In the email sent by Etology to their BitTorrent site customers they write: “Due to the legal implications involved with sponsoring torrent sites, our management team has made the decision to remove from our network torrent sites that promote copyrighted content.”
They probably mean “promote sharing of copyrighted content”, but that’s a minor detail. According to Etology this move is needed in order to to minimize risk for their advertisers. It is not sure what the risk is, but apparently some of their bigger clients don’t what their ads to appear on BitTorrent sites. At this point it is not clear if only BitTorrent sites are affected, or also the huge list of warez sites in their ad network.
Most companies don’t want to be associated with sites that offer links to copyrighted material. Others see it as a great outlet to advertise their products, last year Wal-Mart placed targeted ads for DVDs of popular TV-shows such as “The Sopranos”, “Smallville”, “Desperate Housewives” on The Pirate Bay during the holiday season. The ads appeared on pages that linked to corresponding torrents.
Etology served ads for Demonoid, Torrent-Finder, TorrentReactor, TorrentPond, BTScene and several other sites. There are still some options for BitTorrent site owners to monetize their websites, with Adbrite as the leading ad provider. Other alternatives are CPX Interactive, AuctionAds, ShoppingAds and unfortunately plenty of adult and gambling related programs.
anonymous on 21 Mar 08Etology Launches Japanese Ad Exchange Network AdButterfly.com New Japan Ad-Engine Aligns With Asian Powerhouses CGM Marketing and Technorati Japan to Launch Advertising 2.0 Exchange Network Highlighted Links Etology Home Page About Etology NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - November 5, 2007) - Ad:Tech -- Etology, a global leader in "do it yourself" online advertising currently delivering one billion advertisements per day worldwide, today announced the launch of AdButterfly, a Japanese online ad exchange network. By internationally mobilizing their online ad-exchange platform for AdButterfly, Etology is able to provide a focused advertising marketplace for user-generated websites in Japan. With a strong focus on blogs, along with their strategic partnership with CGM, AdButterfly is primed to progressively advance "self-serve" advertising in Japan. AdButterfly's alliance with Technorati Japan further maximizes their innovative platform with a tag-focused engine that utilizes content keywords and ad targets. AdButterfly empowers site owners to determine market value for their ad space, set the price and sell directly to advertisers. AdButterfly's transparent 'tag-vertising' effectively delivers a high-impact open marketplace for sellers and advertisers to focus-deliver in target markets with a higher ROI. "Ad Butterfly is a first-of-its kind ad marketplace that puts the advertisers and the bloggers in touch with each other on equal footing and adds genuine context and respect to a relationship that has suffered in modern advertising. We're really looking forward to testing it in the Japan market and set a standard for authentic conversational marketing worldwide," said Joi Ito, Venture Capitalist, Entrepreneur and Board Member, Technorati. "With AdButterfly we have effectively created a democratic marketplace for Japanese consumers to sell their ad-spaces in a user-driven venue to a robust advertising community seeking to reach a wide-variety of niche Asian markets
