Vonage Wasteful Ad$ Fund Spyware

In the article called How Vonage Funds Spyware, Ben Edelman proves how Vonage's massive, and as I've written before, wasteful online advertising campaign is funding spyware companies.  According to Ben Edelman:

1. 12 instances of Vonage's ads appearing in awful spyware companies
2. Vonage's ads appear in pop-up spyware vendors like 1800solutions, DirectRevenue, and (un)eXact Advertising and that they paid $31,750 to DirectRevenue in a month in 2005 with a high of $110 per click sent to the Vonage site
3. They are also appearing in a smaller Spyware company (not) Targetsaver
4. It also appears that Vonage is involved with a company called Vendare (myphonebillsavings.com) who receives traffic from DirectRevenue

Now I'm sure that Vonage does not want to be involved with these spyware companies.  However, with the amount of money I'm guessing that they pay per month, they need to do a much better job of controlling this.  In the posts I referenced above, they are not doing a very good job on ROI for the advertising dollars and that was before their IPO that raised money for even more advertising.

Look, I have run very large online campaigns - not $20 million per month - but very large and I was never accused of being involved with spyware companies.  Sure you have to watch where you appear in content, PPC networks, and CPA vendors but there is no excuse for not having a good handle on where your ads are appearing.  The money they are spending and the lack of visibility into this just fuels spyware companies.

Come on Vonage, you can do better than this.  Here's what I would do if I was running that campaign:

1. Get your media agency to track this down and stop it. 
2. Have them research where your ads are appearing and only pay vendors that can prove where the ads are running. 
3. Hire a bunch of college students to manually go through every site that is recommended by your CPA networks.  If a vendor won't let you opt-out then drop them because they know who they are paying.
4. Set a range on your CPA.  Any placement (yes I wrote placement) and vendor/publisher that is outside of your upper range drop ASAP
5. Determine what your point of advertising diminishing return is
   

Regarding point 5 above, if this means that there is a maximum threshold you can spend per month in banner advertising that is less than the money you are wasting today, then that's ok.  Personally, I believe that each company has a point of advertising diminishing returns and with the amount of money you've been spending over the past few years, I'm sure you can figure out what that amount is.  So, scale it back instead of wasting money.  Try spending it in other ways - more creative advertising (online or offline), CRM, promotions, anything else but pouring money down the spyware toilet.

You have enough $$$ to force more visibility.  So use your marketing $$$ and clout to change the game.  That is what I did with a lot less money.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric