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Archives » Spam/Spyware/Intrusive

SocNets, Search Poisoned by Malware

Published on February 09, 2010

Search and viral and social media sites continue to be inundated by spam and malware. The latest study to measure this activity is by Websense, which found in its bi-annual report that as much as 13.7% of searches for trending news and buzz words led to malware.

It is a reversal from trends in the first half of the year when most malware activity was focused on targeting websites. For the...
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Click Fraud Uses Real Purchases to Avoid Detection

Published on January 21, 2010

A Harvard Business School professor has identified a new breed of click fraud that not only simulates clicks on a Google ad - but also seemingly generates a “real” customer purchase on the advertiser’s website.

Professor Ben Edelman, who has researched such related issues as invisible online ads - sleight-of-hand tactics used by some websites to sell more advertising than they have space for -...
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Zango Closes Doors

Published on April 24, 2009

Controversial adware firm Zango was sold last week, following a bank foreclosure after its failure to honor over $44 million worth of debts.

The company launched over a decade ago as 180solutions, after which it changed its moniker several times: 180solutions and Hotbar, before concluding its trajectory as Zango. Security firms — to which it often conveyed threatening letters, and the...
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Amazon U.K. Says No Way to Behavioral Ad Probe from Phorm

Published on April 15, 2009

In a symbolic stance against its business model, Amazon has stated it will not permit behavioral ad firm Phorm to scan its webpages for targeted ads.

U.K.-based Phorm works directly with ISPs to build profiles of user interests, based on their overall web surfing behavior, and serve relevant ads to them across participating websites.

The company suffered hard times last year after a series...
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Click Fraud Hits 17.1% in Q4, Highest in 2 Years

Published on January 28, 2009

Click Forensics reports click fraud rates hit 17.1% in 4Q08, versus 16.6% in the same period in 2007.

According to CEO Tom Cuthbert, three components contributed to the rise: more dollars filtering into pay-per-click (PPC); increased competition in the click firm industry; and rises in cybercrime and botnet activity resulting from the poor economy, writes MarketingVOX.

The average click...
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One-Fifth of Marketers Send Emails Even After Consumers Unsubscribe

Published on November 20, 2008

Some 20% of top brand marketers continue to send additional emails to consumers, even after they confirm requests from those consumers to “unsubscribe” from an email marketing list, according to a research study from Return Path, MarketingCharts writes.

Though the study, “Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After ‘Unsubscribe Me,’” found that the majority (65%) of companies studied are...
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Spam Still a Problem; ‘Finance’ Tops Spammers’ Favorite Topics

Published on July 02, 2008

 Without spam protection, the average web user can expect to get 70 spam messages each day, according to a survey by McAfee, the BBC reports (via MarketingVOX).

For the McAfee spam test, 50 people worldwide were asked to web-surf without a spam filter. Some results follow:

* U.K. residents are most likely to receive sex spam, and emails from Nigerian nobles in “dire straits.”
* The most...
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Google Uses Previous Searches to Serve Ads on Current Ones

Published on June 30, 2008

Google is testing ads that target user behavior, reports The New York Times. Ads a person sees on a given Google search may be influenced by what s/he queried minutes earlier.

According to The New York Times (via MarketingVOX), securities analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray discovered this change in Google’s ad targeting methods, shortly after launching a series of tests that examine ads in...
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Strong, Ongoing Consumer Preference for Email

Published on May 28, 2008

Consumers prefer email as a primary method of personal and business communication - and will continue to do so the foreseeable future, despite online threats and the emergence of other channels and Web 2.0 applications, according to a Habeas study, MarketingCharts writes.

Users want more control over their online interactions with businesses and have an increasing level of concern over spam...
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Subject Line, ‘From’ Address Crucial to Email Marketing

Published on April 28, 2008

An email’s subject line and “from” address are “the most important factors” for getting users to open an email.

The revelation was made by Louise Rijk of Advanced Media Productions, writing for the UK-based Worcester Business Journal (via MarketingVOX). She advised subject lines be eye-catching and less than 70 characters.

As mentioned in MarketingVOX’s “13 Tips for Effective Email...
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