Offerpal Publishes New Ad Policies

  • November 20, 2009
Offerpal Media, which recently came under fire for allegedly running scam offers online, announced Thursday it had come out with a new set of advertising policies that forbid misleading or deceptive offers and provide guidelines for the type of offers they distribute.

The company said it has also adopted a multi-step review process before each offer goes live and put in place an automated system to continually verify ongoing offers.

Offerpal is among an emerging group of companies that run ads in applications on social networking sites like Facebook that offer virtual currency in exchange for signing up for a trial subscription or taking some other action on behalf of a marketer. Lately, these fast-growing startups have come under heightened scrutiny for running bogus offers that trick people into paying for services or products they don't want.

George Garrick, who replaced Offerpal founder Anu Shukla two weeks ago as CEO, admitted the company had been "guilty of distributing offers of questionable integrity" in a blog post and vowed to clean up the company's ad practices.

In the company's announcement Thursday, he said, "Offerpal will rate all offers by quality and allow its partners to select a quality level of compliance ranging from 'Level 1' for minimal restrictions to 'Level 5' for highly conservative restrictions." The company said it's also securing new "high-value' offers from advertisers including Disney, Yahoo and Blockbuster.

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