Larry Rulison. over at the TimesUnion.com, has more to report this morning in the continuing indictment of two top WurldMedia executive. It seems to Gregory Kerber, former CEO of Wurld Media, is still employeed by the ROO Group, the publicly traded company who purchased Wurld Media this summer for $4.3 million. Kerber was hired by ROO after the purchase of Wurld Media as a senior vice-president of business development.

I wonder if Kerber had anything to do with all those pop-ups of Roo.com I was getting through adware? Adware inventory buys can be a pretty quick and cheap way to get a site’s traffic figures up when setting those good ole Rate Card prices for advertising on the site. Anyway, back to the Friday fun provided by Larry….

It seems a reporter from TimesUnion went to the offices of Roo, as a good reporter should, and those offices were located in a “nondescript building” with a locked front door. They did have a couch and Christmas tree in the front lobby behind that locked door though. Eh….Merry Christmas.  

Evidently, the Saratoga District Attorney’s office is still being a bit tight lipped on the specifics of charges brought against Kerber and Saxton. According to Times Untion, Assistand Distric Attorney of Saratoga did say

“The grand larceny and money laundering charges center on “certain financial transactions that occurred” related to the distribution of the proceeds from the sale to ROO earlier this year, Wendling said……Wendling would not say where authorities believe the proceeds ended up, although he said it was another entity separate from Wurld.”

My curiosity is piqued. I wonder if it ended up in the Lexy Foundation? No, that’s not news only me being tongue in cheek because it’s Friday. But those who were in affiliate marketing back in the early days of WurldMedia, Morpheus and Buyersport should remember about the Lexy Foundation. Just in case something changes on the site in the future:

Formed by the founders of Wurld Media….to assist the sick, disabled, downhearted, and poor. It was also used to justify the Buyersport software claiming the traffic of other affiliate’s as their own. Even when the software was just getting installed by users of Morpheus who were really just interested is being able to download free music, movies, software, etc. That downhearted part always did make me laugh. All those halos in the logo and with mouse-over of the menu seem pretty funny right now as well.

I do hope that during all this investigating going on that some official probing has happened or will happen into the Lexy Foundation as well. All considered, just to be sure that everything is on the up and up with the nonprofit.

I’ll continue to be watching as all of this progresses and more specific information regarding the charges become public record.

Rakuten USA, the US division of the Japan headquartered Rakuten, has purchased CauseLoyalty.com. Shaking the corporation tree for those who aren’t aware, Rakuten USA owns LinkShare and CauseLoyalty owns SchoolPop and OneCause.

Another affiliate has been bought by a company which also owns a major Affiliate Network. This is the second such acquisition by LinkShare. In June of this year, LinkShare acquired TrafficStrategies.com. ValueClick has made similar acquisitions, most notably the purchase of PriceRunner and MeziMedia. Performics is being bought by Google (ok that one isn’t an affiliate but there is AdSense and Google moving into the CPA arena). ThinkPartnership owns KowaBunga, SecondBite (an affiliate with access to merchant’s shopping carts and customer contact information) and PrimaryAds. (more…)

On the plane to the Affiliate Summit, I was reading my January/February issue of Revenue. I was somewhat astounded by some quotes in the Out of Commission article. I’ve watching to see if any talk was stirred up in the community over specific quotes. Either I’ve missed the talk or no one is talking about it, so here I go with my opinions. (more…)

Industry events provide us with an opportunity to gain knowledge about our industry as well as networking opportunities. Not only do we (hopefully) learn more about affiliate marketing, such events also provide press, public relations and marketing opportunities for affiliate marketing itself.

Enter stage left Davis & Gilbert LLP, a New York based law firm specializing in marketing communications law. One of their practice groups is New Media, which focuses on all that encompasses Internet Law. Davis & Gilbert are expert speakers at not only Affiliate Marketing events, but also online advertising/marketing events in general. There are after all, as most of us know, numerous legal issues involved with Internet Marketing and Advertising. (more…)