To see the ongoing conversation about aggressive online advertising is both reassuring as well as disconcerting. The reason that it’s disconcerting is that Mike Arrington has just begun to breach a much greater issue by randomly attacking one (or a couple) companies in this space. If this attack was done just for page views then writing about the issues are almost as bad as the people performing the act.
At the end, there should be a goal which in my opinion should be to eliminate unethical practices which damage the entire industry. To arbitrarily bring up an issue which AllFacebook has been highlighting for 6 months does nothing but drive controversy and force some VC funded companies to force their skeletons back into the closet.
It’s A Widespread Issue
The issue isn’t just with the offers space though. It’s a much greater investment by well known spam/affiliate advertisers who wish to take advantage of this space. With struggling developers who believe they are building legitimate businesses, slapping on some questionable ads are a great way to keep funding the business. When questionable ads are the difference between getting another job or continuing to program, many developers opt for the latter.
The issue is with people like Sanford Wallace who earlier this week was asked to pay $711 million in damages to Facebook for aggressive spam. While he probably won’t pay, Sanford Wallace is only one of many spammers in a giant ecosystem which is essentially a spectrum of grey to dark ethical practices. For [...]