Dear Parked.com customers,
We were notified today by Yahoo that all Yahoo based parking companies, including Parked.com, must begin enforcing the no arbitrage/no paid traffic general provision. As a reminder, Section 2 Subsection g. in the Parked.com Terms of Service states:
“All other types of traffic including bought traffic, traffic driven by PPC campaigns, traffic directed from hyperlinks are not permitted. If your traffic originates from any sources other than type-in and search engine traffic, you will not be entitled to payment as per this Agreement. Regular checks are carried out and we reserve the right to suspend any domain from our Service at any time, on our sole discretion, if we reasonably believe that you have violated this Agreement; for example, if we suspect that the traffic on your domain is bought, generated or redirected in any way that contravenes these terms and conditions.”
For more information please see http://www.parked.com/tos/.
Accordingly, all arbitrage must stop effective 1pm PST on Thursday, February 14, 2008. Even though arbitrage will no longer be allowed, all accounts will still be paid.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact your account manager.
We thank you for your business and continued support.
Parked.com
Jeff says:
All these rules are for the little guys, the big earners will be free to do whatever.
Yahoo continues to slaughter their cash cows. The result? Massive layoffs.
Yeah, sure, they’re cash cows. But that kind of cash cow is exactly what has killed the advertiser trust in Yahoo.
This kind of arbitraging tends to have a much lower ROI for the advertiser. The more and more arbitrage traffic hits the Yahoo advertisers, the more advertisers decide to opt out of Yahoo’s network all together. The more that happens, the less RPC the publishers can get. And once that happens, the publishers move over to Google for better monetization.
It’s all one vicious cycle - the more poor quality traffic you let in, the more you’re setting yourself up for disaster once the advertisers run their ROI metrics. It may pay off in the short term, but you’re killing yourself in the long term.
This cash cow, in my opinion, is one of the worst things to ever happen to YSM (Overture) as a company. The EXISTENCE of this cash cow is one of the reasons why my friends are getting laid off, NOT THE FACT THEY’RE CLOSING IT DOWN.
This is a cash cow that deserved to be slaughtered.
Direct Navigation just got defined.
New domainers will be discourage with this experience as they started buying expired domain names hoping to earn with existing backlink traffics. Now all these traffics are no longer useful, unless shifting their business strategy from PPC to development.
No love on Feb.14.
Buying existing backlinks was always going to be a mugs game.
I agree 100% with Fenix’s comment above.
As a Yahoo Search Marketing advertiser who has had to put up with garbage traffic from their “Domain Match” program for far too long, I’m happy to see this cow get slaughtered. Domainers crow about the quality of direct navigation traffic, but don’t seem to realize that you can’t turn junk into gold just by passing it through a parking page. This is not direct navigation traffic, and an advertiser should have a say in where their money is spent.
Wow! this is serious stuff for a lot of folks out there which is why I will keep on re-asserting the following below. Infact, it will not suprise me if google, yahoo and msn kill of PPC altogether
one day soon. For now, there is still time:
Development is certainly the way to go.
However I have been asserting for a while now, this industry must have a Domain Stock or Share Exchange in order to completely break the shackles from google, yahoo and the rest. It really amazes me how us domainers feel so complacent, just because of a few reported big sales or un-sustainable ppc traffic flows.
This industry has over 140 million domains registered with no home!! Think about it again, everyone knows what a car, real estate, stocks and art is. These items are in every home or remain firmly imbedded in peoples minds universally because they trade on ubiquity! Domains are a very parochial commodity simply because what it really needs and deserves has not been implemented or created.
We really need to get the top guy’s such as Rick Schwartz, Frank Schilling, Kevin Ham, sedo, afternic and godaddy etc together to help create a legitimate domain stock or share exchange that operates like a real market. Fusu.com is trying, unfortunately these guy’s have no funding but they clearly have the intelligence and foresight. They are also based in Slovakia which does not seem to help. Why we get so terribly excited about 20,000 plus domains sold thus far, out of 140 million domains registered, makes no business sense to me at all. Yes the auctioners are doing ok, however I’d be straight up here and really don’t mind getting bruised at all, fact is, we need more sophistication and innovation, to do away with being labelled “cybersquaters” or parasites. Ok, there are those of us lucky few who got in early and that’s fine and very well, but as Andrew pointed out on Domainnamewire.com recently, google and yahoo have no reason to give a damn whatsoever! who knows, they may even create a market of sorts that cannibalizes what domainers already have. They may even pitch up with advertising agencies for instance, I certainly would if i were them and realised the ultimate potential of domain assets. Notice for instance how google allows anyone with a google business account to run “print” ads right across the united states! just the tip of the iceberg eh! I’d be very scared of what google and microsoft are very capable of.
We must try not to be penny wise and pound foolish! We must think innovatively like silicon valley, and by that I mean we must get together immediately as a matter of urgency, like a start up company with a true innovative concept, that can truly take this entire industry to another level for several decades to come, and that is to create a DOMAIN STOCK EXCHANGE!
It really is not that complex as it seems, most of the logistics are already there. 140 million domains to trade, domain registrars and domain auctioners that can become DSE market makers, platform software is a no brainer, getting financial services market approval to legitimise trading can be done offshore in europe rather than the US e.g london! a domain derivates market can also be developed, everyday people can come to the DSE to raise small capital of $50,000 upwards to buy a domain listed like an IPO and start a “REAL BUSINESS”, then start trading domain shares, report back to the market and perhaps do a secondary offering later or at least use DSE as impetus to get further capital from NASDAQ. What the heck!… DSE should aim to cannibalize NASDAQ altogether within 10 years as the new stock exchange for the 21st century!!
It’s not science fiction guy’s, but this is how the likes of brin and serg of google, mark zuckerberg of facebook, jeff bezos of amazon and so on think..DISRUPT!!
Therefore the disruptive technologies they create. We must do the same before it is far too late…if we do it now or at the very least start to explore this idea very seriously, we all WIN!!
I’d be honest, I don’t personally have thefunds to do this myself, but i did consult with a US company based in London last year that specializes in developing market trading platforms and after explaining my domain share exchange idea, the consultant thought it was very feasible in technology terms and sent me a proposal which I still have. The only barrier to this is obtaining FSA approval, which is not that difficult to do in the UK once the proposals are submitted to the Financial Services Authority in the correct manner. There are quite a few betting exchanges operating along the same lines as indicated above. We need to act NOW!
I’m with the rest of the crew - as a domainer, yahoo advertiser and yahoo stockholder this is good news all around.