We all know there are plenty of games on Facebook, like recent hits Farmville, Mafia wars and Texas HoldEm poker, all created by game company Zynga.
Zynga’s revenue model is entirely based on players buying virtual goods - like gaining quick access to more land in farm-game Farmville - to enhance their game experience and competitiveness. What you perhaps didn’t know, is that besides buying virtual currency with credit card or Paypal, Zynga signed a deal with Offerpal last month to allow players to do survey’s to receive virtual currency.
Trade a few minutes of your time for some virtual currency bucks. Sounds like a good deal right? Well, we’re not quite sure about that. Offerpal Media allows third party’s to create surveys for their platform. One of the bigger third party is Celldorado, (a quick Google search shows Spyware related results for the name, but we’re not certain if that’s linked) which give the user the impression that they receive virtual currency for the survey, but they are actually signing terms for a paid SMS subscription that could cost you up to 27 Euro (40 Dollars). Suddenly, that small payment turned in a big game investment!
I think you mean ‘scam’ not ‘scamp.’
Joop — I assure you that we are not “turning a blind eye” to misleading offers. In fact we have a dedicated team solely focused on testing all offers and removing anything misleading, spammy or offending before they go live. We were the first ad platform to be in full compliance with Facebook’s advertising guidelines, which we remain today. It is also important to note that game developers have the option of removing these mobile subscription offers from their game. Most developers leave them in because their users enjoy them and find value in them.
Thanks,
Matt
Hi Matt, thank you for your response, appreciate it.
Honestly, I am very interested in the service, as I can see the potential. However, after our initial e-mail conversation I could not conclude differently than written above. I’m interested in learning more about the team looking for spammy, misleaing or offencing surveys.
“…Zynga signed a deal with Offerpal last month to allow players to do survey’s to receive virtual currency.”
The plural is surveys, not survey’s.