DoubleClick Gets Into Spam

keytoe writes: "Well, just when we thought everyone's favorite Privacy Snoop was starting to mellow out a bit, we discover this little tidbit. DoubleClick is now branching out from the ad serving business into the SPAM business due to the fact that direct email marketing 'is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving.' Using DARTmail, you can now target your bulk mailings 'based on profile data.' I wonder which profiling data they're talking about. Perhaps, say, all the data they've been collecting for years?"

Comments

Call them and let them know how you feel.

[kolding]

From Doubleclick's Website, the number to call for information about DARTMail is 866-459-7606 (toll free). Feel free to give them a call and give them a piece of your mind. Remember to be polite, you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If enough people call to complain and ask to be kept off all of their lists, the following will happen. 1: They'll rethink their position, 2: they'll be forced to remove you, and 3: their phone lines will be clogged and they won't be able to make any sales.

Re:Call them and let them know how you feel.

[zama]

Actually if you want to wave credentials you'll lose - as an ex-employee of DCLK, an ex-client, and currently a list admin using a different provider.

So let's go:

1. How does DoubleClick verify that the lists in use are opt-in?
When you are negotiating for the process, at least one sales person and probably a pre-sales consultant goes to your site and goes through the registration process multiple times. Some of the addresses they then ask to unsubscribe - if you spam them anyway there's a problem. They also go through your privacy policy to ensure compliance.

Also, if you send out a mailing that comes back with large numbers of unsubscribes and bounces, that raises a big red flag. Lastly, there actually are people monitoring the abuse@doubleclick.net address. If a particular client crops up enough, it will be addressed.

2. What are the penalties if the list isn't opt-in?
If it's proven that your list is not opt-in then your contract is abruptly cancelled. And depending on how bad a PR flap you can be sued.

3. DoubleClick has no responsibility for spam like an ISP.
DoubleClick's number one responsibility is to its shareholders. Bad PR has significantly hurt their business.

4. Bulk email is the stated point of the DARTmail service.
Nyet. You are misunderstanding "bulk" means large numbers. If you send out 1.8MM newsletters like I do, Outlook or some small scale provider isn't going to cut it. That's bulk. The stated purpose of DARTmail is bulk OPT-IN email.

5. Cost issues.
We left DARTmail because it was too expensive. Period. Most SPAM is only cost-effective with a cheap CPM. That's not a 100% guarantee but a general truism.

I have no doubt that there will be abuses of the technology. DoubleClick's client base is large and there are certainly issues in monitoring compliance for that many clients. But there's a huge difference between a legitimate product that will be fractionally abused and actual spamware.

Good thing!

[GodHead]

I for one am looking forward to the "Nu-Spam". Since I have a B.S. already, I'll get ads from only the finest in unaccredited masters degree programs. Also, just think of the targeted pr0n. No more brunettes thanks, only the red-headed barely-legal college girls will send me invitations to meet them and their roommates on-line...

according to WHOM?

[Em Emalb]

"E-mail advertising, which is relatively inexpensive, is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving..."

According to whom?

Every single person I know complains about spam. Every single one of them deletes without reading the crap. Almost every one of them uses some sort of filtering/blocking.

And no, these aren't all geek-centric folks. Hotmail, yahoo, etc., all have basic filtering in place. Some UCE gets through, but most get filtered to their spam box.

Where the hell are these numbers coming from?

I realize that 1% of 10000 emails sent out is an acceptable return rate, but I wouldn't call it thriving. Show some solid proof that this is true and I will believe you.

Are people out there really this gullible? For pete sake, if I purchased all the products or services offered in spam, I'd be one highly educated, rich, successful, hung to my knee, always hard, in great shape, sexual tyrannosaurus.

And we know that ain't gonna happen.

DARTMail Targeting

[lord13]

I am a bit familiar with DARTMail (actually used the product), and from what I know, it does not use the vast amount of information that DoubleClick has for it's targeting - instead you upload all of your site's registration data, and target based off of that. It allows you to put together different emails for different groups of people, assembling HTML emails like building blocks.

The real murky area (I felt) is that what they do with the information once they have it... Do they integrate it in with their master list, getting even more info? I was assured that would never happen - that all of the info uploaded would be segregated, but I never read (or had access to) any of the fine print.

Re:Do you know what spam is?

[Tackhead]

> Now, this isn't so say that all people are nice. That's not to say that people don't troll web pages and people don't fake mail-from headers. It happens. But there's also a lot of promotional mail that YOU OPTED INTO whether you realize it or not.

Bullshit.

If I opted into it, and didn't realize I'd done so (perhaps I'm the dr00ling AOLer you seem to think I am), then show me the opt-in.

That's what "double opt-in" (or more accurately, "confirmed opt-in", the "double" is your industry's language, trying to make it sound unreasonable) is for. Until you can demonstrate to my satisfaction that I opted in, it's spam.

>What I'm saying is, before labeling every piece of mail that you get as spam, try unsubscribing. And yes, I know that some unsubscribe links are fake. What are you going to do? There are also fake breasts and fake watches.

So, because some tits are fake and some Rolexes are fake, and since I wouldn't give up feeling tits, or wearing a Rolex, just because I can't trust the owner of the tits or the seller of the Rolex, I should trust you? Holy non-sequitur, Batman!

The overwhelming majority of the claims of "click here to be removed" are lies. The overwhelming majority of the "You opted in" claims are lies.

So what I'm not gonna do is this: I sure as fsck ain't gonna trust your unsubscribe link, that's what.

And what I am gonna do is this: Find your upstream, and report you to them as a spammer. Don't want the 2000 TOS violation reports? Don't spam.

And if your upstream ignores those reports, what am I gonna do? Well, I'm probably gonna add your netblocks to my private blocklist. Don't want to be blocked? Don't spam.

> And lots of other companies (like mine) that send lots of LEGAL, NON-SPAM, promotional email.

How come (and I don't mean you specifically, I mean the general case over the past few years) every spammer always tries to re-define "spam" in such a way as "Well, whatever we do isn't spam."

If it's in my mailbox, it's unsolicited, and it was generated in bulk, it's spam, and I'll choose to either block the server that sent it, or report it to the sender's provider. What are you going to do?