It's always interesting to see people's reactions when they see how the sausage is made in the kitchen (look at this thread). This is especially true when it comes to businesses in highly competitive markets like cars, computers, coupons, software, tickets, finance, marketing and insurance. Many big brands are just as guilty as anything this guy talks about (e.g. AOL's love.com, BMW SEO spamming, the shady stuff that goes on with Google PPC, the amount of paid links almost any consumer-facing Fortune 500 co buys). They're usually just better at PRing a cover up and/or keeping it behind the curtains. It's one of the joys of being a public company: massive consequences for failure to satisfy short-term earnings expectations and a huge incentives to employ shady tactics to ensure that doesn't happen.
Edit: Here's an example more closely related to venture capital. Guess who two of Cash4Gold.com's biggest investors are? General Catalyst and Highland Capital Partners. You won't find Cash4Gold on their portfolio pages.
Or maybe even more telling: look at all the major companies that have affiliate programs. The companies know what they're getting in to; they're just outsourcing the dirty work.