.tv Issues With Channelme Advertising Platform

[RogueWriter]

A couple of issues, I believe, will prevent the current advertising platform from becoming a moneymaker for domainers, and as such will continue to discourage development.

The first issue has been discussed fairly well in other threads, which is that the PPC program is too vague in it's details. The TOS is written in a manner that leaves too much nuance and undefined points, in addition to not even mentioning the specific % of PPC income that domain owners will receive.

The second issue is one of control, and this is what absolutely bothers me.

For example, one of the adds that consistently appears on my sites is this silly zwinky advertisement. Geared, seemingly for younger people, accessing the site and joining their program results in a toolbar being installed on the users computer - and God knows what else. For further information about this particular advertiser, I would forward you HERE .

To quote a small snippet:

Zwinky adds the MyWeb Searchbar to the following applications: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, AOL 9.0 Email and Browser, Becky!, IncrediMail, MSN Dial-up Service, AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger.[2]

Once Zwinky is installed, the MyWeb Searchbar runs on startup. When users attempt to visit nonexistent pages, the software redirects them to search.mywebsearch.com. MyWeb Searchbar has been included on lists of known spyware.[3] A review from McAfee SiteAdvisor of the Zwinky website states, "In our tests, this site promoted downloads that some people consider adware, spyware or other potentially unwanted programs." There are also many user review complaints about the spyware that the Zwinky website supports.

Now, as an affiliate marketer, I cannot in good conscience allow that advertisement to appear on my domains. That is a disservice to my surfers, in that I am giving legitimacy to advertisers that I do not necessarily approve of. People that know me assume I would never place an advertiser on one of my web sites that might be targetting their kids in an effort to download questionable, invasive applications onto their personal computer.

I could be mollified on the first issue..... I see it more as a growing pain issue with DM, as they put their program into place one block at a time.

But I cannot use this advertising platform at all if I cannot specifically control which merchants are appearing on my site.

JMO.

 

[TheBulldog]

Nice.

At this point, I would like to hear one positive thing about Demand and their advertising. (Aside from the fact that they are doing it at all)

More and more, all I am reading from the folks using it is that it is "sucking big time" and that there is no visibility into the details.

Nothing I am seeing is even remotely enticing me to want to try the platform again. In fact, if nothing else, it is just proving again that Demand couldn't give a rat's ass about domainers, except as guinea pigs. Anything we seem to hear from them that they are supporting us is just outright crap at this point.

 

[RogueWriter]

I WANT to believe that everything is going to work out the way I want it to, it's just getting harder to do so the more I think about it. We need some positive communication from DM about a lot more issues, as I have no intention of turning into some platform apologist.

I am FRUSTRATED, because I see such a huge potential, b illions of dollars down the road for them, but I also see so many doggone obstacles they have to address before this becomes truly viable.

 

[equity78]

Well I can say for fact because I watch it all the time qdaly,chris sheridan, jason samose and 3 other enom employees come here and lurk but do not post anything, very interesting IMO. I will use the platform for a baby or a family site not looking to make money off of those. Anything else it just seems like a waste of time on the advertising until there is transparency on CPM or whatever model they are using.

 

[RogueWriter]

If, on the other hand, they persue a course of acquiring shopster.com or working a deal with shopster so that we could place commissionable products onto our sites, we could jump over the whole trust issue, since I would know specifically that the only merchant appearing on my site would be Shopster, someone I have already checked out and approved of.

Since they carry some 900K items, every single one of us could find specific items for each of our web sites. Got a sports site? They have hundreds of autographed basketballs, footballs, jerseys, etc. Need apparel? All sorts of items. etc...

Heck, they have the technology in place, I'd like to see them going the way of Hulu.com, giving us access to full length features.

 

[localexperts]

Have you looked at bids for local and service terms. The internet is not all product. Look at bids for "dallas lawyer" and "dallas real estate agent".

 

[RPK]

I think they should open up the platform to developers. JMO

 

[VisualArtistFrankBonilla]

ChannelMe.tv

Rogue, you should post this also in the Channelme.tv blog, so they can see we are not satisfied with their advertising program.
Frank