p2pnet - rss feed: AOL buys ad firm -
p2pnet.net News:- With news that Time Warner’s AOL will spend $435 million to buy online ‘pay-for-performance’ firm Advertising.com come reports that an AOL employee also embarked on his own advertising venture, stealing close to 100 million subscribers’ e-mail addresses and selling them for almost $100,000.
“AOL hopes Advertising.com will boost its online ad business in two ways - by giving AOL a slice of the money that marketers spend on sites other than those owned by AOL, the nation’s largest Internet access provider, and by helping AOL maximize the dollars it gets from advertising inventory on its own properties,” sats The Street here.
Under ‘pay-for-performance,’ advertisers pay according to how many people respond to an ad, rather than how many see it.
In the theft, 24-year-old AOL software engineer Jason Smathers is accused of selling 92 million AOL subscribers’ e-mail addresses to 21-year-old Internet gambling entrepreneur Sean Dunaway for $100,000,” says Cynthia L. Webb in her Washington Post Filter column here.
Dunaway allegedly sold the addresses to spammers to hawk gambling ads, she says, adding, “Both men were charged with conspiracy and, if convicted, could spend up to five years in prison and be forced to pay a $250,000 fine.
“That punishment, however, might not even come close to making up for the potential damage to customer confidence in AOL’s internal security.”
