In light of recent speculation and sensation that Gambit has been ‘banned’ by Facebook for displaying non-compliant offers, we would like to emphasize that Gambit’s service remains completely uninterrupted for publishers and end users, and will remain both stable and compliant with whatever guidelines our publisher clients ask us to follow.
We’ve outlined some facts below for additional clarification.
The Facts
1. When Facebook announced a more aggressive approach of enforcing their revised Advertising Guidelines, the team here at Gambit took immediate action to ensure our publisher partners on Facebook ran ads that complied with these guidelines. This included pulling thousands of international offers until we had had a chance to review each one individually. Gambit opened a direct channel of communication with Facebook and worked with Facebook employees to weed out all non-compliant offers.
2. While working through our ad inventory directly with Facebook, due to a technical bug, Gambit ended up showing a number of non-compliant offers to a segment of international traffic on the Facebook platform. As soon as we noticed the bug, we took immediate action to fix it. Unfortunately, while we were fixing the bug, Facebook sent our game development sister company, Kickflip, Inc., a cease and desist letter. We understand that Facebook thought we were intentionally running the non-compliant ads which cannot be further from the truth.
3. In any event, Kickflip, the company targeted by Facebook, does not own or operate Gambit. Nor does Gambit have any relationship with Facebook, contractually or otherwise. Gambit is an independent third-party payment and advertising platform for use by app developers, and Facebook cannot shutdown Gambit and its service any more than it can claim to shutdown Paypal or Google. Moreover, it is our firm belief that Facebook cannot interfere with our publisher clients’ decision on which payments and advertising service provides them the best solution for their applications.
4. What social networking companies like Facebook can do is set guidelines on the types of advertising that can be run, and hold the publishers accountable. Many of our clients already know that Gambit’s payments and advertising product provides the best solution to guarantee compliance with these guidelines. While our competitors continue to run non-compliant ads, Gambit is delivering fully compliant advertisements to all of our publishers. If we can’t deliver, we won’t be in business.
5. Gambit’s service remains completely uninterrupted for publishers and end users, and will remain both stable and compliant with whatever guidelines our publisher clients ask us to follow. Our publishers continue to run Gambit on their Facebook apps today.
6. Gambit continues to work diligently to ensure all ads we run through our clients’ applications on Facebook are compliant with the guidelines. Gambit continues to develop additional tools and educational materials to help our publishers make the best decisions about which monetization options they choose to run on their applications and games.
Q & A
Q: Why did you guys let non-compliant ads through?
A: When Facebook announced a new enforcement strategy for their Advertising Guidelines, Gambit took immediate action to sort and filter the ads we serve. However, ad inventory is vast and changing. Because of a technical error, we ended up serving some ads to non-U.S. traffic that were not in compliance with Facebook’s new guidelines. We did not do this intentionally, and we removed the ads as soon as we found out. We fixed the error, redoubled our efforts to filter out non-compliant ads, and are now serving only compliant ads.
Q: I’m a publisher in the Facebook platform and I use Gambit Payments. Am I at risk of being shut down?
A: No, absolutely not. Gambit Payments is running only compliant ads for developers running their applications on the Facebook platform, so the ads you publish in your app do not violate Facebook’s Advertising Guidelines and pose no risk.
Q: I’m using Gambit. Will my users still have access to payments and offers?
A: YES, your users still have access to payments and offers. Gambit Payments’ monetization services – including direct payments and compliant offers – are, and always have been, up and running without disruption.
Q: Are you guys still in business?
A: Thanks for asking. The answer is a resounding YES! We are definitely still in business and are challenging ourselves (and our competition) to be better than ever at product innovation. We still think the high-quality offers-based monetization of social applications is a fundamentally sound business model, but end user experience must be deeply integrated into the development process. We also think there are a lot more lot more innovation methods beyond traditional offers to monetize online communities on social networks and beyond, and we’re looking forward to rolling those out in the near future.
We hope this dispels some of the confusion and sensation surrounding Gambit’s business on Facebook, and we invite your questions at team@getgambit.com
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