Marketing Technology Blog

Don’t become a Advertising Malware victim

Steve Kremer — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:24:58 +0000

The e-mail comes in. You’re excited. It’s a very high CPM deal from a major brand name advertiser. You don’t recognize the e-mail address of the sender. You think to yourself: “Hmmn..exampleinteractive.com. Must be a small interactive shop that the major brand is using”. You send back an e-mail asking for their IO (Insertion Order) and start looking at your available ad inventory. You go back and forth with them, they are anxious to get the ad run started ASAP. They offer to up the CPM if you can get it started today. You are ready to make some major $. Everything looks good. But is it?

Wired News Headline: “New York Times Reforms Online Ad Sales After Malware Scam”

“The culprit masqueraded as a national advertiser and provided seemingly legitimate product advertising for a week,” NY Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty wrote. “Over the weekend, the ad being served up was switched so that an intrusive message, claiming to be a virus warning from the reader’s computer, appeared.”

In the real world I’ve gotten the e-mail from the small interactive agency with a large buy from a major brand. After some online investigation I walked away from the deal. Why? They weren’t real. Start with their “exampleinteractive.com” domain name.

Even thought the company site looks nice they list no physical address, no phone number, no list of clients, no listing of “white papers” or client success stories. Misspellings or lots of double-speak jargon claims raises a red flag. The picture on the right is a screen capture from one of the marketing sites that contacted me. Would a legitimate marketing agency representing a major brand have copy errors like this on their home page?
Do a whois lookup of their domain name. How long has the domain been registered? Was it registered in China or eastern Europe one month ago? Does the owner of the domain listed have a Gmail or Yahoo e-mail address? Is the domain hidden by an anonymous registration? Is the address a real street in a real city? Do a Netcraft search of the server. If the server is hosted in China or eastern Europe that should at least raise a yellow flag.
They won’t send you a banner GIF and clickthorough URL. They will send you javascript tags as the creative element. Does the code for the ad creative have the same domain as the marketing web site? Do the same domain and server investigating. Javascript tags are common for rotation of banners but it does give them control to put whatever they want on your site.
Ask for their W9. Ask to do a credit check. A W9 with SS or company tax ID with the wrong number of digits equals a red flag.
Ask for the name of their contact at the major brand. If they give you the contact’s phone number, don’t use it. Call the main switchboard phone number of the brand company headquarters and transfer to talk with the contact. I got a call back from the brand contact once. Caller ID showed me the US brand contact was calling me from Bulgaria.

The article about the New York Times incident linked above is from September of 2009. But I was contacted this week by someone trying to pull the same scam. They’re still out there but you can avoid the ad malware trap on your site by taking a little time to do some online detective work.

This post was written by Steve Kremer

Steve describes himself as a "little bit country, a little bit rock-n-roll" as both a techie and a marketer. He left WISH-TV back in 1995 to be one of Indy's first Web designers and consultants. Along the way he worked for startups including iProperty.com, Narrowline, OneCall Internet, Vontoo and ChaCha where was employee #4 and is currently ChaCha's Director Of Online Advertsing.

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Please Explain Industry Jargon and Acronyms

Douglas Karr — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:51:37 +0000

I just read a press release from a company that was targeting marketing technology folks like myself. In that press release, they mentioned:

OTT, PaaS solution, IPTV, AirTies hybrid OTT, and OTT video service platform, OTT video services platform provider, over-the-top video delivery through an integrated media management system, hybrid demo of OTT, digital video broadcasting (dvb-t), AirTies Air 7320 hybrid set-top box, IP Multimedia Product Line, set-top boxes that support integrated OTT solutions for both SD and HD video

I’m not making this up. That’s not all… here’s the last bullet point:

A new range of DVB-T/IP hybrid STBs, the Air 7320 and the 7334, the Air 7130, a Personal Video Recording (PVR) STB with internal Hard Drive and the new Air 7100, standard definition low cost STB.

After reading the Press Release, I have absolutely no idea what this company does. Not a clue. They are so heavily embedded in their industry and their technology that they assumed anyone reading the press release would understand what it is that they did, sold, whatever…

As you write your blog posts, Tweets, press releases and website copy, please explain industry jargon and spell out your acronyms. Maybe I would have discussed this ground-breaking technology had I understood what the heck it was. Instead, I wrote about wondering what the heck it actually was and why it was important.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

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Be a Spam Samaritan!

Bill Dawson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:59:47 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

Spam Samaritans not only use their email accounts to communicate, but also contribute to stamping out spam for others. Last weekend my mother-in-law was describing how she abandonend her Yahoo! email account and migrated to Gmail, because it was, “all full of SPAM and couldn’t be read.” What she didn’t realize was this behavior hurts Internet Service Providers (ISPs), marketers and spammers alike.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) need feedback to improve your email experience. Without users logging complaints and marking email as spam, ISPs don’t have the input to protect users from abuse.
- Many ISPs are beginning the practice of delivering messages to the spam/bulk folder and monitoring if users correct them. Without user intervention, email marketers begin to have reputation issues, which impairs their delivery.
- Abandoned email addresses aren’t deleted, many ISPs will reclaim the account and use it as a spam trap to root out offensive senders. This jeopardizes legitimate marketers who continue to send emails, because they don’t know the account is abandoned.
Marketers will use A/B testing, opens, clicks and conversions to refine their messages and improve user engagment. Even if you choose to unsubscribe from their messages, marketers want, and need you to interact.
Spammers just want to get messages delivered! They don’t care if it hits your inbox or the spam/bulk folder. By ignoring the onslaught of unwanted messages, they get what they want. Users can only correct the issue by marking these messages as spam, and alerting the ISPs to the issue.

The morale of this story is spending a few minutes to review good and bad spam helps make email better for you and other users. Don’t ignore those emails from spammers or marketers. By unsubscribing, marking email as spam, or removing email from the bulk/spam folder, you’re improving the email experience for everyone.

Help my mother-in-law out, and make the email world a better place… Be a spam samaritan!

This post was written by Bill Dawson

Bill is a technology and email marketing expert. Bill works with some of the largest organizations online, including Zappos and Walmart. He and his wife, Carla, own and operate their own agency, 4 Dogs Design.

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Tourism, Social Media and Tampa Bay

Douglas Karr — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:22:28 +0000

Tomorrow morning I’ll be on a panel discussing how social media is impacting business. I was invited by the University of Tampa Center for Leadership along with Tampa Bay & Company.

I haven’t been down to Tampa in a while, my parents live 50 miles south in Bradenton. Landing in Sarasota was a bit funny (it’s a huge retirement community) – the first drama I witnessed was a guy yelling for his wife, Helen and wandering aimlessly around the baggage claim.

Tampa is a different world. While Miami is for the dancing and night life, Fort Lauderdale is for drunk college students, Orlando is for the kids, and Sarasota for the ol’ folks – Tampa is an incredible city that’s marketed itself well thanks to the strategies deployed by Jeremy Fairley and team. Tampa has elements of all the other cities but I think it’s a bit more beautiful on the gulf coast, accessible with a close airport, and still has all the charm that Floridians have perfected over time.

Tourism and social media isn’t a simple task. Tourists don’t spend money with tourism agencies – they spend it with the restaurants, hotels, events and venues that they support. Tampa Bay & Company has been successful because they continue to spread the word on the region. They recognize that their job is to get businesses and visitors here, but then the industry has to step up. I’m writing this post from the incredible Sheraton Suites Hotel by the airport.

Full disclosure: I’m in a complimentary suite and was greeted with a wonderful cheese plate as I opened the hotel room door. On the cheese plate was a kind, personal, note from the Director of Sales & Marketing here, Colleen Beck.

Geek moment: I can actually use the suite’s television as a second monitor through a little A/V panel on this desk… how cool is that?!

Those small details are what makes Jeremy’s teams’ efforts worth while. Why would Jeremy invite me down here and why would Sheraton comp a room like this? Because they recognize that I’m their targeted market. I’m in business. I’m a traveler. I attend conferences. I am an influencer. I work with a lot of businesses. As Zappo’s Chief Marketer, Aaron Magness, states, “Customer Service is the New Marketing!“.

And I want to come back to Tampa Bay.

I’m sure some of the reason to have me is to help educate their clients and businesses as well. Do I feel used? Yes, wonderfully used, thank-you. This is social media marketing works, though. You set expectations with people with your marketing, you over-deliver with your products and services, and then you allow social media to take over. Social media will amplify your message.

Here’s my message today: Give Colleen a call to find out why you should have your next conference in Tampa and have your visitors stay at the Sheraton Suites.

I hope this post amplifies the efforts of Tampa Bay. After a cold, snowy winter in Indianapolis, I’m pretty happy warming up to a Gulf Sunset hanging around at Sheraton Suites. I’m excited to get on campus at the University of Tampa tomorrow as well. If you’re at the breakfast, please stop by and say hello after the panel!

This post was written by Douglas Karr

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Marketing Technology Blog

Don’t become a Advertising Malware victim

This post was written by Steve Kremer

Most Commented Posts

Please Explain Industry Jargon and Acronyms

This post was written by Douglas Karr

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Be a Spam Samaritan!

Help my mother-in-law out, and make the email world a better place… Be a spam samaritan!

This post was written by Bill Dawson

You might also find these posts interesting:

Tourism, Social Media and Tampa Bay

This post was written by Douglas Karr

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