[6] That method of promotion also led the company to be heavily criticized for its early inability to prevent its members from spamming for referrals in order to collect additional income.
[9] AllAdvantage ultimately fell victim to the sharp decline in advertising spending as the dot-com bubble burst and the U.S. economy entered a recessionary period in mid-2000.
AllAdvantage planned an initial public offering of stock in early 2000, underwritten by investment banker Frank Quattrone of the firm Credit Suisse First Boston.
The concept of the infomediary was first suggested by McKinsey consultants and professors John Hagel, III, and Marc Singer in their book NetWorth.
[16] The company appointed privacy lawyer Ray Everett-Church to the newly created position in August 1999, sparking a trend that quickly spread among major corporations, both offline and online.
[18] AllAdvantage is perhaps most remembered for its successful adaptation of the "viral marketing" concept, a term first coined by the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
[22] These techniques were based upon the manner in which the AllAdvantage "Viewbar" tracked the time that users actively spent browsing the web, through the detection of which applications were "in focus" as well as keyboard and mouse movements.
[24] The AllAdvantage software was frequently updated with detection algorithms derived from analysis of many of the simulators and was able to flag "suspect" surfing accounts for withholding of any payments while giving users the appearance of still accumulating their fraudulent hours.