VGS 09 Draws to a Spectacular End (with a show down!)

I should be getting my Mary Lou Retton Halloween costume on right now, but instead, all I can think is — “Wow, I’ve never seen a conference end like that before.” Today marked the 3rd annual Virtual Goods Summit put on by Charles Hudson and David Sachs.  The last panel of the day was on the topic of Payments Infrastructure for Virtual Goods, and Anu Shukla, founder and CEO of Offerpal Media, was an obvious choice for the panel of experts.

Towards the end of the discussion, Charles Hudson, the panel’s moderator, opened up the floor for Q&A.  Michael Arrington of TechCrunch was the first person at the microphone.  He questioned the ethics of offer providers like Offerpal and game publishers like Zynga and accused them of 1.) Knowingly engaging kids who steal their parent’s credit cards to accept offers, 2.) Facilitating scammers who accept offers from Netflix and other advertisers with no real interest or intention to follow-through on the offer, and 3.) Taking advantage of an ecosystem where Facebook and everyone else is going along with the fraud since everyone benefits from it except for the advertiser.

Arrington’s question/accusation splashed water on the faces of the end-of-day crowd, and Anu Shukla jumped at the opportunity to address his points, which she referred to as “shit, double shit and triple shit”.  She stated that 1.) In her two years of managing customer service calls, she had received roughly five complaints from parents whose children accepted offers without their consent and were charged for an offer as a result. 2.) Netflix and other savvy advertisers have been using offer payment systems for years and continue to do so because it has shown to be an acquisition source with high retention rates.  She further stated that advertisers know their metrics better than a journalist would.  And, 3.) Anu defended Facebook and stated that Facebook is all about the user experience, and as recently as July, issued new advertising guidelines to clean up the companies who were clearly taking advantage of the system.

Anu received the biggest and most enthusiastic round of applause I saw in my two days at the event.  And that ladies and gentleman, was a very lively end to the VGS09 conference.   This will be a fun one to watch on YouTube when it’s up.