Angry in the Great White North

Netflix offers movies for rent, ordered over the internet. Their ads run quite often on the Pajamas Media rail ads I've been running on Angry in the Great White North. In the recent upgrade, I've tried clicking all the elements on the pages to make sure nothing was broken, and this included the Pajamas Media ads.

That's when I noticed it. Netflix ads never take you to Netflix.

I've gotten to a site offering free smilies. Smiley Central is a spyware site:

Smiley Central is an Internet Explorer plugin that allows you to add numerous smiley faces to your email or instant messages. It is part of the Fun Web Products suite of utilities such as Cursor Mania, My Mail Stationary, My Mail Signature, PopSwatter, Popular Screensavers, and the My Way website portal.

Although none of these products claim to be spyware, they do slow your computer down. All of the products use cookies to track usage, although they claim not to use cookies or anything else to track personally identifiable information. That being said, I would still recommend uninstalling the SmileyCentral software and other Fun Web Products if you feel your computer runs better without them. They are found by many spyware removal tools such as Spybot Search and Destroy, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, although they are deemed spyware safe by Aluria Software who created a Spyware SAFE Certification.

Another site reached by clicking the Netflix ad is SentBySanta, a service in which you pay for a personalize letter from Santa to be sent to your children. At least one person alleges that he began to receive spam after signing up for the service, but that might be a coincidence.

Yet another click took me to Freepay.com, a site that offers a free gift, including televisions and digital cameras!

In light grey text against a white background at the bottom, though, are the terms and conditions:

*Subject to our Terms & Conditions, receipt of your gift requires compliance with our eligibility requirements including; age and residency requirements, registration with a valid email address and password, shipping address and phone number, completion of one sponsor offer, and referring between 5 and 20 friends (5 for a Level 1 gift, 6 for a Level 2 gift, 10 for a Level 3 gift, 20 for a Level 4 gift) who have to sign up and complete one sponsor offer. Only one account per person and shipping address.

Available offers will vary and some sponsor offers may require purchases to qualify.

Members have 90 days to complete all necessary requirements to be eligible for a free gift.

I have deliberately not provided the links to these sites.

So what is going on here? Why is my site being used to direct readers to sites with questionable content under the good name of Netflix?

I have written to Pajamas Media. If I don't receive an assurance that the problem will be corrected quickly, I'll have no choice but to pull Pajamas Media ads until further notice. I have every confidence, though, that Pajamas Media will sort this out. In the mean time, if you do click on a Pajamas Media ad, don't explore the site that is returned unless it is clearly the intended target.

Note that it appears that Netflix is the only advertiser affected. Volvo ads and Pajamas Media's own in-house advertising seem to be working correctly, for example. It is likely that the problem is occuring after Pajamas Media hands the click over to Netflix.

Update: Reader Brian comments that the ad delivery service might be redirecting my click because my IP address originates in Canada, and Netflix does not serve the Canadian market. Fair enough, but this doesn't resolve the issue.

First, if Netflix is paying on a per-click or per-impression basis, this would make some sense. But if Netflix is paying a flat fee for a time period, this shouldn't matter.

Second, Pajamas Media ought to explain to advertisers that a fraction of the traffic comes from Canadian servers. If the portion is tiny, it seems like any cost of extra traffic could easily be refunded. Likewise, if the portion is significant, the Netflix might consider spinning off a Canadian operation, or teaming up with Zip.ca:

And third, as much as Netflix doesn't want to pay for traffic from customers it does not service, I still own this website, and I would hope that Pajamas Media would not allow my real estate to be used to advertise for spyware sites.