Hi all ! I've been with an ad company for a year now. At first, they sold my ad spaces on my website, took their share, revenue was good and everyone was happy. A couple of months ago, they inserted an invisible iframe in all the ads they're serving. In this iframe, they load one of their own website and it's easy to see why: - they boost their website's traffic with unique visitors - they collect 100% of the money made by ads they serve on their site Not to say, loading a complete site in background when users surf my site is slowing down my webiste; I'm sure some users left, revenues were lost, etc. I also saw this on some of their other affiliated websites (i.e. I'm not the only one being screwed but bigger affiliate websites are not... they don't want to piss them off I guess or they think that webmasters from little sites don't have a clue about invisible iframes) So I contacted them and they told me the iframe was an error; it was "made by a programmer who did not know what he was doing" and it was "an attempt to implement cookies to track the users". Yeah right, using one of their little websites and not their main ad server to serve cookies (which are already implemented btw)... Anyways... So since I lost all faith in them, I asked them to provide me with the details about my earnings (I only receive a summary saying how much money I made at the end of each week), detailing which campaign was displayed how many times, what was its rate, etc. They just ignored me. So, what would you do ? Do we have a legal right to obtain details about our revenues or can they just pay us blindly ? Can I sue for using my website for illegal practices ? Etc. Thanks a lot for your answers.
It's a North American company, quite big but on the decline I think. I can't give any name because I don't know if I can (don't want to be sued for diffamation though I stand by my proofs ). It's in the PPC and CPM business and represents some big firms like BMW and the like. I still can't believe they're robbing their own clients and screwing their affiliates. But, what were you saying in the post you deleted ? Maybe it can help... Also, can an affiliate request detailed proofs of his revenue ? I know Google Adsense for example does not tell affiliates which ad was clicked and how much it earned but only summarizes it by day; but can they do it ? Can you legally force an advertising company to give you details about your earnings ?