Thanks for the list. :thumbsup

*banging head against a wall...*

That's exactly what most people don't understand. Zango and other adware companies do not have sites of their own that they promote for sponsors. That's why all advertisers rely on overwriting cookies to make sales because otherwise surfers would just close the popup window and adware advertisers would never make a dime.

Adware users, both sponsors and affiliates, NEED, and please read this carefully, NEED legit affiliates. If the only people in a program are adware users, they will only steal from each other. Let them, that's what they deserve!

If another sponsor is popping over YOUR sites, SUE THEM! These cases have been won against other adware before, they will be won again. The ONLY people who can win a lawsuit against adware are SPONSORS, not affiliates. Don't know how to do this? No idea how to go about it? Contact Ben Edelman! You want someone to monitor your sites for you? Contact Kellie! That's what they do for a living.

Zango and other adware are not picky, they'll pop up anywhere, over any site, and steal from anyone and everyone if the keywords/URL's are right.

SPONSORS can put a stop to adware by suing other sponsors that pop on their sites. Affiliates can sue sponsors for breach of agreement when sales are blatantly stolen, the sponsor knows about it and doesn't do a thing to stop it.

Affiliates can help put a stop to it by dropping sponsors that allow it until all they have left are adware advertisers in the program.

Do you know what that means? Does anyone understand this?

Adware popups will appear on free search engine listings, on ppc listings, type-ins, bookmarks, anything that has your URL in it, the source does NOT matter. So if only adware advertisers are left in a program the SPONSOR is the biggest loser of all because all FREE traffic will becomes a commissionable sale if affiliates use adware... OR

Sponsor will steal from every affiliate in his program until no one makes any money anymore and move on to another program. Who's the sponsor gonna steal from? Himself?? How much good would it do to use adware without affiliates??

Sponsors lose regardless of how you look at it.

Without affiliates, how many sponsors would survive?

Missie

Thanks everyone for the input so far. My lists are not about pointing fingers. They are to make people realize that the ugly tentacles of Adware are wider and longer and closer to you than you might have realized. I reported what I saw and everything I said should be easily verifiable by anyone within minutes. If you really can't see your listing and it bothers you, hit me up and I'll send you the url if I can remember the search it came up on.

Regarding the listing of Sponsors who have their Affiliates displayed on Zango search results. Yes it's one step removed from those who buy directly from Zango or those who promote installs. That's why I made three separate lists and explained what each list meant and bolded my reasoning rather than making one "Zango Supporters" list like http://zangoblacklist.com has done with Mainstream and Adult combined and no clear explanation about how they derived their results.

How big a step that one step removed is depends on your viewpoint. Continue my logic enough steps and of course no business would be done at all as we all deal with people who do illegal/unethical crap or at most deal with someone who deals with someone who deals with them so each of us has our own line we draw.

Should Sponsors cancel Affiliates that buy directly on Zango and stop using it themselves as well? Ideally yes but they would all have to stop, not just some and to get them all to stop doing it voluntarily seems to be highly unlikely, though props to Will for at least making his best effort and promoting the discussion that will hopefully produce solutions.

Should Sponsors cancel Affiliates that are listed on PPC sites displayed at Zango? Of course not. The traffic to those PPC engines comes from many reputable sites, not just adware sites like Zango and as was said, the Affiliate probably doesn't even know and can't choose where the traffic originates. To the surfer however the connection seems pretty direct.

Should Sponsors attempt to monitor their Affiliates traffic sources more closely to determine a way to not have themselves associated with Adware? Of course, if there is a practical way to implement this without tying up excessive time and resources. As Jayeff said it will pay off in other areas of present and future unethical/illegal activity not just Adware.

Although I am hopeful the Adware problem will go away, I have a very pessimistic view and unfortunately it seems more likely that it will soften a bit through laws and pressure and eventually evolve to be an accepted practice, crazy as that might seem at the moment.

I can see the toolbars of the main SE's evolving to be more like Zango and them even showing all sponsored results on page one in the not too distant future, based on what the highest bidder thinks we were searching for, like Zango is doing now, with the "real" results relegated to page two or a different engine altogether, perhaps run by a couple guys out of their garage. :winkwink:

Bump for a good read





Oh yeah Zango is the devil

You think there's nothing we can do about this? Surfers can do a LOT. Consumers can do a LOT. We are all BOTH besides being affiliates. The FTC just shut another adware company down... As Kellie says.. Another one bites the dust! :D

http://www.informationweek.com/secur...leID=194300450

Missie

Oz, I had someone contact me. Out of respect for his privacy I will not say who it was and He did not tell me which PPC company he was talking about but... he told me that he did business with one of them and showed them this thread and they cancelled their relationship with zango and stopped accepted traffic from them.

When I finish my site, follow along the lines of what you started here, when I get the " one stepped removed" people, I will put the burden on the PPC to do something about it. They have other customers as well and if enough people who buy ppc from them do like the person who contacted me did, and complain to the PPC search engines they buy traffic from, I believe most will listen.

Maybe this can be the first step to shaking out the bad companies and seperating the bad people from the good.

just a FYI, for those who like the throw the holier than thou comments at me. If you want to know my beliefs, it is 99% stealing. Stealing content, Stealing traffic, Stealing money. How many people have you paid for a service and they fucked you. Companies like ibill, who stole thousands from us, thats the shit I have it out for. I am not here to tell people how to advertise, if this is spam and that is not, that geo-targeting is missleading, etc... thats not what I am trying to do hre.

but if we can seperate at least the honest people from the theives in our industry, I think the honest people will accomplish a lot.

Bump for a very good read..

48 ???? ?

Zango your days are numbered!
 

oppsssssss

I think the appropriate response if your company is ending up in these lists, and you didnt directly make a deal with zango, is "show me the affiliate id, so i can delete it" or "thank you for pointing this out, I will locate the affiliate and delete them"

My guess is, any affiliates who lose sales when they get deleted, are not going to continue to sign up and try again.

I also just read an article on how Zango settled with the ftc and is now no longer dealing with 3rd parties. I assume this means affiliates that would sign up to a program and strike a deal with zango, to promote such program.

Zango zango Zango... This shit is going to be going on for a long long time...

Yeap. I guess AFF is learning now, that this isn't something us sheep are going to forget about. I hope they choose Plan B now.

This sort of thing has been going on for years.

http://www.google.com/search?q=host+...en-US:official

It seems to me that some think its become an acceptable way to do business.

i don't know how you could police it, I'm just a lowly affiliate, learning programming as I go.

But if it was my company and I was bothered about my reputation I'd be telling spyware shitheads that if they ever list my URLs in any form they'd be facing some legal action for damage to my business. Along with a list of URLs.

I imagine that would do some good for a start...

I'm still not seeing tgps and paysites having zango redirect pages, i guess cuz they want the money...it's not as if it's hard to do, but few will take the steps to try and make some changes in the industry.

clean up the adult industry... hahaha I can dream!

this thread needs a bump

nice list . . . ..

I found myself wondering about that ...

It would certainly remove any doubt over who's bidding as sponsors could no longer claim "it's an affiliate doing it, not us". But is that really what it means?

OZ.. you rock out with your cock out... you ever coming to a Vegas Internext?

It's sad that it has come to this.

No. That is regarding them allowing 3rd parties to install their Zango software, it has nothing to do with bidding on keywords.

Everyone has to stop supporting these sponsors now or this will get worse. go to zangoblacklist.com

Quick Buck I agree with most of the things you said .. but take a look at the other side of the coin .. We (affiliates) don't care if your sites are promoted directly or indirectly with Zango .. when we see bad ratios we'll stop promoting your sites .. it's simple .. and I'm sure you'll lose affiliates that makes you good money ..
Just my opinion ..

Have A Nice And Productive Day!

thx for the list!

Awesome news, I hadn't even considered the possibility that a a PPC company would be willing to take such swift action. I guess Zango wasn't as big a part of their traffic as I thought and/or they don't want the heat of being associated with Adware.

If the other PPC's dropped Zango this would instantly get rid of list three at least without any need for action by Sponsors or Affiliates and deal quite a blow to Zango who would have no "results" to list. :thumbsup

I don't get this part. I mean anyone that displays Zango content like videos (half of which Zango gets from Revver and gets paid for every play when an ad is clicked and zero revenue goes to the website displaying the content btw) is a third party?

..or do they mean sites that just push installs that are not bundled with "content" and they make their own eula's etc?

lol er thanks ..I've been the last three years but prob not this year.

yes it has and if you do a search on GFY you see a few people raise hell about it on GFY a few times over the last year or so.

I guess this time AFF and other companies thought it would be no different, people bitch for a day or two, 90% of the people here don't see the threads or find out about it, and it fades away. They continue business as usual.

I'm guilty to some extent of this, I vaguely remember hearing about this shit in the past but never paid much attention to it. It took seeing with my own eyes for me to realize exactly what is happening. I think there are a lot of people here that see all the zango threads and agree it is bad, but everyone of them needs to see it with their own eyes to understand how bad it really is.

Are you fucking retarded? Because traffic is being sent to some PPC engines the people advertising on those engines shouldn't anymore? God you're stupid, those ppc engines make me a shitload of money, it's not like i'm gonna stop advertising there because 0.01% of its traffic comes from Zango.
Retard.

That's your choice. You'd make an even bigger shitload if your PPC engine result wasn't displayed on Zango where the traffic will probably get stolen by a popup anyhow. Where do you get the 0.01% ? How do you know it isn't 20% ?