On Wednesday Spanish authorities announced the arrest of three alleged ringleaders behind the Mariposa botnet. Mariposa is possibly the largest botnet yet discovered and consisted of an estimated 12.7 million computers.

Let’s face it. 2009 is a year that many of us are pleased to put behind us. We want to look to the future. 2010 beckons. New mobile phones and tablet computers are appearing every week. We are seeing crazy-fast take-up of social media like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Add those developments to a rebounding economy and it all indicates an infl ection point: one of those moments in history when everything comes together to enable massive change and opportunity.

With a name like “negative option billing” it should come as no surprise that this practice has received a lot of negative attention lately from the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), various state attorneys general and other regulatory bodies. Despite this trend, marketers and consumers alike have found this billing method to be a convenient and useful payment option over the years.

Google is cracking down. Last month, Google filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and several others as part of an effort to stop fraudulent “Google Money” schemes. These are scammy offers that use Google’s brand to attract unsuspecting customers and then trap them into hard-to-break continuity programs, often via negative option contracts.

New media such as blogs and social networks have opened vast territory for information dissemination, networking and connectivity. Due to their low costs, every “netizen” with an opinion can set up a Web-based soapbox from which to broadcast to the world. As a result, like-minded communities of writers and followers have sprung up around any number of topics large and small: from politics to film, video games to parenting tips.

Cost-per-action networks are all the rage today. But what will it take for a network to win with 400-plus competitors? And how does a network keep ahead of the curve (and the FTC) while building its publisher and advertiser base and fending off tracking and fraud issues?

These are the tough questions that CPA networks face.

Over the last five years, almost all of the topics I’ve written about focus on some aspect of performance-based advertising. My fascination with the subject stems from a desire to understand the role performance-based ads play in the broader ecosystem for advertisers, merchants and affiliates.

On various stages of their involvement with the affiliate marketing channel, merchants look in the direction of launching affiliate programs for the same products on multiple networks. The most common reasoning for this being that by so doing they will expand their affiliate reach, significantly improving chances of recruiting powerful affiliates across different networks.

Top interactive agencies and affiliates share their tricks for picking the right ad network.

Conservatively estimated, there are upwards of 400 ad networks globally. There is a Japanese iPhone-only ad network and the recently launched Village Voice alternative weekly New York newspaper ad network – and everything in between. For ad agencies representing top brands, and for affiliates trying to make a living in the increasingly competitive world of performance marketing, picking the right one is critical to survival. Choosing poorly spells disaster for everyone.

Buying domain names of real live people can be manna to the unscrupulous.

Anne Fognano is not a newbie in the online marketing world. She has run a successful affiliate business since 1997. She's the force behind CleverMoms.com and has registered a raft of variations on the "clever moms" domain name to safeguard her valuable brand. But she never bought the domain for her own name – AnneFognano.com. When someone else did, all hell broke loose.