PPV Spy, Like It or Not You’re Probably Paying

So right now, I feel like Charlton Heston in the last scene of Planet of the Apes.  You know, when he sees the statue of liberty and says “Oh my God… you finally really did it.  You maniacs!!!”

Bevo Media released PPV Spy today.   While other bloggers are whoring out their blogs for some Bevo affiliate monies, you can rest assured I’m gonna keep it real.

EARLY REVIEWS

First of all, I don’t know Ryan personally. I’ve never met him, I don’t know much about him, and he was not even on my radar until he released the Bevo Tracker.  As a person, he might very well be a great guy.  But I am not a fan of his PPV Spy tool.

Early reports from both beta testers and subscribed users as of today say that it sucks.  Direct quotes from ppvplaybook forum:

“The point is that PPV Spy sucks. [another spy tool] had a feature where you could see how many days an ad was ‘online’. PPV Spy does not have this. I am sure that the Bevo guys DO have this data and are keeping it to themselves for the time being.”

The author went to write that PPV Spy is showing you what you already know.  Namely that there are tons of Financial, Diet, Dept, and Biz Opp campaigns.  He also reasons that as people copy these campaigns exactly (and we all know that’s what’s going to happen), their pops will be caught by PPV Spy and cause them to rise in the “most seen popups” and “most seen offers” overviews.    So basically, the reporting will be artificially inflated.   (The tool is screwing itself.  Poetic justice anyone?)

Another user wrote:

“I am not sure whether it is for real because all the pops look the same. IMHO there is nothing that can be learnt from it as all the pops like look they are directly linked. It doesn’t give any insight whatsoever.”

And in reply:

“Yeah exactly, it’s worthless.”

Another where the author is referring to the lack of good data:

“Lets just say that in my opinion you guys don’t have much to worry about, at all.”

And finally:

“You’re not the first to say it doesn’t live up to the hype. Hopefully this will be another Bevo flop.”

So based on these reports, current as of today, the service doesn’t seem to be very useful.  But that’s not the point.  The point is, if they stop spending all their time making fancy launch videos with After Effects and CAN actually figure out how to make this as good as the hype, it could be dangerous in the near future.

So now’s the time to fight it.  Don’t wait until it invades Poland.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

More ppvplaybook forum quotes:

“This is a terrible idea. …. I know for sure this is against the TOS of PPV networks so I am pretty confident this will get shut down eventually. “

“Even if just a few people buy it, whatever campaigns your spying on will be dead. I don’t see how you think you need to buy it to stay in the game when it’s not going to be showing you anything you can make money with.”

“Don’t forget that you guys are also getting charged for a view everytime they scrape one of your pops.”

“I was about to mention this as well. I can’t see any way this tool could scrape pops without the advertiser (you) would have to pay for that view. Nor can I see how the PPV networks can allow this kind of tool wasting hundreds of thousands of their advertisers money.  ….  Hopefully it will be shut down quickly.”

“Yep this is going to cost advertisers (affiliates and companies) thousands in view costs. I can’t see how this could be allowed by any PPV network. I don’t see this lasting long at all.”

All of these people bring up the same excellent point.  And so far, I haven’t seen an explanation anywhere that addresses the issue.  *cough* click fraud? *cough*

So even if you aren’t paying to use the PPV Spy Tool, it is still probably costing you money.

Is everyone OK with that?

And that’s not even counting the money you will be paying due to PPV Spy Tool users bidding up your targets.  Think about it.

ICING ON THE CAKE

So the latest hilarity comes in the form of a misguided attempt to alleviate concerns of anyone with a brain.  On his blog post today, Ryan mentions that “a few users”  requested they remove certain pages from the tool.  LOL. Really?  So let me get this straight.  These users  are OK with spying, so long as no one is spying on them?

But it gets better!  In the post he writes that any affiliate who wants his URL removed simply needs to send an email to Bevo with said URL.

ROFLMAO Really?

I got a better idea, why don’t you just post a list of your LP URL’s on Wickedfire and have everyone promise not to steal your campaigns.

Man… you can’t write stuff this good!

Please post some comments, I’d love to hear what you guys think!

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30 Comments

  • Hannah McIntyre

    Yeah, I agree with you completely. My favourite bit was also him asking to email landing pages he wants opted out. Ridiculous.

    • LOL yeah that was the capper wasn’t it?

      Thanks for reading 😉

  • Steve

    From the beta testers reviews seems like bevo media is keeping all the valuable data, and showing the remaining garbage data.
    Its funny how the pseudo ‘super affiliates’ are promoting the tool with their affiliate link init.
    Seems like they don’t have any PPV campaigns running or they got them opted out by bevo media before promoting the tool.
    I will wait for more reviews, and if they are showing all data without optous or missing data i will purchase it.

    • Keeping the good stuff and showing garbage is an interesting idea. I didn’t really think of that.

      As for “super affiliates”, I agree with you. Even with a 50% rev share (and that is a total guess), the “super affiliates” would be shooting themselves in the foot by promoting this.

      Unless of course, they don’t do any real volume with PPV, or they’re insiders and can get their landers removed, or the tool sucks so bad that they’re not worried about it.

      Thanks for reading & commenting!

  • manofsteel

    I was seriously considering picking this up as a fast way to learn PPV. I was thinking that you could measure the effectiveness of a tool by how many people were pissed off by it (and talking about it.) However, all the posts I read were concerned more about potential than actual results. In other words, people didn’t like it but they didn’t really know how effective it would be.

    Now that I slept on it, I can’t see this as being good for newbies, especially someone who has yet to run an affiliate marketing campaign of any sort. The people on the other end of the scale apparently don’t need it.

    Personally, I’m a member of no networks and I don’t even have a site to show off (my day job is web development, I passed the point of building my own sites for fun years ago,) traffic vance is another $1,000 deposit after dropping close to $400 per month for PPV Spy, and the learning experience for a noob would likely be corrupted with such a monster. So, a total noob would have a ways to go to make this effective and would likely drop out after the first month.

    I think noobs would be better off spending that $400 on traffic. It’s refreshing to see so many honest reviews on Affbuzz.

    • Agreed, this is not a tool for n00bs for all the reasons you outlined.

      As for the honest reviews on Affbuzz, maybe I’m blind but I haven’t seen a single one. All the posts about it today are basically bullet points from the sales page and an inline promotion video. Followed by aff links, of course. Basically these are shill type posts.

      Thanks for commenting!

      • manofsteel

        You’re right. “So many honest reviews” was a terrible choice of wording. In my defense, I was up all night coding before I wrote that comment. 😉

        I guess the only review I saw on Affbuzz is from Ian Fernando because it appears he actually dropped the cash to get a subscription. His review wasn’t very detailed and pretty much matches your description of the types of posts you have seen.

        What I should have said was “it’s refreshing to see honest opinions about PPV Spy.” Even so, there aren’t a lot. Justin Dupre posted that he is quite against it. Even Ian’s post mentioned “This will cause a huge bidding war depending on the ppv network users use” which is obviously a bad thing.

        In any case, I’m glad I held off. Instead, I’m going to get started like everyone else did and put in the hard work and investment without using a tool which promises to hand everything I need on a silver platter.

  • Ha, great post man. You are the first one (I have seen) without the ppvspy affiliate link. Can’t blame them with those high commissions.

    • LOL thanks Browie. Even if I was able to, I wouldn’t promote it because I think its bad for PPV. Goose and the golden egg type of thing.

      Thanks for reading!

  • Joe

    Actually… I bought the tool and am pretty impressed. I understand you aren’t happy such a tool came out in the industry but it was bound to happen eventually.

  • chris

    Hey,

    I’ve been using the PPVSpy tool for a little while now. So far i’ve tried 5 campaigns based on the information i’ve seen within the tool, and two of them have been steadily profitable. In my opinion, there is actually a lot more information within the tool than you see at first, you just have to dig around.

    It didn’t make me a super affiliate over night, but so far it has given me some good results and ideas, and i do intend to keep using it.

    • Hmm… interesting. So on these new campaigns, are you submitting your own LP’s for opt-out so they don’t appear in the PPV Spy results?

      Thanks for commenting!

  • MrRight

    Interesting Tool and I truly think it is going to be a game changer. There are so many spy possibilities for any type of traffic source these days. There are PPC spy tools, For Facebook you don´t need to do much, there is services as Majestic SEO for SEO and such that gives you the exact details to smallest point. I mean why would there not be a Spy tool for PPV. It was bound to happen and I think it’s not the only PPV spy tool we are going to see. I think a lot of people are willing to pay BIG coin for these type of apps which makes it interesting for developers…

    For the discussion if it’s going to be bad or good for PPV. Here I think it´s is important to see all parts involved in the biz in order to judge. My gut feeling says that the only big losers here would be Super affiliates. Id think that some institutions have 50 times the amount of funds to spend on PPV than the biggest super affiliate there is… For them it must be like Christmas evening… For beginners with some experience… Sure if you can´t “sell” or create your own spin of the LPs you are seeing there is not much point to own such tool… For some this could easily be the last puzzle needed for getting profitable.

    And finally if I owned a PPV network I would promote this tool so hard I possibly could. I would make sure I had a webinar every single week promoting this. For them this must be the best thing since sliced bread and give them a nice revenue bump of all the bidding wars generated. So my verdict is that these type of tools is here to stay because there is more winners than losers.

    • Thanks for taking the time to write such a big comment.

      Your points about other spy tools are valid. But the problem is, in this situation, there are click fraud and copyright issues.

      Advertisers are paying for all the views. And the advertisers landing page (their intellectual property) is being stored in a private database and that snapshot is being sold as part of a service.

      On top of that, every PPV installer I have come across explicitly forbids reverse engineering and/or using the installer in ways it was not designed to be used. Beyond the installer, the websites and servers themselves have terms of service that forbid using/accessing their services by third party applications, etc.

      And finally, if a PPV network did promote this tool heavily, I’d be willing to bet it would be a PR disaster. Imagine if Facebook promoted a spy tool that would let you slice and dice all ads on any given demographic. How long would it take for the top spenders to stop using the platform because every ad innovation they made would get ripped off in minutes? Do you think a guy like Shoemoney would continue his giant ad spend if he couldn’t profit from his original ideas?

  • MrRight

    Hi, and thanks for the response
    I Really Like to discuss these sort of things and I find most of blogs in the IM World just discuss topics such as this just looking at from their own perspective “What is it in for me” what can I loose what can I gain. While that is a good start it will never really bring you to any conclusion that you can put too much weight on. That’s why I like to pop in here from time to time and read your blog you seem to have a bit broader perspective.
    So back to PPV SPY tools lol. Don´t get me wrong here now I agree with almost everything you say, I just think that it’s needed to be put into a bigger perspective than the “affiliate perspective”. About click fraud, yes you are completely right these type of tools is going to generate a bit of click frauds but in context to what? Now I don’t have numbers on this but I would not be surprised if for instance black hatters hire tons of people from sources like Mturk and such to click on their AdSense banners or similar banners… There is probably millions up on millions click frauds every single minute with programs like AdSense or chickita. So if you would take these numbers and apply it to the context of PPV and divide it the number of pop ups displayed I think it’s a drip in the ocean the Fraud % a tool like this generates. Not saying it’s right but I think you would have to accept a certain amount of click fraud in any advertising platform it is just a part of the game.

    When it comes to landing pages and intellectual properties. You probably know a lot more than me about the T&C here but. I think it’s going to be impossible to take any legal action about that. If someone is so scared about displaying their landing page to the wrong person/competition they should probably not own a landing page in the first place. You create a landing page with the intention to have as many viewers as possible to it, then it is part of the game that if the landing page is good and generating a lot of revenue that competition is going to see it too and probably rip it of too.

    This type of things is just everywhere over the internet net. There is constantly popping up ecommerce sites especially in the most competitive niches online that is just copycats of some other profitable site that someone has discovered… Same is with PPC or banners, And the traffic or the competition has not decreased because of that. Its more people/companies than ever that want to play the game. And just because this tool is coming out I don´t think PPV is going any were or get abandoned. Its just a part of the game all what happens. What sucks thou is those skilled innovative people is going to get ripped of in a heart beat… But that happens everywhere over the internet these days, And I think we will have to accept it as part of the game or move on to other things.

    • Again, you make some valid points. Click fraud is going to happen on all platforms and it surely happens on PPV by individual affiliates who installed a toolbar. The same goes for landing page theft. You’re right, it will happen, and it’s part of the game.

      If it was worthwhile to go after individual affiliates for both of these things, you can bet your ass more people would do it.

      But the difference here is someone is creating a BUSINESS supported by both of these activities. And that’s the distinction. It’s reminds me of Napster 1.0 They tried to build a business around illegal distribution of copyrighted works. It’s not a perfect analogy, but PPV Spy is doing something similar. And that, my friend, is straight up profiteering.

  • I purchased the tool.

    I’m not an IM/AM noob but have not been able to get profitable on PPV. I was profitable on facebook and google content network for a long time but I really struggled on PPV. I joined the PPVplaybook which helped but I still didn’t quite get there.

    I did spend quite a bit of time sifting through the various campaigns but eventually settled on one. I’m not gonna bullshit and pretend to be noble and say I didn’t copy the campaign exactly because the truth is I did.

    The campaign was profitable immediately. I’ve since removed some targets to improve the ROI but apart from that I changed nothing else.

    The interesting thing was that many of the targets had no competition on them. I can only assume that whoever was running this campaign either stopped running it or is running it on a different network.

    Either way, I’m happy, profitable and feel like I understand a bit more about running on PPV.

    • “I’m not gonna bullshit and pretend to be noble and say I didn’t copy the campaign exactly because the truth is I did.” LOL thanks for being honest.

      Are you concerned at all about your freshly jacked LP and targets showing up in PPV Spy and someone else doing the same?

      Thanks for commenting!

  • manofsteel

    Another thought. This likely opens up a can of worms. If Bevomedia can put this together then I assume anyone with the coding chops can do it as well. I imagine that a launch like this charging close to $400 / subscription will spur a load of competitors. If this tool is any good, it’s probably only going to continue to be so because it’s early. How long until someone else comes out with something which does the same thing for way cheaper and no limit to the number of subscriptions? Alternatively they all get shut down by the networks, if it’s even possible to keep the spy tools out forever.

    • All excellent points. This kind of app can be banged out in a week. Then you just wait for the database to fill up.

  • Stuff like this… better kept private for the guys that know how to use it.

    Ripping campaigns is a nasty way to cut ROI from someone else. Then you’ll get cut which cuts everyone… then someone else does it. Then the campaign dies out for everyone because everyone wants 10 pieces of a 6 piece pie.

    Disappointed that a tool like this would be publicly released.

    • I agree. This is the kind of tool you keep inhouse. It’s pretty shortsighted in a lot of ways.

      Thanks for reading!

  • manofsteel

    Or maybe the people who created it see that banking $400K plus is worth more than whatever value they would get out of it in house. Or maybe they believe it’s really not that effective. Or maybe they saw the writing on the wall and decided to be first to market. I read somewhere they bought out a number of other products which could do roughly the same thing so they could be the lone players on the market while they collect their high subscription fees.

  • Great post!

    This tool doesn’t make sense for various reasons:

    1. Bid war, cut 12 pieces out of 10, all said.
    2. Copying a campaign and its targets doesn’t mean you will be profitable
    3. Just a landing page doesn’t say anything about the sequence that will follow and that can make the difference between loss and great ROI.
    4. No time stamp on it? Forget it anyway.

    I could go on and on but…..

    I’ll stay away from it and tell everybody to do the same.

    Reminds me on Google Cash Detective, people lost an arm and leg because the same is not the same 🙂

    Take care,

    Volker

    • All good points. Thanks for reading and commenting!

  • Can’t I just setup a virtual machine and install gamevance and whatever adware I can find and do the same thing for free?

    • Pretty much. But the idea here is it’s scaled up and all done for you. Seriously based on all the feedback I’ve heard it does a poor job at providing truly useful data. Definitely not worth the price of admission.

  • Jerry

    Man, I can’t thank you enough for this post. I was seriously about to drop a good chunk of change for this thing and my main concern was being disappointed for one reason or another. I was so excited about it that I never once thought about all the other problems it would cause not only myself, but all marketers alike.

    Last minute, I decided to check some reviews with hopes of finding a non-affiliate review and here you are.

    A good deed done.

    Thanks again.

    • Glad the post helped you. Thanks for commenting.

  • If your looking for landers I highly suggest you checkout blackpops.com. I use it to get new ideas and watch my competition closely.

 
 
 

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