Daily Domainer

TrafficClub, a domain parking service and aggregator, and DomainSponsor, which was providing the former with two different versions of Google's pay-per-click advertising feed, recently parted ways.

Like most breakups, it wasn't pretty.

A few days ago we received the following email in our inbox:

Dear Domain Owner,

As someone with a valuable domain portfolio, we would like to invite you to open a direct account on DomainSponsor. We are known in the industry as the leader in domain monetization with a strong focus on quality of service and revenue growth. With a direct relationship you will experience this level of service and additional benefits.

To take advantage of this offer, please go to [...] and complete an online application. Once you have done so, please send an e-mail to Jim Grace at [...]. As your Account Manager, he will approve the application and present you with a special revenue share as part of this offer.

If you have any question or concerns, please contact Jim as well. Thank you. [...]

If you have received this message in error, or wish to opt-out from receiving future email correspondence from DomainSponsor please click here and reply “unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Regards,

DomainSponsor Support Team
DomainSponsor.com [...]

The message seemed strangely out of character at the time so we quickly discounted it as spam, some sort of phishing attempt or simply a "joe job".

The next day, we received another email, this time from TrafficClub.

Dear TrafficClub account holder:

As you know, Moniker is constantly working to provide you with the best Domain Asset Management services available, including TrafficClub, one of the highest revenue generating monetization services on the market. We want to keep you updated on some product transitions taking place at TrafficClub.

Due to changes occurring within the monetization industry, several Pay Per Click partners are changing their rules and guidelines and therefore are no longer a fit for our network. We continue to work closely with our highest performing partners, and have temporarily redirected your account(s) through one feed. As you know, we're committed to making sure your revenue remains high throughout this transition process. As a result of this shift, you may even see an increase in revenue.

We are currently developing alternate solutions and will update you as new partners and products become available. Moniker will continue to work to bring you targeted advertising, increased value and the best monetization options available.

Sincerely,

Moniker's TrafficClub Support Team [...]

This email was even more confusing. It appeared to be "spin pure", without any explanation of what had happened, and left us quite puzzled. Had we fallen victim to a guerilla marketing campaign? Was someone out there impersonating parking companies with the goal of creating confusion in the marketplace?

No. Both emails were real, and strangely enough, both were about the same issue – even though neither of them addressed it directly!

TrafficClub had always been offering its members a choice between DomainSponsor, Google and Skenzo feeds. TrafficClub got the first two of these feeds from DomainSponsor. But according to DomainSponsor, they were instructed by Google to stop dealing with TrafficClub, which left TrafficClub with just one feed: Skenzo.

When Moniker was about to announce the breakup, DomainSponsor performed whois lookups on all of TrafficClub's clients and sent them the email we quoted at the top of this post. Moniker hastily reacted with the email shown above. When confronted with accusations that DomainSponsor was trying to steal TrafficClub's customers, Ron Sheridan of DomainSponsor posted the following explanation to several domainer forums:

[...] we sent out an e-mail inviting TrafficClub customers to deal directly with DomainSponsor.

We would like to apologize if our email notification appeared as “spam”. We were attempting to reach out to customers who were enjoying our DomainSponsor program via TrafficClub. We felt we had good reason and justification to do so but the email did not speak to the reason we were forced to send it. The email was created and sent in haste and failed to give the larger context.

Background: On mid day Friday we were notified by our largest upstream PPC provider that we were to immediately terminate our participation in TrafficClub. We quickly notified TC and apprised them of the situation. TC asked for more time which seemed reasonable. While we were not given more time on our end, we decided to extend the deadline to Wednesday (yesterday) midnight and absorb any financial and legal risks ourselves.

We were expecting an announcement by TC to those customers affected. As of 5:00pm pst on Wednesday no announcement seemed forthcoming, and we saw that as a direct reflection on us. We decided it was necessary to send an announcement on our own. We have been very happy with our relationship with TC and it is with great sadness that we had to terminate it. This was not a DS decision or a TC decision…it was something forced upon us.

We think this development which precipitated our email, is part of a larger effort from the large upstream providers to exert more control over their distribution. In that context, our main concern is to ensure we abide by our terms of service thus ensuring our clients the most sustainable and highest performing experience. That said we could have and should have handled the specific communication better, and we apologize to those directly impacted especially the TrafficClub team. We welcome anyone who has concerns to contact us directly and discuss with us.

Monte Cahn, the CEO of TrafficClub, presented the following explanation:

As some of you may know, Google decided to make some sweeping changes with their partners regarding 3rd and 4th party feeds. TrafficClub.com was unique as it allowed multiple feeds to compete on a domain by domain basis and select not only the feed but the landing pages that monetized the best for each domain.

DomainSponsor/Oversee was one of 3 Google feed in TrafficClub and WAS considered a partner until yesterday when they decided to do whois look ups and aggregate all contact information they had on TC customers on every domain name and directly solicit our customers. In my opinion and after a direct conversation with their management (after I was even solicited), their intent was to take advantage of the situation and steal our customers. They were actually planning this for days.

Sometimes it takes a while to discover the true colors of companies and their management.

The great news is that they flushed themselves out of the system and revenue and performance will increase as a result. TrafficClub will only get better when we learn from experiences such as these.

My advice is to choose your partners carefully and work with people/companies you can really trust and who are aligned with with you. If you never learn from your mistakes, you will never grow. We just learned from ours.

The Daily Domainer is with TrafficClub on this one. DomainSponsor's after-the-fact explanation

We were expecting an announcement by TC to those customers affected. As of 5:00pm pst on Wednesday no announcement seemed forthcoming, and we saw that as a direct reflection on us. We decided it was necessary to send an announcement on our own.

is illogical. Their original email didn't explain what had happened… it didn't even mention TrafficClub! Instead, it left us confused and appeared to be such blatant spam that we initially put it aside in the belief that it couldn't have possibly been sent by DomainSponsor. (Join TrafficClub – a quick plug to help them recover any customers they might have lost due to DomainSponsor's email.)

What's the bigger issue here? Apparently Google is cracking down on parking companies that aren't dealing with them directly. Skenzo is using Google, too, and it can be taken for granted that TrafficClub is working on an alternative solution, which might involve dealing directly with Google or even creating their own PPC program.