Click Farms and Buying Traffic Trickle Into Podcasts
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Click farms and buying traffic trickle into podcasts - Digiday
In digital, where there is money, there is often fraud.
Last week, Maximum Media, the parent company of Joe.ie, came under fire in Ireland for allegedly using click farms in 2017 to juice the number of listens on an episode of the publisher's since-discontinued business podcast, The Capital B, sponsored by Allied Irish Banks. The bank's agency, Core, part of Starcom, halted running campaigns with Maximum Media in Ireland.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau is discussing the case and releasing a statement this week. Maximum Media said an internal investigation found this was an isolated incident unauthorized by the company. Last year, click farms in audio were used to game the ranking of podcasts in Apple's iTunes charts through accounts leaving reviews. In the case of Maximum Media, it's been alleged that listens to the podcast episode on SoundCloud leapt from 3,000 to 21,000 overnight.
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