Clickbooth

Clickbooth
Private
Industry Affiliate marketing
Founded September 2002
Founder John Lemp
Headquarters Sarasota, Florida
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Erin Cigich, President & Managing Partner
Services Affiliate network
Number of employees
 125 (2011)
Website www.clickbooth.com

Clickbooth is an Internet marketing company based in Sarasota, Florida.[1] Clickbooth is a publisher affiliate network which sells online advertising in both Cost per action and Pay per click formats.[2] Clickbooth and its parent company IntegraClick are both located on 12-acre campus in the heart of Sarasota's new growth corridor.[3]

IntegraClick and Clickbooth have received numerous awards including being named #5 on Inc. Magazine's 2009 listing of the fastest growing private US companies. Clickbooth has been known to be a company called clickbooth. Website Magazine recognized Clickbooth as the #1 Affiliate Network in the World for 2009, Enterprise Florida awarded IntegraClick the Florida Governor's award for the entrepreneurial company of the year, and IntegraClick has been rated as one of the Best Places to Work in Florida.[3]

Headquarters

Clickbooth is part of a 12+ acre multi-building business campus (85,000 square feet). The building was completed in early 2010 and an open house was held on August 19, 2010 to allow a public viewing for members of the local community. Within its walls house a full-service bistro, two arcades, fitness center, stand-up tanning bed and a full body massage chair with music sync capabilities and cocoon therapy. The facility has state-of-the-art technology with broadband access (FIOS), campus-wide wireless networking and energy-saving automatic lighting system. Other amenities include a basketball court, outdoor running track, outdoor seating, multi-purpose conference center and customizable office space.[3]

Background

CPA advertising has become increasingly popular throughout the past year as major online players such as Google have entered the space.[4] Clickbooth has also entered text based PPC ads, Google's largest revenue market.[2]

Clickbooth had over 100 employees as of 2009,[5] and 125 as of February 2011.[6] Their network has approximately 70,000 web publisher (this is a fake number, most recently their website says 40,000 Source https://www.clickbooth.com/evolve affiliates.[7]

FTC Settlement

The Clickbooth affiliate network has agreed to pay $2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that its affiliate marketers deceived consumers through bogus weight-loss claims on fake news sites about acai berry supplements and so-called “colon cleansers.” [8]

The FTC will seek to use the $2 million judgment announced today to provide refunds to consumers who were allegedly deceived by the defendants’ marketing. The settlement also bars the defendants from a wide range of deceptive marketing practices, including making misleading or unsupported claims; misrepresenting any material fact in the sale of any product; failing to adequately disclose a material connection to the seller of any product, service, or program; and misrepresenting the existence or result of a test or study.

According to the complaint, Sarasota, Florida-based Clickbooth has been paid by merchants since 2008 to market supposed weight-loss products to consumers, and recruited a network of affiliate marketers who deceptively advertised those products. The complaint also alleges that the defendants prepared and designed websites for Central Coast Nutraceuticals, a merchant that agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle FTC charges of deceptive advertising and unfair billing related to the sale of weight loss and colon cleanse products.

The FTC alleges that the defendants recruited affiliate marketers to advertise the merchants’ so-called weight loss products online. Clickbooth then monitored the ads that its affiliates used, suggested certain claims for the affiliates to make, and even designed some websites for the affiliates to use, according to the complaint. Marketing products such as Acai Pure, Acai Max, Pure Berry Max, Acai Advanced Cleanse, Acai Ultraberry Slim, TriSlim, Slimberry, HCG Extreme, ColoThin, Tone DeTox, and ColoPure, some Clickbooth affiliates designed their websites to look like news reports, using domain names such as channel5healthnews.com, dailyconsumeralerts.com, and online6health.com. The supposed news reports had titles such as “Acai Berry Diet Exposed: Miracle Diet or Scam?” and “1 Trick of a Tiny Belly: Reporter Loses her ‘Belly’ using 1 Easy Tip,” according to the FTC. The sites often included the names and logos of major broadcast and cable television networks, falsely representing that the reports on the sites had been seen on the networks.

The defendants named in the complaint – John Daniel Lemp and two companies he controls, Clickbooth.com, LLC and IntegraClick, LLC – violated the FTC Act by making false or unsupported claims about weight loss products, the FTC alleges. The Clickbooth defendants also are responsible for their affiliates’ misrepresentations that the affiliate marketers’ websites are objective news reports, that objective reporters have performed independent tests of the products, and that “comments” in the affiliate marketers’ ads have expressed views of actual consumers, according to the complaint. The defendants’ affiliates failed to disclose that the contents of their advertisements actually were paid advertisements, and that consumers who sign up for a “free trial” would be billed on a recurring basis for additional shipments of the product, according to the FTC.

Two other recent settlements involving online affiliate network marketers of acai berry supplements and other weight loss products that made allegedly deceptive claims include the affiliate network Coleadium, Inc., which does business as Ads4Dough, and IMM Interactive, Inc., which operated the affiliate network Copeac.

The FTC helps consumers recognize and avoid deceptive claims made by fake news sites that market acai berry supplements for weight loss. To learn more, see the consumer alert THIS JUST IN: Fake News Sites Promote Bogus Weight Loss Benefits of Acai Berry Supplements, and the video Free Trial Offers, which explains how free trials are often used to market acai berry supplements and other products.

The FTC also is grateful for the assistance provided by the Florida Office of the Attorney General in this matter.

The Commission vote authorizing the staff to file the complaint and approving the proposed consent decree was 5-0. The FTC filed the complaint and proposed consent decree in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division on November 13, 2012.

Industry, national publications and awards

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

See also

References

  1. ↑ Mattioli, Dana (July 20, 2009). "Contests and Giveaways Move To New, Fast Terrain of Twitter". online.wsj.com. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Silver, Curtis (November 30, 2010). "Google AdWords, Meet Your Competition: ClickBooth CPC". technorati.com. Technorati. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 "High Growth Internet Company, IntegraClick, Expands with New Sarasota Campus". www.floridatechnologyjournal.com. Florida Technology Journal. January 21, 2010. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
  4. ↑ Malone, Steve (June 23, 2006). "Google tries 'cost per action' model". www.pcpro.co.uk. PC Pro. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Clickbooth.com expanding, hiring". www.myfoxtampabay.com. Fox Television Stations. Oct 27, 2009. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
  6. ↑ "Tech jobs: Seeds and clusters". www.bizjournals.com. Tampa Bay Business Journal. February 11, 2011. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
  7. ↑ Pollick, Michael (November 12, 2010). "Sarasota's IntegraClick moves into 'Google Ad World'". www.heraldtribune.com. Herald-Tribune. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
  8. ↑ "Marketers Behind Fake News Sites Settle FTC Charges of Deceptive Advertising". U.S. Federal Trade Commission. November 14, 2012. Retrieved November 22, 2012.
  9. ↑ "Best Midsized Companies - 2009". www.floridatrend.com. Florida Trend. August 1, 2009. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
  10. ↑ "Top 50 Ad Networks To Explore". www.websitemagazine.com. Website Magazine. June 30, 2010. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
  11. ↑ Zac Johnson (January 29, 2012). "The Top 10 Affiliate Networks". PPC.org. Retrieved June 28, 2012.
  12. ↑ Zac Johnson (January 29, 2012). "The Top 10 Affiliate Networks". PPC.org. Retrieved June 28, 2012.

External links