If I recall correctly, Viglink does affiliate marketing. Essentially they are setting an affiliate cookie to make money from anything you purchase on Amazon, Walmart.com, Ebay, etc. This cookie will override any other that was already set. So if you clicked a link to a book from a blog post and then clicked on a tinyurl, they would get the affiliate referral money and not the blog.
It's an easy way to make money because it doesn't involve a long sales process with major advertisers. Viglink does all that. tinyurl, bitly, et al are probably making a fair amount given their reach
1. TinyURL does not give Zoom any more customers than they would have had otherwise.
2. Zoom pays VigLinks and TinyURL.
3. An incompetent, or unethical performance marketer gets to claim to their boss they are driving X upgrades for $Y when in reality they are driving 0 incremental upgrades for $Y.
It's an easy way to make money because it doesn't involve a long sales process with major advertisers. Viglink does all that. tinyurl, bitly, et al are probably making a fair amount given their reach