doesnt have as many links to steal thus , end results is less signups higher payout to affiliates..

great long term strategy

true dat/

My timing must be off. I posted this one yesterday and it sank like a rock.

One day the guys at sexsearch and AFF will realize that when you feed the spyware / malware / toolbar trolls, the only ones making any money are THEM. It is a thieving business that plays on the ignorance of both the surfer and a major business blindspot for the programs.

Paying someone else to get back your typein traffic - what a smooth business move.

I was surprised to still see this going today actually. Bump for making people realize Zango is no good even for the buyers.

That so few people in the business dare touch this is either total ignorance or fear that they would have to admit it and come out of the spyware closet.

They saw what happened to Lars, nobody else is going to jump out in front of that bus.

Good thread, back to the top.

good article :thumbsup

Very interesting read. I'm really hoping to see this kind of shit squashed REAL soon. It's hurting everybody's bottom line.

Dang, Blockbuster pays $18/signup?

Not bad ...

it's only getting worse with Zango spinoffs popping up everywhere