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Cashing Out: Week of October 19-25th, 2008 in Online Marketing News

Oct 26, 2008
by

Boutin Inserts Foot In Unfortunately Not Wired Mouth

The art of the shock jock is alive and well on the internet as Wired Magazine writer Paul Boutin demonstrated this week. His now infamous piece of linkbait entitled Kill Your Blog is such tripe that we are not going to link to it. However, we will link to two excellent rebuttals we found by Paul Stamatiou and Jack Humphrey.

Layoffs Continue

Online companies continued to make cutbacks that impacted their employees. Companies announcing layoffs included:

Dell – Was the biggest announcement this week with 8,900 people loosing their jobs amounting to 10% of their staff
Yahoo – Cut 1,500 people approximately 10% of their staff
TicketMaster – Laid off 300 about 5% of their staff
WildTangent – Eliminated 20% of its staff
Mercent – Trimmed 12% of its staff

ScanSafe Warns of Big, Bader Malware Threats and MessageLabs Warns of Zombie Computer Phishing Attacks

ScanSafe released a report finding that employer are increasingly risk of having employees inadvertently download backdoors and password stealers onto corporate computers from Web sites that have malicious software hidden on them. A company in ScanSafe’s focus group faced a nearly 500 percent greater risk of exposure to those threats in September than was faced in January of this year, according to ScanSafe’s Global Threat Report (pdf) released on Tuesday.

Companies in the energy sector are at greater risk from Web-based malware than other industries, the report concludes. The energy sector, worldwide, faces a 189 percent higher risk of exposure from workers visiting sites with malware on them than other industries, followed by the pharmaceutical and chemicals industry, construction and engineering, and media and publishing. The industry with the lowest rate of exposure was aviation and automotive.

Also on Tuesday, security firm MessageLabs released statistics on the numbers of phishing attacks related to the banking crisis.

MessageLabs intercepted 7,000 phishing attacks exploiting Bank of America on October 16 and 15,000 on October 17, reaching 125,000 total e-mails over that weekend. American Express was the focus of a phishing attack that started on October 20 and reached 35,000 e-mails for the day. The Cutwail botnet, which controls more than 1 million active unsuspecting zombie computers on the Internet and is believed to be the largest botnet, is responsible for those phishing attempts, MessageLabs said.

CPA Empire Rebrands as Affiliate.com

Taking steps toward an upcoming rebranding launch in November CPA Empire, posted a preview of what is in store in November when they officially become Affiliate.com. Their new look promises to focus a lot on compliance which has been a problem in the past when they were Opt In Real Big and as shown in a recent report by Ben Edelman.

Filed under: Cashing Out
  • http://www.benedelman.org Ben Edelman

    One recent trend I've noticed, from a variety of CPA networks, is vague claims like "industry leading compliance expertise" without meaningful explanation of what kind of "compliance" is at issue.

    For example, CPA Empire may be an expert at email marketing and ringtones, based on its prior efforts there. Maybe CPA Empire has something useful to offer as to compliance in these veins.

    But as to spyare and adware, I can't find evidence of much excellence at CPA Empire. My AutoTester has found 600+ incidents of spyware sending traffic to/through CPA Empire, as I mentioned in the linked piece last month. Google searches for [spyware site:cpaempire.com] or [adware site:cpaempire.com] both come up empty. Now, provision 5.D. of CPA's Affiliate Terms & Conditions, http://login.tracking101.com/agreement.html?CLIEN… , does prohibit "engag[ing] in, disseminat[ing], promot[ing] or otherwise distribut[ing] any Offer through the use of contextual media, specifically downloadable software (also called adware, pop-up/pop-under technogies …)." I give CPA Empire credit for this rule; some other CPA networks openly admit that they still allow adware. But how well CPA's no-adware prohibition enforced? Not well at all, based on my 600+ automated observations.

    Perhaps CPA Empire will in due course say more about the promised focus on compliance. They certainly have plenty of work to do in that regard.

  • http://www.rhinofish.com Pat Grady

    lemme guess, do also they have a "100% parasite free" sign hung somewhere too…

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    http://www.affiliate.com/advertisers/
    Unparalleled Compliance Program – Navigating the online marketing legal compliance landscape can be a real challenge for any advertiser. We have the most experienced and knowledgeable compliance team in the industry providing you with unmatched guidance in this vital area.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    nope, a careful reading reveals top notch word smithing, one of their truly outstanding skills.

    nothing illegal about adware… unparalleled is such a squishy adjective…

    an interesting and legitimate question for their prospects to consider, regarding their claims, is… where did your compliance team gather all that experience you claim to have?

    :-)

  • http://www.get-in2.com Mike Hyland

    The only thing that's changed at CPAempire is the out front "Help Wanted" sign changed from "Adwhores apply within" to Ad Ho's apply within. They still think BHO is just a political candidate.. LOL