Network and Merchants stance on Phorm?

[drivetowin]

I think it is important though (as I have said in previous Phorm threads) to a) separate the privacy issue from the affiliate bottom line issue and b) not get swept away on a tide of hype.

There is not one document produced so far (that I'm aware of anyway) that shows that Phorm changes any webpage unless that publisher has signed a commercial agreement for Phorm to show ads on their website - which makes Phorm just like any other adserving network. If anyone can show me one I would genuinely like to read it. The University of Cambridge document actually confirms that Phorm does not change webpages without permission.

While we may not like it as affiliates, most end-users would rather see targetted advertising and most advertiser would rather deliver targetted advertising (since theoretically at least conversion rates should be higher all other things being equal) - but to deliver targetted advertising you have to gather the demographics to target somehow.

Which brings us to the privacy issue - yes this is an issue and some people will get paranoid about it , but to most people I doubt they will give it a second thought. Speak to the average man in the street about Phorm and most will probably not have a clue what you are on about - when probably 90%+ of home wireless networks operate with no encryption whatsoever, and a good number of people run their pcs with no anti-virus and no anti-spyware apps then I can't see most people getting too worked up over something happening at their ISP.

Yes there is an argument that Phorm should be opt-in rather than opt-out, but if they had opted for opt-in then no doubt you would have people saying 'we were tricked into opting in' - rather like the Jamster scenario a while ago, you can put t's and c's in front of people until they are blue in the face, most wil still go, yeah, yeah, yeah where do I sign without even reading the first line (and then bleat like wounded sheep when it later turns around to bite them on the backside).

So far, the only issue I can see that directly affects affiliates is the 307 issue with cookies and Opera but given that for my portfolio of sites in the last month, less than 1% of users use Opera I don't think that impact is going to be too great.

I'm not sure I follow the "Phorm is stealing content" argument - surely if that is the case then Google, MSN, Yahoo etc are stealing content too - or do you not think they actually profile people's viewing habits? - there must be some aroma free coffee floating around somewhere cos some people sure have trouble smelling it.

I'm not saying I agree with Phorm, I would rather it didn't exist - I just think we need to be careful to have balanced argument and not just envy that someone has thought of something more effective than we ever could - and at the very least we should be professional enough to give them the opportunity to respond now Kevin has pointed them at these threads.

Oh, and before anyone asks, I have no financial or other interest in Phorm, I just don't like witchhunts either.

[moredial]

I have to agree to disagree with you.

Cookies - if my site says it does not use cookies who is going to pay for the court case when someone finds the forged cookie in the name of my site? If they did not change the code between my website and the visitor's browser, how did the cookie get there? Just because the code is not visible in the final version of code delivered to the browser does not mean that content has not been changed. It is my domain name and I do not give permission for it to be used. It is a fraudulent cookie and fraud is a criminal act.

Search engines stealing content - since when? On each visit they check the robots.txt file and meta tags to check whether or not the site gives permission for the content to be cached. Some sites give permission and others do not. If search engines get it wrong, they can be sued for breach of copyright. Most webmasters permit the caching because it comes with a very useful link that sends lots of visitors.

I am still waiting for the ISPs to contact me to get permission to copy my sites for the sole purpose of analysing my content to send my visitors to my competition - this is not the conduit role that an ISP should perform in delivering its service. Without that permission my sites are protected from interception under RIPA and any interception for a purpose for which there is no informed consent by both parties is illegal under criminal law.

The person accessing my site can not give permission for what my server sends them to be profiled - it s my communication to them and I have not given permission to the intercept. If they do so, they are in breach of copyright for passing themselves off as the owners of copyright to which they have no title.

Privacy - most people install software to prevent loss of their privacy and expect that same software to protect them from Phorm. They get a bit shocked to find out that they can't block Phorm and its snooping on their data stream. Not even the opt-out cookie prevents the interception of their data stream.

This is not yet live. So far it is only known in the tech press and forums. The general press don't want to publish anything about it because they are all signed up to earn revenue from displaying OIX adverts and they don't want to do anything to prevent that revenue stream.

Once it is live, the general public will be getting just as excited about this as are the techies.

Rather like in USA - people are starting to get a bit excited to discover that their prime ISP service which is the most expensive in the area is profiling them without giving them any notice nor asking permission.

Search around and you will find a few ISPs that have disappeared after going down the cheap rate, profiling and displaying adverts route. People do vote with their feet when they are not given value for money.

If you are happy to stay with a profiling ISP and host code on your site which will add to the profiling of all your visitors, then I have to disagree with you.

[aotagain]

If Phorm were a new company then imo it would be fair to deal with them freshly.

However, they appear not to have a 'clean slate' and not to have addressed previous issues. Googling for 121media, their previous name gives some worrying results. I also found it worrying that after 121media narrowly avoided prosecution for spyware on a technical legal argument in the US, they then changed their business model.

Their public message was along the lines that the previous business model didn't work and so a new one was being developed. No mention that they recognised that it was sailing close to the wind in terms of privacy. So either they thought it was OK because it escaped the system, or they didn't want to address it openly.

As I understand it, there is (some) new management in place. As far as I am aware, there still hasn't been any public distancing from the previous doubtful PC invading software.

Some time ago the Phorm website showed what was called a 'bridge' advert, which is no longer there. It may be that wasn't the new tool, or it may be that it shouldn't have appeared. But it showed a use of a tool as intercepting a Google search with a pop-over, or something similar. ie. someone searched for something, saw the results on Google and then had an advert appear over the top of it. So that interception was after the 'new business model announcements'.

So yes, I think the networks need to be very careful, but I also think they will inevitably be under pressure. Phorm is involved with some very big businesses, so once underway it is not going to be as easy to back track as it was dealing with hidden cookie dropping frames from a few affiliate sites.

We've spent years fighting various 'interceptions' - I just hope the lure of money doesn't put us back a few years.

With the amount of clout that Phorm and any 'partners' have I think we can be sure that any grey areas will be pushed legally to the very edge. Also the scale of any operations that go ahead is going to be huge. That requires some very serious thought about suitability for affiliate marketing.

I wouldn't underestimate the effort that will be put behind Phorm - it has appeared as an apparent 'lifeline' to failing ISP business models and if it can work, they will make it work, to rescue revenues.

Whether the ISP's will really bother to value their customers I'm skeptical - perhaps we can only judge most of these big players real attitudes by the 'we value your call' mantra.

Perhaps I should live in a commune and relinquish capitalism ;-)

[bapages]

Nice to participate in the thread if I knew what 'Phorm' was!

[moredial]

Originally Posted by bapages Nice to participate in the thread if I knew what 'Phorm' was!

It is called a search engine - do a search on the words 'Phorm' and 'Webwise' and you will find the press and blogs from USA to England, Germany and Denmark all against the concept.

While you are about it, you may as well learn about the other players in the field who have been secretly doing this since 2001 in UK. USA looks like it may only have started about 2003. Although, if it has taken people in the UK 7 years to discover what the lower cost ISPs have been doing to earn revenue then it could have been in USA much earlier.

It is not easy to find the 'infected' ISPs - you need to search the T&C and privacy statements for mention of providing 3rd parties information about your surfing for direct marketing.

Originally Posted by aotagain Some time ago the Phorm website showed what was called a 'bridge' advert, which is no longer there.

I wish I had seen that. Are you sure it was phorm and not adzilla, nebuad, frontporch or one of the other players?

Phorm is working very hard at not being detected. Over the last couple of months the techies have been working very hard at detecting phorm and phorm has been making good use of all the free information that the techies have provided to debug the scripts and make it even harder to spot.

The weakest factor is the forged cookie which a site can easily detect and warn its visitors that their browser has been hijacked and been given code which has evaded basic browser security features.

Phorm really don't want websites warning people off which is why they are working on a cookie free solution. They are also trying to work around the hosts file directing webwise.net to 127.0.0.1 preventing anyone whose data stream is intercepted from gaining access to the internet on port 80.

The frontporchs and nebuads of this world work off modifying the delivered site code and that is easily detected by server side and client side scripting comparing results and warning visitors that the code they are seeing has been modified on route and is no longer the code written by the site. They are doing what phorm and BT were doing during the 2006 and 2007 trials.

Getting back to affiliate networks. Do they want the ads they serve up being highlighted with 'webwise is on' or 'webwise is off' with every ad? And that data can only be supplied by reading forged cookies on the visitor's computer, checking the database for the highest paying relevant 'channel' and then displaying the ad. The networks won't have any idea which website will be displaying the adverts so they won't be able to determine whether or not the 'affiliate site' meets the merchant's marketing 'ethics'.

Has anybody seen anything about click fraud prevention or reporting? The business model is PPV or PPC - how will that affect the merchant's ability to fund their affiliate programme? Will merchants who pay less than 5% still be viable? If they need to increase their prices to pay for increased advertising costs, there is only one person who ends up paying that cost.

[muto33]

[quote=moredial;394634]So, does that mean that you have missed all the bits about them changing their name from 121Media - publisher of PeopleOnPage and the malware / rootkits which installed it on the unsuspecting user's computer....

.....Do your research and you will find that all the 307 redirects cause the Opera browser to not hold cookies correctly - bye-bye commissions
QUOTE]

Well excuse me son shine - do your research of these forums and you'll already relise I know all that stuff about them being former black hats - and pointed it out and it got 'poo pooed' so I shut up grumbling about it - just like i did gator years ago.

In Business, it seems you have to make certain 'allowences' for business people/companies (with dosh or clout) to turn over a new leaf - so I deliberably tried to view this debate taking into account what we already know about them i.e their past - most networks probably don't pay much attention to scandal mongering or dramatic spectulation of cookie overwriting - for what it's worth I agree with alot of what you say and wouldn't choose to touch them with a barge pole - purely for the fact people don't have a choice about opting in.

'prawn' traffic and spam take up about 75% of internet usage - so - what I was saying in a round about way - was their will probably be alot of concern by those 75% that their dirty deeds are going to be found out - child safety is not the highest priority on a 'prawn' merchants list - making money is - i don't know why I'm even bothering to explain this - it's like stating the obvious to a spotty teenager - you mess up big time enough often enough you learn to relise that once a crook doesn't mean always a crook - we know sweet FA about their real motive yet are they another 180 solutions ? - if the cookie thing turns out to be true - the networks and agencies here will be the first ones taking them to court - as it their businesses that will be at risk.

[aotagain]

[quote=moredial;394677]Re: bridge advert...
I wish I had seen that. Are you sure it was phorm and not adzilla, nebuad, frontporch or one of the other players?

Definitely Phorm, although may have been when the site was 121media. I was researching it a bit as a stock, wondering why it was worth 200mln plus with no revenue to speak of.

Wish I'd saved the page now !

[aotagain]

I see the spin is first class:-

"The Phorm Privacy Revolution", making it sound like their primary interest is privacy.
The average punter might even think it was anti-virus/spyware software, not an advertising platform.

That's like a chocolate company sponsoring athletics to associate themselves with healthy activities. But of course a socially responsible company that used to be run by quakers would never do that would they ? ;-)

Yes, I can see the parallels now: "Intercepting browsing and publishing of content is OK as long as it is part of healthy overall protection from privacy invasion"

btw I wonder what mastermind decided to rename the company Phorm ?
I thought the letters Ph were like discovering 666 under someone's hair.

[thomaskay]

If I had a site with bundles of impressions coming out of my ears like myspace, facebook, etc etc I'd be rubbing my hands with glee about phorm.

But for anyone with a niche or expensive audience, their ad revenue is going to be diluted as advertisers start to buy ads via OIX of audiences that have been to the specialist site, but are now on a cheaper site.

Personally I think both sides should be recompensed... the phorm model seems to be that only the retargeting site gets the dosh.

I'm sure phorm will go ahead no problemo despite all the concerns. I'm sure they'll make alot of money. But.... they're going to carve into the adrevenue of sites that are genuinely adding unique and good content to the web.

[moredial]

Originally Posted by muto33 Well excuse me son shine - do your research of these forums and you'll already relise I know all that stuff about them being former black hats - and pointed it out and it got 'poo pooed' so I shut up grumbling about it - just like i did gator years ago.

Sorry, I don't visit the forum often enough to know what people have said in posts other than those I have posted in. Even then I don't always visit after being emailed the 'reply' notice.

As I am sure, therefore, that you already know this, I will post this comment for the others.

Gator ceased trading, it did not change its name. (Shortly before doing so it had an out of court settlement for copyright infringement after inserting pop-up ads over web site content. On ISPs to insert their own ads into websites up to USD150,000 per page is mentioned for copyright infringement and damages claims.) Instead all the top people started working for a new company called NebuAd who also host their systems within the ISP's network and require an opt-out cookie. No opt-in cookie required as the ISPs intercept all traffic. By the end of last year, NebuAd were into about 10% of USA traffic and are now moving to the larger ISPs. Charter customers are getting a bit excited as changes in USA standards requires all customers are notified and they have just received the letters outlining when the service is starting. Problem is, most customers don't have an alternate ISP they can use - rather like VirginMedia in the UK and a lot of other people who have moved their phone line rental away from BT.

Cheaper communications do appear to have some nasty hidden costs.