Zango Confirms Adult FriendFinder’s Participation

Here is the response that ZangoCash offered it’s affiliates after one affiliate blasted them in his blog for cooking stuffing…

Some of you may have seen or heard about some very serious charges made by TeamClickCash against Zango and others in a series of web/forum posts over the past few days.

Normally, we would not respond to such accusations by circulating a written communication like this to our partners. In this instance, we will make an exception. The charges are irresponsible and inaccurate. In addition, our efforts to reach out to TeamClickCash to engage in a direct conversation about its (unfounded) concerns have been completely ignored. Most of our partners have worked with us long enough to know that we are a responsible company, always striving to do what’s best for consumers, advertisers, web publishers, and content providers. It’s our hope that all our partners, regardless of the length of their experience with us, will share that feeling about us after reading the following.

Somebody using the nick “Will76” at TeamClickCash took exception to a specific campaign running on our network. The campaign was run by AdultFriendFinder Media. Will76 witnessed his cookie being overwritten by a cookie placed by the ad. Will76 quickly jumped to the conclusion that Zango is the devil incarnate and immediately launched against us on every webmaster forum he could log into – this before even bothering to contact us to make sure he understood what was happening.

He should have asked. Overwriting the cookie made us no money. None. Zango had (and has) no incentive to overwrite the cookie. The campaign in question was being run on a cost per visitor (CPV) basis, not on a cost per action (CPA) basis. The cookie was placed by the advertiser.

There is no reason to believe that AdultFriendFinder had malicious intent; it has a long history of being proactive and protecting the interests of its affiliates. In fact, when the potential conflict was brought to the attention of AdultFriendFinder and Zango (at about the same time), AdultFriendFinder stopped the campaigns in question and reconfigured them to avoid the potential of having a cookie overwritten or a home page targeted. In short, much ado about very little.

Once unleashed, however, Will76’s forum rampages started to include any number of false and defamatory claims against Zango, like . . . the software infects your computer, it’s spyware, MySpace is suing the company, we can do anything we want on a user’s computer, etc. These claims are laughable and, to be clear, false. Zango has over 200 employees in four countries and runs a highly successful publisher and advertising business based on our commitment to providing a high value to our users, our advertisers, and our publishers. We did not become the business we are today by cheating people or engaging in unethical business practices. You’ve seen our guidelines and our code of conduct. You know firsthand how careful we are with our publishers and our products.

The “cookie placement” controversy was one that raised its head somewhat frequently in years past. As the industry has evolved and more individuals and companies gained familiarity with cookies, the issue hasn’t really come up since early 2005. In part, that’s because we publicized the results of a third-party, independent audit we commissioned. (The audit firm, ImServices Group Ltd., is a well-known company in this space, and is the only firm we approached to do the audit. Will76’s assertions to the contrary are yet another example of his inability to state basic fact.) Attached is a copy of the audit firm’s findings, giving us a clean bill of health.

If you have any questions after reading the above, please don’t hesitate to contact me or anyone else here at Zango. An honest discussion between sincere, sophisticated parties is just smart business. Period.

Best Regards,
Zangocash

Still more to come…

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