[Edit 1/15/08 The creator of the campaign, Kirt Gunn, emailed me to let me know that the campaign never worked with PayPerPost. Glad to hear!]
PayPerPost … er… Izea… insults our intelligence yet again. Ariel Waldman summarizes a new campaign from PPP and Garnier:
The Harry Situation site is a horrid attempt at a site, not naming what networks, lawyers, etc. they were working with, but somehow managing to spill out the fill name of “Ganier Frucits” at any chance. A quick WhoIS lookup gives a vague address and another un-Google-able Gmail address…
On this particular blog post, the site is again, linked to twice (with 2 TinyURLs). One of which is supposed to go to Todd’s “blog”, but when you click on the link, it (surprise!) takes you to an image of the “show” hosted on PayPerPost. Also, “interestingly”, the same name of the image is used on the Harry Situation blog, only this time appropriately hosted on the site. Other blogs that host the post load PayPerPost data when you visit them.
Our investigative conclusion? Not only has Garnier (and potentially associated ad agencies) attempted to “game” bloggers, by somehow believing that they will link to anything without credentials, but it seems that PayPerPost is incredibly insatiable in making themselves and any blogger associated with them become an evil empire of ridiculousness.
Whatever your feelings about PayPerPost … er… Izea… this sort of marketing stunt dilutes both the online marketing and online video effectiveness for early adopting advertisers and does nothing useful for either viewers or advertisers dumping money into such campaigns. In fact, I’m sure the poor results and backlash from this will only convince more Madison Ave agencies that online video is a fad.