Facebook Monetization = Fail
I was out of the country for a week and when I got back my Facebook account was covered with hundreds of deceptive “Get Rich Make Money Online” schemes. I started reporting them just to get them off the screen and stopped after about 20 minutes as I kept getting new ads to replace the ones I flagged as spam i gave up.
I have no doubt that these ads work and are making affiliates, networks and the advertiser a pile of cash and Facebook is probably giddy with the cash, but there is a very real downside to this kind of saturation - It attracts unwanted attention!
The very reason Google is so successful is because of their depth of advertisers and the focus on relevancy. Facebook provides neither of these and in the interim is setting itself up to be the asset the FTC will go after once these less than truthful ads are come to their attention.
There are truth in advertising laws and I suspect that many of them are being broken and repeatedly and blatantly.
In the interim, Facebook is probably losing the faith of consumers who are being inundated with irrelevant and somewhat offensive ads.
Don’t get me wrong, I am jealous I did not come up with the idea, because a few people are absolutely banking on this stuff, but with this blatantly deceptive type of ad the big bad wolf will come knocking on their door. Either in the form of a trial lawyer or the FTC - not entirely sure which is worse, but neither is good.
I really think the ultimate losers in this deal are the networks who are not vetting the advertisers - more and more totally hollow offers with little to no product fulfillment are showing up. Both the affiliates and the advertisers can pretty much close up shop and be in another country tomorrow(if they are not already) - not the case with the networks - they have assets and I strongly believe that their claim of middle man/broker is pretty thin. Not to mention that as soon as the FTC shuts em down, the advertiser may just walk on a few million in payables, which ultimately will mean a lot of affiliates wont get paid either.
Long run I think this does Facebook more harm than good and a few networks go out of business… Just my thoughts, not a lawyer and dont know the relevant laws, but just cannot imagine this is all legit.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
I totally agree. Allowing those scammy ads to run is VERY short-term thinking from FaceBook’s part.
They will obviously lose all trust from their userbase, and soon enough the word will get out that FaceBook ads are to be ignored.
February 14th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Just as bad as the fake weight loss blogs that are everywhere. That’s another FTC crack down waiting to happen.
February 15th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Tell me about it..
Complaints about this are already showing up on rip off report.
What is happening is this, simply sign up for 2 bucks and burried in their reports is 30 bucks a month membership fee. Pretty f34cking bad.
The offer itself offers nothing whatsoever. I mean the “membership site” is just a wordpress blog.
I was left wondering, wow i can actually launch my own offers that are better than this and i am barely making 4k a month. Seriously - just hit wf and get some damn good banners and magically get accepted into a network and bam watch the money roll in.
Sure i am a dreamer, but its not that people dont have money to spend - they do , the thing that 5 dollar gas prices changed was they dont have money to spend around as much.
The last thing you want is to have someone kill themselves cause the last 300 bucks they had to their name was withdrawn from their account cause of this offers.
I remember paying a 700 bucks phone bill when i was broke as shit 4 years ago cause of the ringtones b.s and i wasnt making much.
I paid it, but i think thats partly why i dont push azoogle lol knowing that they were behind the whole ringtone business from the get go.
I think i need some sleep - i get your point though and thanks for blogging again.
Nick Out.
February 15th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
I agree with you. People are stepping over the line with this false advertising and there is gonna be a major crackdown.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
My sister got hustled by one of the aforementioned grant schemes were the info is available for $2 and the sub is hidden in fine print or not mentioned. She was like, wtf is this $70 membership? It didn’t even go through and I have no login/pw?!
February 16th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I actually wrote a paper on related topics last year for my class actions class - happy to send it along if you’re interested. As well, SMX West had a great discussion in the legally speaking panel of holding affs and merchants liable.
February 17th, 2009 at 4:38 am
diorex,
i dabble in a little domaining here and there and find this interesting. All networks ads4paper(ads4dough, click2ads , azoogle, copaec) seem to run the same offers.
The domaining companies that are making it right now parked.com, hitfarm, domainsponsor.com have nothing but crown jewels and provide nothing but sweet high quality traffic to yahoo and google respectively.
If i have this right, azoogle started the ringtone business and made a killing off that, right now shouldnt this upcoming networks focus on coming up with unique offers that actually help people.
Sounds like a pipe dream , but i beleive whoever works harder than the next person is going to survive. Unlike the domain community where having a 300 premium generics can be the difference a lawsuit aimed at any of this networks will completely wipe them off and affiliates will suffer too with their massive creditcard bills.
hmm… i think you already adressed this in your post lol.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
[...] Wondering who was reporting your Grant ads on Facebook!? It was Diorex! What a fucker! [...]
February 19th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Don’t you run a ‘free’ credit report offer that depends on a rebill service to back out?
February 19th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
@hypocrite - I am not knocking the rebill, lots of legitimate businesses use them, including credit monitoring services. I am knocking the deceptive ads that claim you will get $12,000 for free and then provide nothing at all of value. Take for instance a credit report offer - you can indeed get a free report and score from any number of providers with no obligation if you cancel within the free trial. They give you what they advertise - huge difference between that and offers that are blatantly lying to consumers about free government grants that dont exist and dont tell you how to get them if they did - not even implying all grant offers are bad… hopefully you see the difference and will use your real name to post next time…
February 20th, 2009 at 3:47 am
Facebook isnt all about shady adverts. They allow(ed) legit dating offers as well as a few other legit offers. Diet, mobile et al are for the most part pretty shady,,
The big challenge for Fb is that their user base isnt like yahoo or G..those search clients will use a credit card to make a purchase..FB users wont..so the only way to capitalize on that demo is with lead based offers…meaning mostly shit offers.
February 20th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Wow, I totally agree w/ you. Was just in my profile & all I have displaying are these offers in various flavors. I clicked on one (yeah, yeah, I know, but I don’t know how to get the URL from source like adwords) and the guy tells us his name was 3 different people.
1) in the “about me”
2) different name on the check
3) referred to himself later in the story… and this guy is on facebook like white on rice.
Plus, he’s using some BS geoplugin. Yeah, sure he just happens to be from the little backwater town my ISP is in. What a coincidence. Looks like an easy way to get burned to the ground if the Feds ever crack down on that. You’d think someone running that much volume would know you never mess with the government. Just give them their money, obey the rules, and live and let live.
February 21st, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I agree these offers are shady but how are they any different from the get rich quick, ringtones, or horoscope ads on TV? The get rich quick tv ads have tons of people saying they are making $100K every week, that has to be false advertising. There’s no way those crap make money courses helped even 1 person make that kind of money. All they do is say results vary and then flash their TOS for half a second where no one can read it. Same with TV ad ringtone and horoscope offers. You can’t even see what the TOS says.
Since these offers are clearly false advertising how can the FTC or any other agency allow them to be on TV for all these years. I would think TV ads are easier to regulate then online ads.
While the facebook ads are more clear examples of shady ads I think by its nature most advertising can be considered technically misleading. Any search on Google will produce tons of sponsored results that say one thing but it would be almost impossible to prove the ad copy was 100% compliant with what the offer provides. Its the only way to compete and get high ctr.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:37 am
“Since these offers are clearly false advertising how can the FTC or any other agency allow them to be on TV for all these years. I would think TV ads are easier to regulate then online ads.”
TV testimonials are usually backed up in writting by those who give them. Not to say they are not “exagerated”, but the person who makes the infomercial jumps through the hoops to make sure that they are covered.
In the weight loss space, there are companies you can work with to have people use your product and lose the weight - normally through some extreme dieting as well, but the point is that the TV Producers back it up.
Yes, there are some radio commercials and TV spots that run with questionable support, but any of them that go big time get all there items taken care off.
Look at Kevin Tredeau - that guy is a master marketer and he continually gets busted up by the FTC - he can no longer market diet products because of his whole “coral calcium” issue.
Steve Warshack (smiling bob/Enzyte) paid 2.5M fine plus had to deal with the IRS back in 2006 for making fake health claims and for dishonest advertising over “free trials” - he was essentially doing what most of the grant/money/acai trial offers are doing right now. Starting a 14 day trial, having the product show up on day 12 or 13, and then charging the card.
As discussed, the folks at the highest risk level here are the Aff Networks and sites like Facebook. Those are the ones that will get targeted.
Now, remember TV and Radio marketers have the FTC and the FCC to contend with. To date, the FCC has left the internet alone mostly - trying to figure out how to manage it is difficult.
The FTC could definitely come in - per there own website (http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus28.shtm) . You get enough of a target like the Grant or diet ads, and it will eventually hit someones radar.
March 22nd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I think Face book should charge all their users $35 per year to use their service instead of ads. It would make things alot simpler, since the advertisers on there that aren’t running those “Deceptive” ads aren’t doing much volume.
July 5th, 2009 at 1:00 am
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