Enough is enough, Bodis founder says.
Domain name parking company Bodis announced today that it has punted six zero click ad partners from its network.
Zero click ads monetize domains by directly forwarding a domain visitor to an advertiser’s page. No clicks are required, hence the term “zero” click.
The idea is good in theory. Unfortunately, zero click networks are rife with scammy landing pages. Instead of someone who visits your travel-related domain being forwarded to a travel website, they are often forwarded to fake virus notices, sites that trick users into downloading a plugin, and other scams.
It’s a difficult problem to solve. Advertisers on zero click networks a safe URL to get approved. Then they will forward the safe URL to a bad URL after the ad network stops paying attention.
Zero click ads will sometimes bounce between several URLs before landing on a final destination.
The final straw for Bodis was an incident today in which a zero click forward went to a fake tech support site.
Bodis founder Matt Wegrzyn wrote:
What once started as a valuable monetization channel has recently turned into a battle for the bottom, with our partners bidding on traffic as cheaply as possible with little to no concern over what is shown on your domains.
We have tried to police ads to the best of our ability, using 3rd party tools to do so, but we no longer believe that the vast majority of ZC partners have you, the domain owners, best interests at heart.
Domain name company CentralNic recently entered into the zero click market with its acquisitions of Tonic and (soon) ZeroPark. I hope that CentralNic can take the lead in making sure that zero click is clean, and thus a viable monetization option.
Michele Neylon says
I’ve always hated it and as you say it’s often abused.