Comments on: Zynga CEO Speaks On Offers, We Provide Some Context

By: Zynga Brings Back Social Adverting Offers, With Tight Supervision

Zynga Brings Back Social Adverting Offers, With Tight Supervision — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:03:02 +0000

[...] facing mounting criticism over the lower-quality offers — which we’ve detailed here – Zynga decided to pull all of them in early November. The company never said [...]

By: Interview with Zynga CEO Mark Pincus on Social Gaming in 2010

Interview with Zynga CEO Mark Pincus on Social Gaming in 2010 — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:45:11 +0000

[...] and his company have also faced a fair amount of criticism. The company, like most others on Facebook, has aggressively used viral channels, like [...]

By: Zynga Launches FishVille — How Big Will This Virtual Aquarium Game Get?

Zynga Launches FishVille — How Big Will This Virtual Aquarium Game Get? — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:33:26 +0000

[...] developer on Facebook — and one that has come under increasing scrutiny recently for its use of scammy advertising offers in games — has just soft-launched a new title called [...]

By: Arrington-Shukla fight « maclalala:link

Arrington-Shukla fight « maclalala:link — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:29:47 +0000

[...] Zynga CEO Speaks On Offers, We Provide Some Context | Inside Social Games [...]

By: Justin Smith

Justin Smith — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:33:56 +0000

Hi Marshall, thanks for your comment. As for your question about the first commenter’s argument, what else do you think we should say about Mark Pincus? He has his share of enemies, and we are not experts on his integrity (or lack thereof). So we are not ready to make a character judgment.

As for your question about our sponsors, we take this issue seriously. We have rejected some prospective advertisers in the past because they were doing things that didn’t meet our standards.

We are aware of some problems with offers our sponsors are running. In recent months, we have been working on gathering more information on how big these problems are. We do not currently have enough evidence of wrong-doing on their part to justify ending their ads. We are continuing to review them on a case by case basis.

- Justin and Eric

By: Marshall Kirkpatrick

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:05:51 +0000

Interesting post, good value add to the discussion. I do wonder about the first commenter’s argument, though. Also, can’t help but wonder where your advertisers here stand on all this. maybe not a legit question, but not being a regular reader (sorry!) these advertisers are new to me.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:32:13 +0000

Eric, good post. I’m glad Zynga is standing up and doing some thing. Offerpal has a long post on their blog as well. Peanut Labs put up a survey earlier today on this topic.

http://peanutlabs.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/survey-finds-arrington-has-a-point-given-choice-users-overwhelmingly-prefer-direct-payments-and-research-surveys-to-cpa-offers/

http://myofferpal.wordpress.com/

By: matwel

matwel — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:24:01 +0000

There is plenty of reason to question Pincus’ honesty ethics and sincerity here and elsewhere.

He diminishes the scope of the problem by “admitting” that SOME offers may be suspect. Anyone playing those games can’t help but know the suspect ones are virtually all there are.

He claims to have taken the worst offender down before Arrington’s post, as though self-policing was already on the job. He neglects to mention this action was taken only AFTER Arrington’s public shaming of his company for these practices was getting a lot of traction.

And he deleted a comment I left on his blog pointing some of this out. Hilariously only “way to take the high road” and “you are so awesome!” comments amend his mealy-mouthed post, which surely has elicited a much broader range of responses.

It looks for all the world like his strategy here is blow smoke and wait for the furor to die, then business as usual.