Domain parking service’s payments delayed from upstream providers.
Publisher payments for Moniker’s TrafficClub domain name parking service will be delayed due to questions about click fraud. According to a notice on the TrafficClub site, the service’s upstream providers are delaying payment:
Payments: With the increase of click fraud, we are receiving payment delays from our upstream providers. This is an industry wide issue that all companies are experiencing from time to time. We apologize for the inconvenience and we are working hard to resume our normal payment cycle and get payments released to customers ASAP.
Almost all TrafficClub traffic is currently monetized through Skenzo, so Skenzo’s payments to TrafficClub must be delayed. It’s not clear if Skeno’s delays are due to that company’s upstream ad provider witholding payment. [Update 9-23-07: According to Skenzo, their payments to TrafficClub have not been delayed. According to Divyank Turakhia, President & Director of Skenzo, “The post on TrafficClub’s website about us delaying payments to them is incorrect. Someone from our team is reaching out to them to get this statement rectified.” I should note that the TrafficClub web site does not say specifically that Skenzo is delaying payments. However, almost all user accounts are solely monetized through Skenzo. My understanding is that some accounts within TrafficClub may have other ad providers. Please see Skenzo’s comments below as well. I’m sure we’ll get more details soon.]
Fraud is a big issue that domain name parking services are wrestling with. I’ve talked to a number of parking companies, especially new ones, that say 9 out of 10 account applications they receive are not activated due to suspected fraud. When a fraudster is kicked off another network, he simply finds another network to join. This creates a number of ‘false positives’, whereby a legitimate domain parker is not accepted to a network because he may be a fraud. One parking company confided to me, “If the application to our service includes broken English, we usually assume it’s a fraudulant account.”
Andrew says
Frank Schilling’s take:
http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/09/looks-like-some.html
Jenika (Skenzo PR Dept) says
Please Note:
1. Skenzo has not delayed any payouts. In fact, payouts to all customers for the month in question were made 2 days earlier than the due date
2. None of Skenzo’s upstream ad providers have delayed payments to Skenzo
We just learnt about this post when a customer of ours emailed us about the same. We are currently in the process of asking TrafficClub to rectify the post which says that we have delayed payments to them.
Kindly remove all references from the above story that state that any payment delay to TrafficClub’s customers is caused by either Skenzo or its upstream providers.