Multiple Personality Disorder
An interesting article came out in MediaPost yesterday titled, "Washington AG Targets Tattoo Media’s MyLuvCrush.com." For all that has been written about the mobile marketing space over the years, outside of a few miscellaneous references, this is the first article in the mainstream Internet marketing press, let alone any national publications, that references that other trend in mobile subscription services, the crush offers. If you have spent any time in or observing the performance-marketing space, you would have come across these offers. If you’ve spent any time surfing the social networking sites, especially twelve to eighteen months ago, then you definitely came across these offers. Chances are, you might have even clicked on one. With the ad telling you that someone has a crush on you, someone you know even, who wouldn’t want to know? Turns out millions daily click, and in its heyday more than a million a month would enter not just their cell phone but a pin that would sign them up for text services charging their mobile phone upwards of $19.99 per month. The downside of these ads, as evidenced by the legal action against one of the largest purveyors, the signups rely on arguably misleading ads, and the process wouldn’t succeed if users had to put down their credit card numbers. Fortunately, for the company targeted by the Washington AG, to settle it meant paying a day’s worth of profit and agreeing to modify the ads. And, good news for all that run these offers, the article barely scratched the surface of the methodology and missed the mark when trying to compare it to other subscription services.
Despite the immense profitability that the crush ads, and their newer variant, the IQ quiz, can yield, it has made them favorites of certain publishers. But, not all publishers will run these ads, some for moral reasons – they don’t like the bait and switch or question the value of charging for something that should be free. Others will avoid running it for the same reasons but instead of it being moral, it’s legal. They avoid running them because they don’t want to face a potential inquiry by a state attorney general. It’s not just mobile subscription service offers. Every network and every publisher has their limits in terms of what they will run. For some, the limit falls along more traditional lines, i.e., mainstream versus adult. For others, it has to do with their feelings of potentially taking advantage of a customer. For every ten people who might run a payday loan offer, you will have one person adamantly opposed, saying that these offers unfairly take advantage of those in need, charging them completely egregious interest rates. Those on the pro-side of payday or short term loans, say that these loans provide those in need with access to funding when they couldn’t otherwise get it, and feel the fees charged adequately represent the risk the lenders take. If you’re trying to figure out who is right, don’t. It’s like talking politics. Even if a pro-payday guy gets a letter in the mail from someone regarding their bankruptcy, they still will find their actions justifiable. So, what determines whether someone will run one offer and not another? Is it upbringing? It is nature? We find it tends to depend on a color. Green.
Our space is a funny one. The line that people draw between what they will do and won’t is often arbitrary, and it’s rarely written in stone. One of the more fun conversations to engage in involves gathering a group of people and hearing their takes on what they have and haven’t run, what they will and won’t run. For even more fun make sure you have representatives of each side, one that will gladly run a certain offer and one that won’t. It might sound like someone on one side couldn’t turn to the other, but flash enough money, and see how quickly things change. For those that start on one side, usually the "against", and switch to the other, don’t think poorly of them. That doesn’t make them inherently bad, or speak to their values as a person. And, despite how it sounds, it’s not greed or some latent insensitivity that caused their change of heart, even if the money did influence the decision. You see, it isn’t about the money. (OK, at some level it is definitely about the money, but…) The change is really due to addiction, the addiction to metrics. Performance-marketers are the new day traders. The money just implies active metrics and acts as the drug that keeps people going. Watching stats gives marketers a bigger high than any other substance. They will switch sides because they can’t live without the excitement of working on something with that explosive growth.
Performance marketers are the biggest bunch of people with ADD. When they take sides on a certain offer it’s driven by their heart being in the right place. They really do want to do good and feel like they aren’t hurting anyone by their actions. We aren’t doctors. We don’t save people with our actions. We market and rely on impulse. We entice people to act, appeal to their emotions. You can see why someone would draw some line regarding what they will and won’t do. But, those in our space tend to share an underlying DNA that made this space attractive to them in the first place. And, while it is in part money, it’s the ability to influence that money by their actions, one click or one action at a time. That draws them to the space, and like alcohol, can create blinders having them make decisions they wouldn’t make in normal scenarios. So, when you hear people talk one way but see them later doing another, it won’t surprise you, and you will know that they are simply under the influence… or as we like to say, that performance markets suffer from multiple personality disorder.
