MIVA.com, the long forgotten pioneer of search marketing have just established a settlement fund of nearly $4m in a class action “click fraud” case. Aside from allegedly trading at a loss for several years now MIVA, who were previously known as findwhat and espotting, will have been hit pretty hard by this settlement. Not simply because of the numbers involved, for they alone make you wince, but more because of the negative publicity this will have on their already somewhat fragile reputation.
“The settlement fund affects advertisers who spent money with MIVA between 1st January 2000 and September 30th 2007. The class settlement will provide advertising credits to members who certify they were victims of “click fraud”. The settlement resolves claims that MIVA failed to adequately detect and stop “click fraud” or other invalid or improper clicks on online advertisements” source payperclicksettlement.com
Great, ad credits, just what we needed.. :/
So how did MIVA get to where they are now and what does this settlement mean for advertisers. From memory, Findwhat bought espotting and MIVA business solutions and rebranded their search marketing stable of solid platforms to become simply MIVA. Findwhat in particular paved the way in search marketing and did so long before the likes of Google even acquired applied semantics/oingo (which went on to form the basis of their adsense product).
Not wanting to make out I’m harbouring some grudge towards MIVA plus, as I always like to give a balanced opinion, I’ve searched the forums for some positive news on MIVA and yet, I’m sorry to say, I struggled to find anything that would constitute what you might call “reasonable” feedback. From my own experience (which is pretty much the same experience as I had with Mirago.com – so lets not leave this lot out of the slagfest), MIVA is just a drain on your advertising dollars with little or no return. MIVA have no platform of their own, so their distribution is all white label syndication through partner sites. Not only did I lose a good deal of money during my short lived campaign, I also spent an eternity monitoring the traffic, editing the keywords and filtering the referrers. All to no avail. As one forum poster commented about their partner sites “Just when you think you’ve killed one locust, 5 of his friends turn up at the funeral”. Damning words indeed.
Its a frustrating story both for advertisers and for MIVA and how have they not made a success of their network is beyond me. In a mainstream marketplace of just 3, MIVA have done fantastically well at attracting the advertisers en masse and then seemingly pissing them all off en masse. Now that takes some doing. So, lets capsulize their situation in a nutshell. They’ve a bad reputation. Advertisers have been and gone. They have a class action settlement to pay of nearly $4m. They trade at a loss and they fly the flag of click fraud. Hmm, now Im no Nostradamus but, to the layman, or for someone who might dapple in predictions, I think its fair to say that things don’t seem great in the MIVA garden anymore. Is the situation salvageable for them? Our survey says ……
I agree that Miva sucks. However, I think this settlement they made is the same class action that Yahoo agreed to pay out on a while back…so I don’t think it singles out Miva. The lawyers are probably going to all PPC companies to get them to pony up.
Hello,
For your information I have proof of Miva fraud (and before Espoting ) during last 4 years in europe (UK/SP/FR/DE). But there is many more company (CPC/CPA) using the same fake click service.
If interest I can give you the details, but you will read soon this in a major newspaper.
You will be in touch…
P.
Miva is absolutely the worst company I have ever dealt with. Miva’s traffic was simply the worst quality traffic I have ever tried. After a few clicks, I realized how bad they really are and some of them even seemed like fake clicks, so I contacted them and told them to stop my account and give my money back. It was a small amount of money and for 3 weeks now they have been telling me they will get back to me in a few days and nobody every gets back to me.
Dealing with Miva Media has been one of the most frustrating experiences in marketing my business. I have never seen such a terrible customer service and such an unorganized company ever. They have wasted 3 weeks of my time and they refuse to even get back to me!
Their phone number transfers to India and whether you contact them via phone or Live Chat, they say you have to contact another department. I have been contacting them so many different times and still no answer.
Miva is a complete rip-off and a complete scam.
Hi Everyone,
I have had a simlar horrible experience with MIVA with absolutely no luck in getting a refund. So I did a bit of digging and as the author of this blog says, there is very few people out there writing anything positive about MIVA.
So how are us little people supposed to fight MIVA?
File a complaint with the SEC, which can be done here:
http://www.sec.gov/complaint.shtml
Chances our this will not get us our money back, but at the very least, less people will get defrauded in the future…
And, MIVA will eventually get shut down. It takes 5 minutes to file a complaint, so if you are part of the ‘defrauded-by-MIVA’ club, file your complaint today!
To Creak,
Yes,
I am interested in forming a case. I have much proof already as to no conversions and I am going to arbitration court next month. Any more info you can supply me will be much appreciated. This will make all the blogs and maybe top news in the US.
Please Forward MIVA/SearchFeed Click Fraud info to my Offices or email to web@wholesaleEZ.com
Mailing Address:
Merchants Media
P.O Box 516
Boynton Beach Florida 33483
Ph: 800-453-3532
561-272-5544
Fax: 561-266-0005
LC thanks for the SEC link
Hi,
Other that Google, msn and Yahoo – are there any other reliable PPC programs. Other than this three, every other PPC company I check seems to have a dubious record. Any ideas?
Best regards,
Mike
I used to work for Miva. The problem lies in the sub affiliates. if they have an affiliate that is supplying lets say 200 good clicks a day; they likely have a sub affiliate supplying another 150-200 bot- clicks. When you remove the sub affiliate from the net work.. it takes the primary affiliate that was supplying some decent clicks along with it.
Once you do get a campaign to convert; it has been optimized down to the point where there is simply put, no traffic, i.e. not scalable. aside from the management team being a joke; most of the players they are generating traffic with are disreputable and the type of guys you would like to kick the shit out of at the pub. I was there 7 months before resigning.
CAN’T CANCEL MIVA!
Beware of Miva. They make canceling an account impossible.
I tried to cancel my account over three months ago. There is no way to cancel on their web site. They say you have to call them and then fax the cancellation to them. But, there is no follow up to the fax.
No one at MIVA has replied to my numerous e-mails to their “support” desk. They are still charging my credit card each month.
[...] “I used to work for Miva. The problem lies in the sub affiliates. if they have an affiliate th… [...]
It’s 2009 and MIVA still a scam. Tried them with $50 free credit and $25 of my own cash. Within 4 hrs, 119 clicks, not a single lead on a simple email submit form..I check my logs and 90% of the traffic coming from an MFA site. Maybe I suck at this PPC thing, but surely my site should be more than capable of collecting 1 lousy email address…Don’t guess there is much you can do, ill chalk up my $25 loss to inexperience…