aimm News

AIME launches Digital Marketing Guide and Early Warning System for Advertisers

Posted on by Andrea Putnam-Moorcroft

08 August 2014

AIME, the Association of Interactive and Media Entertainment professionals specialising in micropayment services including voting, competitions, charity donations and mobile commerce, today released its Early Warning System to Members to warn Digital Marketing companies about rogue and fraudulent practices operated by entities masquerading as legitimate online publishers.

These practices are designed to defraud digital advertisers of their advertising funds and in the process, often cause issues for consumers who may be misled into purchasing services that they do not want.

AIME Members in the micropayment (also called premium rate) market raised their concerns around malpractice affecting digital marketing, and AIME responded with two major initiatives. The first is the AIME Digital Marketing Guide that advises advertisers operating in the internet marketing arena, on how to detect and prevent fraud attempts aimed at their advertising budget.

The second is a community blogging platform known as the AIME Early Warning System for advertisers to warn each other of bad practices that they have encountered when conducting their own monitoring.

Additional to advertisers’ posting warnings, AIME has negotiated to receive postings from PhonepayPlus (the UK premium rate regulator) and from monitoring and compliance companies such as Enarpee, Empello and ETX.  AIME is in discussions with anti-virus software companies and the UK Cabinet Office about collaborating with their cybercrime and malware information sharing initiatives, and getting their relevant alerts posted into the AIME Early Warning System.

Cybercrime can affect consumers who use smartphones, tablets and computers to access the internet.  Consumers are particularly vulnerable if they have not installed anti-virus software on portable devices as infections with adware or malware are becoming increasingly common.

In addition the Internet is rife with dubious practices like ‘clickjacking’ and ‘typosquatting’, designed to trick consumers into visiting or even purchasing chargeable services under false pretences.

In all these cases, it is often the internet advertiser who has to deal with the fallout from the consumer issue while also losing out financially to the fraud.

Used together, AIME’s Digital Marketing Guide and Early Warning System provides relevant and timely information to enable advertiser to protect themselves from affiliate fraud and in doing so, help to protect online consumers from harm.

AIME Chairman Edward Boddington, stated:

“Affiliate marketing fraud is a serious problem for all Internet advertisers.  It causes particular issues for merchants using micropayment options as often the fraud is not caught until after users have been misled, leading to brand damage in addition to defrauded advertising spend.

Last year Internet advertising fraud cost AIME members around £20 million, in addition to considerable brand damage.

“Together AIME’s two initiatives are equivalent to a Neighbourhood Watch for online advertisers.  Both initiatives are a success because of the extensive support provided by Members.  AIME’s strength is enabling Members to collaborate on solutions to industry issues so as to protect and nurture the marketplace in which they work.”

EWS Contribution Form update

Posted on by Andrea Putnam-Moorcroft

We are aware that users are experiencing some problems with the downloadable contribution form on our new EWS site. The form is currently in PDF format and people are having difficulties editing the fields as needed.

 

If you would like to make a contribution we now have a Word version of this form available. Please email: info@aimm.co for this and we will send it over to you ASAP.

 

We are in the process of trying rectifying this problem on our site as soon as we can, so everyone has easy access to the Word version of this form.

 

Many thanks for your patience on this matter.

 

The AIME Team

The Early Warning System is here

Posted on by Andrea Putnam-Moorcroft

 

EWS-logo-white-cropWEB

AIME are pleased to announce the launch of the Early Warning System (EWS) this week; accessible from the News Menu of AIME, or directly from http://ews.aimm.co.

The Early Warning System is a Digital Marketing Community blogging system designed to alert advertisers of malware and malpractices that have been spotted by other advertisers, anti-virus companies, PhonepayPlus, security specialists and other UK businesses.  EWS goes hand in hand with the AIME Digital Marketing Guide (available from here)
EWS is for use by both AIME Members and non members. Only Members have access to Member contributed content, but everyone has access to basic level information. All information is behind password control, and on first access you will be required to set up a new account to be able to login.
All Digital Marketing advertisers and monitoring companies are encouraged to contribute information for sharing.

Receive Twitter alerts from EWS by following @AIMEWarnings https://twitter.com/AIMEWarnings

If you have any queries, or you want to get your new EWS account set up, email us on: info@aimm.co

 

Sponsor Spotlight: mGage

Posted on by Andrea Putnam-Moorcroft

mGage-color-1-2

mGage is a global mobile engagement provider with more than 15 years of mobile marketing and customer care experience.

We deliver billions of monthly mobile messages and our SaaS cloud-based technology, enables brands to intelligently personalise mobile communications for the omni-channel consumer.

Our platform provides reach across mobile touchpoints, including text message, app push notification, voice and email.

To learn more about how mGage can help your business read : mGage Overview

mGage Twitter-Cover-graphic

 

AIME briefing on Potential Judicial Review of PhonepayPlus

Posted on by Andrea Putnam-Moorcroft

11 July 2014

All information in this release is derived from material already in the public domain.

In 2013, PhonepayPlus’ Research and Market Intelligence Team downloaded a virus to their test computer as part of the ongoing monitoring of the digital advertising of premium rate services and found that a form of malware prevented their computer browser from accessing websites and displayed a warning that the user had performed activities that were unauthorised. The warning also suggested that to prove that the user was human and to get the browser unlocked, the user had to use one of a range of different commercial offers.  These “offers” led to various subscription-based premium rate services.

The malware, known as “Ransomware”, was used by an affiliate publisher to promote services. The malware had been recently re-authored to act in this way, previously designed to extract for £100 PayPal payment from the user, and it was unclear if any consumers had been affected before PhonepayPlus detected the malware.

Over the following few days, PhonepayPlus Executive raised an Emergency Procedure against the companies whose services had been promoted by the affiliate utilising the malware. In all, 10 companies were affected and all received the Emergency Procedure which shut down their services and froze any revenue flow.

Later that year, nearly all of the companies were adjudicated against by the PhonepayPlus Code Compliance Panel and received fines and warnings.

Two of the companies, Germany based Ordanduu GmbH and Optimus GmbH, felt that PhonepayPlus had breached European law in carrying out its investigation against them and requested a Judicial Review through the English Courts. In April 2014, permission to proceed with a Judicial Review based on possible breaches of EU Law was granted by the Administrative Court. In granting permission for a Judicial Review, the Judge, Justice Charles also gave permission to the Barrister, Gerry Facenna of Moncktons Chambers, to add in to the Judicial Review, potential issues of English Law in terms of “fair regulation”.

We note that whilst observations about PhonepayPlus’ process and fair regulation have been raised by Justice Charles in his summing up the Judicial Review is not yet concluded. We would however expect that PhonepayPlus will take these observations into consideration and are working closely with PhonepayPlus in relation to its 13th Code consultation, and will be detailing the various requirements for review on behalf of its members

AIME will not comment on the specifics of the Judicial Review as it is not appropriate to discuss ongoing legal cases nor speculate on the potential implications of the Review at this stage.

However, AIME is in discussion with PhonepayPlus regarding the creation of a cross industry working group.  This will seek to address the relevance and effectiveness of the current regulatory model in light of the rapidly changing dynamics brought about by new digital content consumption and changing consumer behaviours.

AIME Board Chairman Edward Boddington of Harvest Media stated; “The Premium Rate Industry is characterised by rapid change and in some cases the industry is still catching up to the evolving risk element when using affiliate marketing.  PhonepayPlus is constantly evolving its own approach in the face of new risks.  This case represents a disagreement as to whether all parties reacted sufficiently and correctly to the particular risk of ransomware, utilised by a rogue affiliate.  Moving forward, new risks will emerge, and doubtless new disagreements will emerge.  AIME believes that close collaboration between industry and the regulator is the best way of keeping misunderstandings, under estimations, and disagreements to a minimum. AIME is negotiating with PhonepayPlus for the creation of a cross industry working group to consider certain aspects of current regulatory processes and to be available to assist when new risks emerge. AIME will also continue to keep Members informed and will work with them to ensure the appropriate regulatory framework exists to support their businesses.”