One of the best groups I have joined on Facebook is the Internet Advertising - People Who Dont Pay Group. This has been a helpful resource in researching Advertisers and has allowed us personally to dodge a few bullets this past year. One of these bullets has been PROLERO.

I am actually surprised that with so many networks in this space you dont see many of them going mainstream and public about this. Of course, we have a lot of those networks out there with “boards” “corporate tables full of morons” and basically people without the courage to put something like this out there for fear of public lashback. Times are a changing, I’ve personally aired a ton of dirty laundry over the last year and honestly, I dont see any end in sight. Fortunately for us, it’s just been damn good business.

Every event I’ve been to so far, someone has come up to us and thanked us for a fraud post or some other content we have put out there that has saved them heartache. So here’s another one of those posts:

Prolero - Owned by Pete Maughan

Currently he is the highlight of the Internet Advertising - People Who Dont Pay Group. Outstanding balances are owed with quite a few people but one that is really out of control is the invoice from Unique Leads which is now 160+ days outstanding. Invoices are also due at Maxbounty and MediaTrust. The networks are now going public ESPECIALLY on 3rd party sites now and starting to network with each other to rid this industry of Advertising Fraud. If you thought Affiliate fraud was bad, I assure you that on the Advertising side of it, it IS WAY MORE organized, sophisticated and so much harder to spot.

Later on this week, Google will now be introducing AND enforcing their new URL adjustments for Adwords Advertisers. In an attempt to break Adwords Advertising Subdomain “spammers” (apologies for this word, this is what most of whom are using these tricks are being referred to as) will have another crackdown brought upon them. Originally designed, implemented and now being publicly addressed to reflect “sites who sit on shared or hosted domains” the new adjustments will now be enforced to make sure advertisers are sending their “clickers” too “100% CORRECT DESTINATION AND DISPLAY URLS“.

Here’s an example:

Destination:

http://thiswouldbesomeaffiliatesite.com

Display:

http://mycoolsubdomain.thiswouldbesomeaffiliatesite.com

In that example, it will now be enforced that you cannot use that. Subdomains being used as “redirects” are no longer allowed and will now be enforced. So far from Adwords, they are saying that ads will be disapproved but I would suggest if you have campaigns setup this way with this type of url structure to go in their and quickly change it up. Adwords has been on a banning spree and why give them another reason?

I caught this story on MSN Money and wanted to share a few thoughts on it. For awhile now, anyone familiar with AOL in the Performance Marketing Space has known that something like this was coming. From all of the reps I’ve personally talked to over the last year, it seems it was inevitable. AOL has been wanting and expecting to cut 2,300 workers from its staff but as reported, only 1,100 volunteered to be bought out.

With only 1,100 accepting buyouts, AOL now looks to cut another 1,200 to reach it’s goal. The cuts are supposed to start tomorrow.

Pretty crazy at a time like this that a company of AOL’s size is now slimming it’s numbers to less than a quarter of its workers  of 2004. Currently with a cut of 2,300 AOL will trim nearly a third of its entire workforce.

RUCK’s TIP - Get rid of your crappy, outsourced work-force who cant speak English. I hate to sound biased but one of the major complaints of AOL has ALWAYS been the majority of English speaking consumers/customers trying to speak to someone who doesnt understand you.

Before we dive head first into this post, I would like everyone to know that what you read from here will likely be the ONLY source of publication for a topic of this nature (unless of course you catch the wickedfire forum thread). (Thanks go out to Mike and Gennadiy for real info).  As we all know, and as I have preached for a long time in this industry, we have a lot of…how do I say this politely?….Absolute ball-less people in this industry. Since we all know and understand that I have pair, and I’m probably the most “professional” person you will ever meet, allow me to enlighten you on the events that happened and really put a kink in a lot of businesses today on the interwebz in the cpa industry.

First off - With my Twitter posts, Facebook posts, and my captivating forum posts around the web, I’m not going to ask, I’m going to tell you to STOP ASKING ME IF REBILLS ARE DYING. Ok? I’m not a genie, I dont have a crystal ball. What I have is my brain, my eyes and my ears which are ALWAYS open and looking for information. I give the information as it comes to me and asking such a question is just begging for speculation and if I were one to speculate well then…that makes me the biggest asshole in the world if I were wrong correct?

Moving along…