Semantic Labs - Scam or legit company?

[meowmarketing]

Does anyone actually know what Semantic Labs does?

They were involved in affiliate / performance marketing flows at my last company, but what they did was about as clear as mud. They drove hundreds of fake leads and we seeminly paid them for MQLs with no quality control.

More recently I noticed they were acquired by Ziff Davis, which made me revisit them and try to make sense of the model.

Site: https://www.semanticlabs.com/
Wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20240501000000*/https://www.semanticlabs.com/(see 2024 and prior)
Google reference: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/13707634?hl=en

1. The company had a non-functional or effectively empty web presence for ~8+ years prior to being acquired. Why??
2. In Google’s third-party click / partner context, the referenced URL shows as “srvto.com”, which doesn’t appear to be a functioning or clearly attributable site. How does that map to Semantic Labs, or what role does it play in the chain?

Would appreciate context from anyone in ad ops / SEO / martech who has seen them in the wild.

 

[keegand42]

ran into something similar with a different performance network, 340 "MQLs" over 6 weeks and sales couldn't get a single one on the phone, turned out about 60% had mismatched email domains vs the company fields they filled in. the MQL definition problem is real though, no quality control at the intake layer means anyone with a form spinner can print money on your budget indefinitely. ziff davis acquiring them is interesting context, that company has a habit of buying things that look like media but operate more like arbitrage.

 

[meowmarketing]

ran into something similar with a different performance network, 340 "MQLs" over 6 weeks and sales couldn't get a single one on the phone, turned out about 60% had mismatched email domains vs the company fields they filled in. the MQL definition problem is real though, no quality control at the intake layer means anyone with a form spinner can print money on your budget indefinitely. ziff davis acquiring them is interesting context, that company has a habit of buying things that look like media but operate more like arbitrage.

So looked into Ziff Davis a little more, and two more strange things:
1. They own "retailmenot" which was recently had a class action against it for something similar to the PayPal Honey browser-extension fraud situation that came to light last year.
2. They are also owners of "Moz"- one of the only company references that was on Semantic Labs post-acquisition site that is now up.
http://Semantic Labs site post buy out/ present day. Again, this is what the site https://web.archive.org/web/20240730210958/https://www.semanticlabs.com/