Eradicating LeadGen Fraud, Increasing Lead Quality: We’re On It

2013-03-14

Two LeadsCouncil 2013 ‘Most Innovative Company’ LEADER Award Winners partner to provide most comprehensive solution for restoring integrity (and ROI) in the lead generation market.

CPA Detective will be the first lead fraud detection application integrated into the LeadiD Marketplace, a single platform for best-in-class marketing solutions. This partnership comes in the wake of both companies’ selection as winners of the 2013 Leads Council LEADER Award for Most Innovative Company.

“The purpose of the LeadiD Marketplace is to present LeadiD customers with a curated suite of applications for the most effective lead generation platform in the space,” according to Rob Rokoff, Vice President, Business Development at LeadiD. “We evaluated many options and we are confident that these partners represent best-in-class solutions. CPA Detective is a clear pioneer in the lead fraud detection category.”

Lead fraud is a serious problem. In the lead generation industry, reports suggest that fraud represents up to 30% of affiliate traffic. Advertisers often pay for leads that are stolen, recycled, or from unwanted sources, which have been form-filled using fake online identities.

CPA Detective’s powerful tools are available to LeadiD customers with simple setup and include adaptive device fingerprinting, proxy unmasking, and “big data” analysis to eradicate fraud from their digital campaigns.

“Everyone wants to use their marketing budget effectively, and eradicating fraud is the fastest way to cut costs and boost ROI immediately,” says David Sendroff, President of CPA Detective. “We catch more and more fraud every day. Now that we are integrated into the LeadiD Marketplace, marketers can easily implement our platform and immediately identify and disqualify fraudulent leads.”

The Performance Marketing Industry’s smartest partnership is revealed just before LeadsCon Las Vegas (March 18-20). Visit CPA Detective at Booth 430 and LeadiD at Booth 416. P.S. keep an eye out for #OrangeKicks.

About LeadiD
Founded in January 2011 by Ross Shanken, LeadiD is the only independent, neutral, open technology platform, which tracks the origin and history of every lead event that utilizes the LeadiD system. No supplier-proprietary data is exposed, but rather, LeadiD allows Lead Sellers and Lead Buyers to make real-time decisions based upon definitive origin and history flags that are predetermined. LeadiD fosters an environment of trust in the transaction, one where both Lead Sellers and Lead Buyers alike derive top-line value. With unmatched data, LeadiD is the industry standard for authenticating lead origin and history and the authentication platform of choice for firms of all sizes. For more information, visit leadid.com.

About CPA Detective
CPA Detective is the premier fraud detection solution for the performance marketing industry. Proven to increase marketing ROI and maximize campaign efficiency, CPA Detective is used across all verticals providing greater transparency into the quality of each conversion and the overall traffic source, allowing companies to make intelligent media buying decisions by leveraging predictive scoring algorithms, smart device fingerprinting, and an industry-wide Fraud Intelligence Database. Learn more athttp://www.cpadetective.com or call 877‑449‑1854.

Facebook Getting Rid of Unlike?

Pesach Lattin

2013-03-13

Proven through the constant attempts at bringing in more Likes for Pages, which can go as far as paying for fake likes just to bring the number up; Facebook marketers see their Pages’ fan counts as a very important measure of their Facebook campaigns’ success. There have been many features added to Facebook’s list of marketing offerings, and many of them have been primarily beneficial to those who run Pages on the network. Also, most of these marketing features are aimed at bringing in Likes for these Pages, and ultimately getting more followers.

With Facebook’s new redesign have come countless concerns from those who advertise with the company. There is a lot that marketers know about the new design, but there is still a lot that is up in the air. However there is one feature, as it has been reported by InsideFacebook, which will allow marketers to feel a bit more secure about the ways in which they bring in Likes on their Facebook Pages.

Now, there has not been much complaint regarding the loss of fans of Facebook Pages, but with Facebook’s old design these users have had the option to both Like a page and to Unlike a page. Hoping to help marketers keep up their fan counts, Facebook has gotten rid of the Unlike Page option when hiding a story from a Page in their new redesign.

When clicking the small dropdown menu in the corner of a Page post in the old Facebook News Feed, users were given the option to hide the story, and then given the option to hide all stories from said Page or even Unlike the Page completely. Now, users will have the same options when hiding a post, with the exclusion of Unlike a Page. This means that users will have a much more extensive process to go through in order to Unlike a Page, which will hopefully lead to fewer users doing so.

For marketers, maintaining fan numbers is great. On the other hand, Inside Facebook mentions that there is the issue of a loss of reach on the network. With users now having the ability to hide posts from pages, but not to Unlike them, the percentage of reach goes down while the number of Likes stays the same.

But, if there has not been much complaint regarding the amount of people that Unlike pages, why has Facebook made the effort to include this change in their redesign? Well, Facebook wants people to continue liking Pages, even if that is the very furthest that their interaction with said Page goes. Here are some of the reasons that this is important for Facebook;

Easier collection of information for ad targeting and recommending other Pages
Giving Page owners more detailed information on demographics
Giving marketers a better idea of their audiences as a whole, allowing them to create, “hyper-relevant creative for a responsive audience, and gain insights that they can apply to their other marketing efforts.”

This small part of the redesign of Facebook’s News Feed has a lot behind it, and hopefully it will work out just the way Facebook hopes it will.

Marketers Pay Attention: Return Purchases Make Up 41% of Sales

Pesach Lattin

2013-03-13

The point of any form of digital advertising is to bring as many people as possible to one’s website to purchase their products or services; that much is known by everyone who used the internet. There is always a focus on grabbing new customers, and any way marketers’ can find to make their traffic grow further, they will try it out. However, with all of this focus on growing customer numbers, little attention is given to keeping these customers around once they are hooked on a product or service. There are far fewer methods that can be practiced in order to keep customers around for as long as possible, but there is plenty of reason to do so. With that said, many businesses have taken advantage of one method that does quite well at keep consumers coming back. Through the use of loyalty programs, many retailers are able to offer to current customers something more than the original product they came for, keeping them interested in the company for far longer than they would be without the program.

According to eMarketer and their report, “Customer Loyalty: Emotional Bonds Trump Monetary-Based Loyalty Programs,” retailers actually are losing quite an opportunity by focusing their attention in one direction only. The company states that return purchasers and repeat purchasers only make up about 8 percent of the usual site traffic. However, their impact on sales is far more significant. These consumers made up a whole 41 percent of all sales for retail sites. Not only that, but eMarketer reports these consumers as having, “higher average order values and conversion rates than shoppers with no previous purchase history.”

Now, getting customers to stay proves to be incredibly beneficial to retailers in more ways than one. When a consumer establishes loyalty to a retailer, there are many ways in which they like to show it. In eMarketer’s study, customers that were, what eMarketer refers to as “emotionally loyal,” 78 percent preferred to show this loyalty by telling friends and family about positive experiences and talking up products and services. Another 69 percent said that they show their loyalty by simply buying more from the company, which can never hurt. Then, 54 percent said that upon establishing loyalty, they put all competitors of the company out of their minds as options. After that 15 percent said they join the company’s social media community, 11 percent support the brand through things like t-shirts and stickers, and another 3 percent said they use other methods.

Gaining customers is and always will be step one, step two, step three, step four, et cetera. However, at some point, retailers should pay attention to those customers that they have already brought in, as keeping them around is turning out to be a very important practice. They are more beneficial to a company than most had considered before, and they need attention too.

Paid Search Ads Can Actually Suck

Pesach Lattin

2013-03-13

Everyone loves Google, or at least is seems that way. Google has come closer to conquering the web marketing business than any other company has been able to. Since their very beginnings in web marketing though, Google has been known well for their paid search offerings. These paid search ads were relatively affordable for a broad range of marketers, and they were effective at meeting their purpose. This is still the case to this day. Well, that is of course for most businesses. On the other hand, there are companies like eBay. The all famous online bidding and retail company has just recently realized that they really don’t need Google’s paid search ads at all, but rather they need not pay anyone to get people visiting their website.

Ray Fisman, of the Harvard Business Review Blog Network, writes in an article all about recent results from a study by eBay Research Labs economists Thomas Blake, Chris Noskos, and Steve Tadelis. In this study, eBay took a look at their sales during two separate scenarios. First, the team analyzed the company’s sales while running a paid search campaign with Google. Next, they looked at the sales numbers after stopping the purchasing of paid search ads with Google and search engines all together. The results were as follows; “many paid ads generate virtually no increase in sales, and even for ones that do, the sales benefits are far eclipsed by the cost of the ads themselves,” as it was written in Fisman’s post.

Taking a look at the actual report itself from eBay Research Labs, here is what they wrote;

It is our hypothesis that users searching for “eBay” are in fact using Google as a navigational tool with the intent to go to ebay.com. If so, there would be little need to advertise for these terms and “intercept” those searches because the natural search results provided by Google will serve as a perfect substitute. To test this hypothesis, eBay halted advertising for its brand related terms on a smaller search advertising platform (MSN). As suspected, almost all of the forgone click traffic from turning o↵ brand keyword paid search was immediately captured by natural search traffic from the platform, in this case Bing.

The facts that came of eBay’s research make it seem like this idea is something that everyone should have already realized. At least, that is, those businesses on the web that are well known across the country and the online community. Companies like Dropbox, Amazon, and even Square are all examples of what eBay’s research is trying to explain. With all of these websites, when their names are typed into Google’s search bar, a paid ad appears directly above an organic search result with the exact same link destination.

Now this is not the case for all businesses, of course. However, the bigger businesses on the web, and even some of the smaller are spending far too much money on Google’s paid search, even though they may seem like they are working quite well. There are many out there that should continue to trust Google’s paid search ads to bring in the traffic, but those who don’t necessarily need the help are still paying for it.

Infographic: What You Should Be Doing on Twitter

Pesach Lattin

2013-03-13

When talking about marketing, any time that anybody says social media, the first thing that comes to mind is Facebook. This is certainly the case for the majority of the online marketing community, simply because just about every digital marketer uses the social network in some form or another. But, as we all know there are many other social media marketing options, the more appealing of which would be Twitter for most people. Twitter is continuing to grow in popularity among everyday internet users and marketers alike. However, many marketers find it a bit hard to advertise on the network, as it does not quite offer as many opportunities and options as Facebook does. Of course, all social marketing poses a challenge, but for now LinchpinSEO, a digital marketing agency for small businesses, has provided some tips and guidelines for marketing with Twitter in an infographic that they have entitled “Tweet Cheat Sheet.”

Ever wonder about the little things that go along with Twitter that help increase engagement? Things such as how many hash tags you use, how long your tweets are, or if asking for a Retweet actually works to increase engagement for your Twitter campaign. As a follow up to our Facebook Cheat Sheet Infographic, we have created a Twitter Cheat Sheet Infographic. This infographic can serve as a guide to help increase Twitter interactions such as Retweets, CTR, and overall engagement.

It seems the most important information in the company’s infographic is that regarding what brings marketers the greatest engagement rates. LinchpinSEO says that engagement rates with Twitter are 17 percent higher on the weekend, even though only about 19 percent of brand Tweets occur during this time. Also, the company notes that 78 percent of engagement with Tweets from brands comes in the form of a Retweet. Next, 22 percent of engagement comes in the form of replies from users. Finally, a total of 92 percent of engagement on these Tweets is in the form of clicks on links.

It also seems that the shorter the Tweet, the better off you will be. I suppose this is true for all forms of advertising. Anybody who has had any sort of training in advertising knows that more often than not, simplicity can go far. According to the infographic, “Tweets that contain less than 100 characters receive 17 percent higher engagement than longer Tweets.” However, extending a Tweet with a hashtag or two can’t hurt, considering that the company notes in their infographic that Tweets with hashtags receive double the engagement of those without.

Twitter is a valuable destination for marketing efforts, as has been proven in the past by the many marketers that are already on the network. However, things can always be better and more effective, and LinchpinSEO has hopes that this infographic will be a bit of a help in making that improvement happen. So, if you want a bit of an edge when it comes to your next move on Twitter, take a look at this infographic and see if you can’t learn a thing or two.

Important: FTC Updates Advertising Disclosure Guidelines

Richard B. Newman

2013-03-13

Updates to the Federal Trade Commission’s guidance document, Dot Com Disclosures, have been anticipated for almost two years. After receiving substantial written feedback and in response to the increasing use of both social media-based marketing and smartphones with smaller screens, the Commission has now issued updated guidelines entitled .Com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising.

The evolution of online advertising and the digital marketplace necessitated the need for the revised guidelines – aimed at overall compliance with the §5 of the FTC Act – which prohibits unfair or deceptive advertising, marketing and sales practices. According to the Commission’s release, the updated guidelines seek to describe “the information businesses should consider as they develop ads for online media to ensure that they comply with the law.”

The guidelines also contain mock advertisements that illustrate the updated principles. For example, FTC staff advised marketers in 2000 to consider the placement of disclosures and their proximity to the ad claims they explained or elaborated on. The old guidelines defined “proximity” as “near, and when possible, on the same screen.”

The new advice? Disclosures should be “as close as possible” to the relevant claim. Another design consideration from the 2000 document was the advice to avoid buried or generically labeled hyperlinks. It also warned against using hyperlinks for disclosures involving key categories of information, such as how much a product costs or certain health or safety information.

The updated guidelines build on that, calling on advertisers to label hyperlinks as specifically as possible. You must also consider how hyperlinks will function across the broad range of programs and devices consumers are likely to use.

Perhaps the most important thing about the new .com Disclosures is, actually, what has not been changed. Regardless of how or where you market, truth-in-advertising principles continue to apply to print, radio, TV, and online advertising.

Nothing really new here, either. Well, not exactly. It has always been the law that if the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent an online advertising claim from being deceptive or unfair, it has to be made clearly and conspicuously. However, according to the updated guidelines, advertisers should make sure their disclosures are clear and conspicuous on all devices and platforms that consumers may use to view their ads.

In other words, if an advertisement could potentially be deceptive without a disclosure but the disclosure cannot be made clearly and conspicuously on a particular device or platform, then you should not run that advertisement on that device or platform.

One of the more interesting considerations for the Commission has been real estate limitations on various social media platforms. The updated guidelines acknowledge this marketing challenge, although, companies will not be relieved of the obligation to ensure that all disclosures are made clearly and conspicuously.

Pop-ups are potentially problematic given that so many technologies exist for blocking them. You will want to consult with advertising compliance counsel early on in the creative compliance process in order to assess advertising campaigns and the need for disclosures.

Something to consider – the need for a disclosure may oftentimes be an indication that the underlying representation may possess a deceptive element. A skilled advertising law attorney will be able to assist with the design or reformulation of cleaner advertising claims that incorporate relevant limitations into the underlying representation, rather than having numerous separate disclosures qualifying the claim.

Learn more about these guidelines at the FTC.gov website.

Information conveyed in this article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute, nor should it be relied upon as legal advice. No person should act or rely on any information in this article without seeking the advice of an advertising law attorney.

B2Bs See Email as the Way to Go

Pesach Lattin

2013-03-12

With so many digital marketing tools becoming available to the marketing public, it often becomes difficult to figure out which is the best option. Aside from actually trying them all out personally, which would require quite an impressive budget, there is really know way for marketers to be completely sure what will work. Luckily, there are constant studies released that serve the purpose of helping marketers out with these decisions. In fact, BtoB magazine has just released the results of a study sponsored by Eloqua. The study focuses primarily on B2B marketers, of course, and it searches for the best, most effective marketing tool for them to use. The overall results are a bit surprising, but understandable in the end.

In the magazine’s survey social media, which I expected to have the highest percentage of marketers behind it, was only the most useful marketing tool for 42 percent of respondents. However, ahead of social media, by a significant margin, was email marketing. Of the respondents in the survey of marketers, a total of 64 percent favored email for their marketing campaigns. In fact, it was email that has gained the number one spot among B2B marketers.

Below email and social media came customer case studies, PR and blogging with 31 percent of respondents reporting their effectiveness. Next, only about 28 percent of B2B respondents reported that search marketing worked for them. Another 28 percent of respondents preferred webinars and virtual events for marketing, apparently seeing the best results through them.

After those marketing tools, things got a different. Mobile, which is arguably the most popular topic of conversation among those following the evolution of the marketing world, was only reported by 10 percent of B2B marketers as a tool they think works best. Also, only 9 percent of marketers said that video portals worked for them; another surprise considering the popularity of video advertising seen with the rest of the web’s marketers. Even white papers, a tool that one would think would be most popular in B2B, were low in the ranks with only 15 percent of marketers getting excited about them.

In the end, it seems like email takes the cake for B2B marketers, which came as quite a surprise to me at first. This is mainly because of all the hype that social media platforms have been seeing these days, and how little hype email has been getting. But, after letting it sink it, it is easy to see how email could be the favorite for B2B marketers.

Social media is more of a B2C formatted marketing platform, with the majority of the social media user population being consumers. Email on the other hand, can go either way, and business marketers simply take advantage of a platform that is constantly in use in the business community anyway. Email has always been relatively reliable as a marketing source for B2B marketers, so why change anything?

Worried About the FTC? Feds and State Regulators in High Gear

Richard B. Newman

2013-03-12

There are many conceivable ways to avoid a federal or state regulator’s spotlight. What is somewhat confounding is that so many seem utterly disinterested in employing any of them.

Deliberate compliance-monitoring is one way to avoid undesired attention from regulators. Actually, it is THE way.

Each word in your creative content, in context, and the net-effect it has upon the average consumer must be considered. There is nothing wrong with aggressive marketing. But there is a line.

For those who may not be paying attention, the Federal Trade Commission and various state Attorneys’ General have started the new year with some pretty agro investigative actions aimed at unfair and deceptive business practices.

Text spam, online lending, data collection and privacy are in the spotlight. Advertisers are pointing down. Publishers are pointing up. Run smart. Be prepared to demonstrate your good faith compliance efforts to adhere to lawful online advertising regulations.

Banal as it sounds, careless mavericks are attracting unnecessary attention to an industry that is already the focus of legislative reform efforts. If you want to avoid the receipt of a regulatory love letter in the future, take proactive measures, now.

The good news is that if you run your campaigns the right way, under the watchful eye of advertising compliance counsel, you can maintain healthy margins without spending your hard earned money dealing with over-zealous regulators.

For those who just will not stop blatantly waiving red flags, do not say you were not warned.

Performance Marketing Insights NYC Huge Success

Murray Newlands

2013-03-12

The first high-level Performance Marketing Summit of sorts, “Performance Marketing Insights” was launched this week, and from all the attendees feedback, it was a huge success. While it was limited to only a few hundred people on purpose, it managed to bring all the “who’s who” of the performance marketing industry and focus completely on high-level topics that will affect the industry. Produced by A4Uexpo out of the UK and the Performance Marketing Association, it showed that our industry has matured way beyond the “affiliate make money” crowd that sometimes dominates the industry discussions. While the exact amount of money at the event was not know, it was estimated by one attendee that at least $2-3 Billion of producers attended the event, from major ad networks to brand buyers who were getting their companies involved in this part of the industry.

Here are a few highlights of the event.

Lisa Chalkin of Affiliate Window talks about Case Studies for Affiliate Marketers

Greg Shepard of Affiliate Traction on Issues on Attribution and Brand Oversight.

Steven Brown of Lindex on Quality Content for SEO, and how this has changed Google.

I Will Help Your Affiliate Business Get Started

Murray Newlands

2013-03-11

Dan Cohen of TradeDoubler talks with Murray about their Zoo Project. The Zoo Project supports aspiring entrepreneurs to transform their business ideas into reality. With hands-on mentoring from TradeDoubler’s experts, the fundamental goal is to develop the needs of entrepreneurs in the start-up phase. In addition to a solid infrastructure, marketing reach and business development support, The Zoo Project offers invaluable access to the wider online industry. If you are looking for a way to get your affiliate business started, here is an excellent opportunity.

Want to know more? Signup for the Zoo Project

WhatRunsWhere Launches First In-App Ad Tracking Service

Press Release

2013-03-11

San Diego – Giving advertisers and agencies the ability to track competitors’ use of in-app advertising for the first time, WhatRunsWhere (www.whatrunswhere.com), the service that already enables tracking of online and mobile ad campaigns, today launched a data gathering tool for the Android platform.

Using WhatRunsWhere’s new in-app capability, advertisers can now collect data from more than 20,000 Android apps. The data will provide crucial intelligence about where competitors’ ads are running, which specific ads are running there, who is selling those ads, and other information to help advertisers develop their own cost-effective mobile advertising campaigns.

“This is a significant development, not only for WhatRunsWhere, but the entire Android app market,” said Max Teitelbaum, co-founder and COO of WhatRunsWhere. “Until now, apps have been an informational black hole for marketers seeking to implement effective campaigns. Advertisers and agencies were buying ads blind, with no real performance history data showing what types of ads had worked in what apps. Now, with the introduction of WhatRunsWhere’s in-app tool, advertisers can develop intelligent strategies for deploying their mobile ad dollars, leading to a greater return on investment.”

“The universe of Android-based devices continues to grow at an astounding rate,” Teitelbaum added. “The ability to effectively reach audiences across Android phones, tablets and other devices represents an enormous opportunity for advertisers.”

In September 2012, Google announced that it had activated more than 500 million Android devices globally, with 1.3 new devices activated daily. And Opera Mediaworks reported in February 2013 that Android had “emerged late in the year as the leading mobile phone OS as measured by impression volume.”

The in-app launch follows WhatRunsWhere’s August 2012 entry into the mobile ad space with its acquisition of the UK startup Mobile Ad Spy, a company specializing in global mobile ad intelligence gathering technology.

About WhatRunsWhere

WhatRunsWhere, a competitive intelligence service for online media buying, allows users to look up what advertisers are doing online: where they are running ads, from who they are buying inventory, and what exact ads they are using. WhatRunsWhere also allows users to see what is happening on any online publisher: who is advertising there, who is selling the inventory, and what ads are running. With data from multiple countries and actionable insights from the data, WhatRunsWhere allows users to quickly dissect competitive online advertising campaigns, resulting in reduced risk and a higher ROI.

YouTube OneChannel: A Better Look and More Options for Users

Pesach Lattin

2013-03-11

Recently, Facebook gave Facebook users and Facebook marketers something to wonder about, announcing their new big News Feed redesign. For some time this redesign has had the social media world buzzing, but other marketers really could not care less about it. Now, video marketers have a similar announcement that they should pay attention to. This is especially true considering that most video marketers look to YouTube for effective video ad placement options. Much like Facebook, YouTube has a new redesign underway, to which the company has given the name, “YouTube One Channel.” However, YouTube’s redesign is both a matter of visual appearance or effectiveness, as well as functionality of user channels.

The introduction came in the form of a video from the YouTube Creators, in which a few of the most famous YouTubers made appearances to give their opinions and thoughts on the new channel design options. From the video we learn about what YouTube will be offering to its users.

The New Look

With YouTube One Channel, a new option is available that can help those who run popular channels, as well as marketers, in making YouTube viewers more aware of a channel. The new option, called Channel Art, will allow those people using YouTube to include a large header on their channel page, much like what we see with Facebook’s Timeline cover photos. The difference is that YouTube users will have the option of making the header area a functional image, including links to merchandise or prompts to become a fan on social media sites.

There is also the option to include a channel trailer, appearing only to those users that are not yet fans of a page. In their OneChannel overview, YouTube writes;

Win new subscribers with a trailer video that only appears to non-subscribed viewers. They’re all your fans; they just don’t know it yet.

The company has also made a change that will optimize all channels for any given device. YouTube, answering to the immense mobile growth lately, wanted to make it so that no matter where a user accesses a channel, it will appear as the channel owner planned for it to, including the new headers.

The New Functionality

YouTube states that, “Your content is a unique snowflake,” upon using their OneChannel. Users now have better and more control over their content, with the ability to organize their videos on their channels. YouTube users can now decide what they want viewers to see first and foremost upon visiting their channel.

Take greater control over how you present your videos and playlists on your channel. You can now curate content — your own or others’ — into highly visible sections for your fans to discover what to watch. With multiple layouts for videos and playlists, you can arrange your channel to best highlight your content.

Now, when your subscribers click on your channel from the guide, your full channel appears instead of just your activity feed. Your fans see exactly what you want them to when they click on your channel.

If you would like to view the video from YouTube Creators, explaining a bit more about the new design, visit their channel. Also, visit the OneChannel overview page. From there, you can get started with the new design. As of now, the feature is only available in a limited beta, but the good news is that it is available to all users.

FTC Text Message Spammer Summary

Pesach Lattin

2013-03-11

Sponsored Posts, Paid Reviews - FTC Disclosure Schwag150

When it comes to advertising through the use of text messages, things can go either very smoothly or they can get very aggravating. There are many mobile advertisers that opt to use text messaging as an advertising platform that know how to do so effectively. However, there are also those infamous and seemingly constant spam text messages that often end up with mobile users getting scammed. Of course, there are a lot of people out there looking to find the sort of “easy way out” and pummel smartphone owners’ inboxes with irrelevant scams. With comScore reporting that there are more than 129 million smartphone owners in the U.S. now, it is expected news that text message scams have gone up as well. A Slate article reports that in 2009, there were a reported 2.2 million spam messages sent and received in the country, and by 2011 that number had skyrocketed to 4.5 billion. More recently, there are over 180 million of these spam texts being sent. By now, smartphone users have been crying out in need of something to be done about these spam text messages, and the FTC is now ready to respond.

The Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on affiliate marketers that allegedly bombarded consumers with hundreds of millions of unwanted spam text messages in an effort to steer them towards deceptive websites falsely promising “free” gift cards.

In eight different complaints filed in courts around the United States, the FTC charged 29 defendants with collectively sending more than 180 million unwanted text messages to consumers, many of whom had to pay for receiving the texts. The messages promised consumers free gifts or prizes, including gift cards worth $1,000 to major retailers such as Best Buy, Walmart and Target. Consumers who clicked on the links in the messages found themselves caught in a confusing and elaborate process that required them to provide sensitive personal information, apply for credit or pay to subscribe to services to get the supposedly “free” cards.

Believe that this is a very real situation. I myself have received about five of these “free gift card” offers just this week. Two were for Walmart, and the other three promised me gift cards to Target. Of course, I did not follow through with any of them, realizing what they were. However, there are many people out there that do not realize what these messages are until they have already gone too far along in the process. By the time that they realize the offer is a fantasy; they have already given out things like names, email addresses, and sometimes even credit card numbers. Plus, the fact that these people are tricked into following through makes these spammers believe that what they are doing is working, causing for more of the same for others. These text messages are far more dubious than they may appear at first glance.

According to the FTC, the defendants who sent the text messages were paid by the operators of the “free” gift websites based on how many consumers eventually entered their information. The operators of the free gift websites were in turn paid by those businesses who gained customers or subscribers through the “offer” process.

As a regular U.S. smartphone owner, I actually enjoyed receiving advertisements through text messages. It made it easy to get updates about my favorite businesses, and even to receive information about deals sometimes. However, the spammers are ruining things for everyone. I now ignore all text ads because it is hard to tell which is right and which is wrong, and I am sure I am not alone.

Mobile Deals Have the Collegiate Community Excited

Pesach Lattin

2013-03-11

Even though college students may not like receiving advertisements on their mobile devices, there is no doubt that they are heavy mobile users. A huge chunk of the mobile social community is made up by those consumers in this very age group, with millions of social and gaming app downloads coming from college students. They are constantly hit with mobile advertising, but it is rare that they respond to these everyday display ads. However, there is one form of advertising that college students are responding to in heavy numbers, as it benefits them just as much as it benefits the advertisers, in a way. Of course, this advertising method comes in the form of deals and coupons, and being that college students generally do not have much money to begin with, when they see them they take advantage of them.

On Friday, eMarketer reported the results of a survey done in November of 2012 by Study Breaks and Campus2Careers, two websites committed to helping college students learn the news and get information on the career market. The survey asked 689 college students in the US about their mobile usage habits, and it stated that many college students search for deals on the mobile phones.

Of the respondents in this survey, a total of 90 percent of the respondents said that they do indeed look for deals, meaning that only 10 percent do not. Plus, of this 90 percent, a total of 51 percent turned out to be what eMarketer called “mobile deal aficionados.” This 51 percent is made up of 31 percent of college students that often check for deals, and another 20 percent that are constantly doing so at an addictive degree.

This brings to question how often college students are actually making purchases on their phones, considering the frequency with which they seek deals. According to the survey and eMarketer’s breakdown of the results, a total of 38 percent of college students said that they purchase on their phones at least monthly. Another 11 percent said they do so weekly and 3 percent said daily. With another 18 percent stating they purchase on mobile only once a year, that leaves 30 percent of college students that reported that they never shop on mobile.

Here is another interesting fact from the survey;

Additionally, college students are using mobile phones increasingly for classwork, a sign that the devices really have penetrated nearly every aspect of student life. Over half of respondents said they used their mobile phone for school-related tasks every day.

A lot of marketers are trying to reach college students, being that they land smack in the middle of most marketers’ target demographic as far as age goes. Therefore, from this survey it can be judged that the best place to reach college students is on their mobile devices, possibly through the use of mobile targeted deals. College students use phones for almost everything now, therefore marketers should not let that opportunity slip away from them.

UrbanObserver

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Eradicating LeadGen Fraud, Increasing Lead Quality: We’re On It

Facebook Getting Rid of Unlike?

Marketers Pay Attention: Return Purchases Make Up 41% of Sales

Paid Search Ads Can Actually Suck

Infographic: What You Should Be Doing on Twitter

Important: FTC Updates Advertising Disclosure Guidelines

B2Bs See Email as the Way to Go

Worried About the FTC? Feds and State Regulators in High Gear

Performance Marketing Insights NYC Huge Success

I Will Help Your Affiliate Business Get Started

WhatRunsWhere Launches First In-App Ad Tracking Service

YouTube OneChannel: A Better Look and More Options for Users

FTC Text Message Spammer Summary

Mobile Deals Have the Collegiate Community Excited

Other Great Reads

Data, Dance, and Daring Campaigns: Erin Levzow’s Approach to Building Loyalty

Streaming’s Big Lie: The Future of TV Is Already Broke

How to Narrow the Scope of Information Sought by an FTC Civil Investigative Demand (CID)

Did Your Company Receive a Letter From the FTC? FTC Warning Letters and Notices of Penalty Offense

The Good, the Bad, and the SPO-ly

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