Tech Crunch's Michael Arrington has put the full-court press on social media gaming companies, criticizing them heavily for cost-per-action advertising. This tactic of charging an unspecified subscription fee was in the Zynga title FishVille, though it was taken down two days after launch.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus claims that the ads used were not under his company's control and that his company was revising its internal policies.
"We recognize it is our responsibility to ensure that offers which generate a bad user experience are not shown with any of our games," said Pincus. "Therefore, we are removing all CPA offers across Zynga games until we can control their inclusion and presentation ourselves. This will be effective by end of day today. this move is worth it for the long-term user experience and value to our partners like Facebook and MySpace."
The efforts by Arrington are a true demonstration of the power of the press, causing major social media sites to step up their enforcement and forcing companies like Zynga to review their policies. While Zynga reportedly generates about a third of its revenues from offers/CPA advertising, it's worth noting that Playfish, which EA just acquired, has not been accused of scammy offers. Playfish CEO Kristian Segerstrale told IndustryGamers yesterday that his company's participation in the offer market is very small.
