Investigating the people behind those sketchy flat-stomach ads.

Once they’re in the networks, they’re served across the Internet. The search engines will serve the ads on keywords that the affiliates have purchased. The social media sites will serve them based on the demographic data in your profile. And the third-party ad networks will pump them into websites that use their service. This last scenario is why you see the ads pop up on sites like Slate, The Big Money, and other news publications. Most sites use ad networks when they run out of ad inventory they’ve sold themselves. So when advertising is light—as it is in the recession—these ad networks are relied on more heavily. Thus the increase of the scam ads in recent months.

From there, of course, people click on the ads to the landing pages to the vendor pages. Then, when somebody buys the vendor’s product, the money flows through the system, allowing more ads to be bought and more commissions to be paid out.

In a way, it’s a beautiful system. Everybody is intertwined, and everybody relies on one another. Its interactions almost seem ecological, as though they’re a food chain contributing to a broader ecosystem. Just don’t call it the circle of life—it’s more like a circle of lies.

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This piece owes a large bit of thanks to Nickycakes.com, which has a vulgar but indispensible guide to affiliate advertising. Also, the Waffles at Noon blog is ace at keeping track of all the various scams and landing pages. E-mail me if you’ve seen this kind of multilevel marketing scam for other products than those mentioned.