Direct Revenue change branding, distant galaxy explodes

Just kidding on the exploding galaxy thing, but Direct Revenue have indeed made some changes to their cash-cow (click the image to see some nifty re-branding action). And here comes the science part...

In a nutshell, they're now calling everything "The Best Offers Network". They've already been using that name for about a year, but they liked it so much they decided to splatter it all over everything, crazy paintball style.

This is what they're offering the advertisers:

• Best Offers Behavioral is a contextual and behavioral online advertising offering.
• Best Offers Keyword is a search and keyword-related online advertising offering.

This is what they're offering the end-users - check out the last one in particular:

The value proposition to consumers is clear in exchange for seeing a few relevant ads per day, the consumer can use the software for free. Examples of free software include iWatchNow (coming soon), an online video service with the world's largest selection of cult and classic movie downloads, and IDTheftRadar, an application to safeguard users against online identity theft.

iWatchNow - new, can't wait to see it. IDTheftRadar - I double-damn bacon genius-burger can't wait to see that one.

MyPCTuneup? Now called "Best Offers Uninstall". It's a nice name change, but does the damn thing actually work now or what?

For partners...

The Best Offers creates the opportunity for developers of content and software to generate income from each permission-based consumer download.

Permission based....there's the catch, isn't it? How many non-permission based installs do we see every single day? I won't even bother filling this paragraph with links to spurious installs (even though it's crying out for them), because frankly I can't be bothered. I feel like I've done that a thousand times and more already. Just Google "Aurora" and scroll about halfway down the page. You'll see what I mean.

More importantly than a few cosmetic changes - does Aurora (for example) now come with a built-in EULA or anything that remotely says what it is, what it does, before install?

Or does it still rely upon the website it launches from to spill the beans?

I haven't had a chance to try it yet. Watch this space.

The full press release can be seen here. More interestingly, I've heard rumours that Direct Revenue are making partners who use affiliates walk the plank. I wonder if this will make any noticable difference in the amount of hopeless installs we all know and love so much. Or if this is just a bunch of stuff designed to put lots of "mind-distance" between past mess-ups and the current wave of legal-type action going on at the moment.

Time will tell...