Adult dating site AdultFriendFinder, rumored to have been acquired in November for $1 billion is on the wrong side of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with a settlement that restricts AdultFriendFinder’s promotional activities.
The FTC said in a statement that AdultFriendFinder affiliates used pop-up ads to drive traffic to the site, and exposed consumers, including children to sexual explicit images when search for terms including “flowers,” “travel,” and “vacations.” More seriously the FTC alleged that the ads were also distributed with spyware and adware.
The FTC found that “the practice of displaying graphic pop-up ads without consumer consent was unfair, and violated the FTC Act;” essentially saying that porn pop-ups are illegal.
AdultFriendFinder agreed to a settlement with the FTC which sees the company admitting no guilt in return for not displaying sexually explicit ads to consumers unless they’re looking for that sort of content (or are already on an adult site) and to cease using pop-ups. AdultFriendFinder must also force affiliates to comply with the settlement or terminate them should they not comply. The last point is the interesting one because AdultFriendFinder has one of the bigger affiliate programs online, and would certainly have the largest affiliate program of any dating company; affiliate promotion is their bread and butter and if suddenly affiliates left the program or were restricted in ways that dramatically reduced clickthrus to AdultFriendFinder, the $1 billion sales price starts to look a little high; perhaps the later rumored price of $300 million at 3x EBITDA was such a low multiple because they saw this coming?
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I wonder how much of this has to do with the religious undertones of the current presidential election in the USA?
Jon
Dude, for these kinds of affiliate programs, popups are not the norm. Generally its a few bad apples.
Like the one you kept putting up Duncan?
We should just all keep trying to one up one another on new porn/adult related websites. The best part is, they ALL make money.
very suggestive headline, or Freudian slip?
sincerely,
angela hayden
ART GODDESS
I think they have already earned reputation in market and good brand now, if the affiliates will start leaving them that will hardly put any bad affect.
Popup pron is very low class and they should have never have done it in the first place, i wish them all the luck, but they need to clean up their act a bit.
The FTC found that “the practice of displaying graphic pop-up ads without consumer consent was unfair, and violated the FTC Act;”
Does their term graphic mean to be defined as profane, or can this be constriued to mean any graphical image?
In fact adultfriendfinder is a friend of adults. Hardly there’s any adult who doesn’t know about the most delicious topic.
This is certainly interesting for us:
http://www.beercosoftware.com/.....penthouse/
I monetize sitespaces.net with AFF adverts. They have been outperforming Google Adsense for about 20/1. I am glad they got this settled.
AFF may have one of the largest affiliate programs, but also one of the scamiest. For everyone like @11 above, there are 10 guys putting up fake ads on craigslist to drive traffic to them. (Anecdotally, about 8 of 10 craigslist personals are hookers, fakes, or porn spam - worse in smaller markets.)
AFF previously has been completely unresponsive to complaints about their affiliates. I had one of them spamming a social network I used to work with, and AFF’s response was basically, “well, we asked them to stop but we’re not going to terminate them.”
How many AFF affiliates are going to be shut down because of the ruling? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
The FTC is having a hard time enforcing FCRA and FCBA with FreeCreditReport.com not being ‘free’ (oops!) and AnnualCreditReport.com operating as a lead gen machine for the bureaus (TransUnion, Equifax and Experian).
@ 2 Yes I’d rather have my kids see porn pop-ups than go to sunday school.
I find more offensive, and this doesn’t apply just to dating sites, how sites can, quite accurately in some cases, find out where you live …
I have seen way to many dating pop-ups with “Find girls in [hometown]” … that is much more offensive to me than a half-naken woman.
Ouch!
I’m going to have to be careful with my own adult services site. Mine is nowhere near as aggressive or explicit but the line’s porn providers tread seem to be in constant flux.
But I do agree with the restriction of pop ups from search terms such as those provided above.
AOL brought you the pop-up. AFF turned it into an art form, Some judge who couldn’t learn to click the “X” fast enough said ENOUGH is ENOUGH. NOW the king and queen (pentcondo) of the pop-up are together where they belong.
My child’s computer is completely infected with random, persistent “pop-up” ads from Adult Friend Finder. I’ve spent all weekend trying to get rid of this crap, then interestingly enough I come upon this article. I can’t find a way to get this garbage off the computer, it’s only recently started happening. I’ll go to a legitimate web page, like a news story on Yahoo, and right there in my face are explicit, disgusting ads that my child could see at any time. There are those on here who think all of this is funny, or “a few bad apples”, but there are also parents and concerned people who see it for what it really is and want the situation fixed. Does anyone know what I can do about this garbage that keeps appearing on my computer??