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Report: Top Facebook Advertiser A Bing Scam

Based on research by comScore and Matt Cutts, head of Google's anti-webspam team, Facebook's third largest advertiser is a Bing affiliate scam site named Make-my-baby.com. Facilitated by affiliate company Zugo, the site gets unwitting Web users to switch their browser's default search and homepage to Microsoft's search engine. In the third quarter alone, Make-my-baby.com bought an estimated 1.75 billion ad impressions on Facebook, according to comScore.

Notes ReadWriteWeb: "It's pretty remarkable that even at the top of this giant success story of Facebook advertising, and perhaps near the top of the story of Bing's steady rise as a search engine, is a Web 1.0-style pulling the wool over the eyes of gullible internet users." Are Facebook and Microsoft -- which happens to own a small share of Facebook -- knowingly in on the scam? According to Google's Cutts: "It's entirely possible, even likely, that Facebook and Microsoft didn't realize this was going on." Still, asks ReadWriteWeb: "Is no one minding the store? Or are they just minding the cash register and turning away from what the customers are up to? ... It's in the short-term economic interests of both Facebook and Microsoft to ignore what affiliates are doing."

Read the whole story at ReadWriteweb »

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