Yahoo is deep into promoting Spam according to an article in MediaPost; funding it and allowing companies to produce spam, according to New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s recently filed suit against Direct Revenue.
…..The suit alleged that Direct Revenue unlawfully installed pop-up-serving software on consumers’ computers through at least September of 2005. Anti-spyware researcher and Harvard graduate student Ben Edelman recently posted them on his Web site.
…….e-mail correspondence indicated that Direct Revenue guaranteed one business partner it would enable an automatic uninstall function, then reneged. In an e-mail dated September 29, 2004, with the subject line "distribution concerns," a Direct Revenue executive admitted: "[W]e promised them an uninstall and then when we thought they weren’t watching any more, removed it on purpose."
Among the information in copies of internal emails and memos found in the filings, which were posted on Ben Edelman’s website, is that Yahoo Search accounted for roughly $200,000 per month of revenue for Direct Revenue during April-June 2005, according to MediaPost.
An e-mail dated June 2, 2005 states that revenue attributable to Yahoo Search ads came to $226,964 in April, $193,944 in May, and was estimated at $180,000 for June. "All revenue was derived through Overture’s CPC feed (courtesy of Walnut)," stated the e-mail. The search links apparently were displayed to users who mistyped a URL, triggering a "404 file not found" error message.
So the ads that were servered where not even seen (but Yahoo was paying for them anyway).
A Yahoo spokeswoman said that Walnut was an authorized distributor of paid search listings, but that the company did not do business with Direct Revenue, and never authorized Walnut to pay Direct Revenue. "Yahoo!/Overture has never had a distribution agreement with Direct Revenue, nor have we ever paid Direct Revenue for services. They have approached us on several occasions, and we have repeatedly declined their proposals," stated the spokeswoman.
Perhaps Yahoo needs to take a closer look at how the set up distributorship’s of their advertising. Like I’ve said, Yahoo is more overtly commerical than Google or MSN (that’s my subjective opinion).
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