I’d contact spafinder and let them know whats going on. This post comes up #2 for “DirectAdSolutions” in google search so I think they’ll definitely have to change their name soon.

Glad I could help.

After some suspicious malware warnings from DoubleClick, we double checked our references and then found your blog post! Thank you.

Indeed we were working with Tom Marrow and almost fell for it. I can’t thank you enough!

In this case the ads actually stopped working the first day into the campaign, if they were actually trying to get advertising for free I think they’d have tried to keep the ads live and string the site along for as long as possible.

Whereas if they just wanted to install some malware, they’d get as many people infected as they could before complaints came rolling in and suspicion was raised and then bolt.

Affiliate Marketing or Selling Leads is a pretty good business. The end advertiser doesn’t care where the leads came from or why.

As a matter of fact dealing with someone disreputable probably only helps them because at some point they can just pull the rug from under them (after 1000 free leads) and say “sorry, we’ve heard that you’re ripping off publishers”. Or renegotiate the CPA terms, saying that the leads aren’t good. Instead of $10 we’ll give you $2. Since DirectAdSolutions pays nothing to the publishers it’s all profit.

If you ran any quantity of impressions i’d contact the advertiser and demand some sort of payment. They should be accountable for knowing where their leads come from.

I emailed the guy and told him that i’d be writing this blog post and that he might as well start a new site.