If you’re looking into marketing with an ad network, please take my experience as a guide to making sure you run a successful campaign with the network of your choice.
In this case, it’s not the campaign we ran, but the company we ran it with…ValueClick. ValueClick began in 1998 and states in their ‘About Us’, “ValueClick’s experienced team provides advertisers and publishers solutions which:
- Generate maximum return on investment
- Reach lifelong customers globally
- Deliver quality leads
- Build brand awareness and preference
- Utilize all online channels to reach audiences
About a month ago or so, we began our campaign with ValueClick as our sales rep told us that with no problem, they would be able to deliver quality leads and drive qualified traffic to our offer (financial service). Everything looked promising and $10k upfront seemed reasonable for what they promised out of the campaign.
The campaign was launched and the leads did in fact come in. ValueClick decided to start the campaign on a Friday (leaving us no room to stop the campaign with a 72 hour clause during the weekend), and approximately 300 leads or so came in over the course of the next few days. As marketers our eyes lit up, and we thought: “that’s it, our client is going to love us!”
The results were in…and they were horrific! Nearly EVERYONE (i.e. 99%) our client had called (and they did call all the leads, unfortunately for us) said they were filling out what they either thought was a survey to win a prize, had no idea what our client was offering, stated they never filled anything out of that sort, et cetera.
We went back to our sales rep at ValueClick with this information and they were good at spinning the story saying leads are a sensitive issue and must be called right away. Even with a written log from our client detailing the nature of the “leads”, it wasn’t enough.
We decided adding more fields would qualify the traffic more but here comes the big punch which we failed to notice ourselves, but — most importantly and dishonestly — was never pointed out by ValueClick. ALL TRAFFIC DRIVEN TO OUR OFFER HAD PRE-POPULATED INFORMATION AND WAS INCENTIVED TRAFFIC!
ValueClick generates leads from sites such as http://www.myshoppersrewards.com/ and according to Scott Spaulding, director of sales at ValueClick, this is in no way incentivized traffic but “promotional traffic.” No matter how many fields you would add to the existing offer, but lead would be QUALIFIED…this traffic is all driven by the fact the user thinks they will get a free item by filling out the information in the offers which most put wrong names, phone numbers, etc and even the right information sometimes not having a clue about the offer, but wanting the free item. In this case, by filling out all the information, you would get a free Razor phone.
We kept insisting this is incentivized traffic and our offer simply wouldn’t work using this method which was never made clear to us or even spoken about, but they (Scott Spaulding) insisted it is not incentivized traffic. I’ll quote the website:
“To receive the incentive gift you must: 1) Register with valid information; 2) Complete the user survey; 3) Complete at least two (2) Silver offers Page, two (2) Gold offers Page, and two (2) Platinum offers Page; and 4) Refer one (1) unique household that also must complete these requirements. Purchase may be required. Purchase may be required. Please read Terms & Conditions for details. Upon completion of all requirements, we will ship the incentive gift to you with free shipping.”
Can it get more incentivized than that?!? ValueClick still held the position that they do not drive incentivized traffic and refused to reply to our emails demanding a full refund. Several days later, we were notified that a partial refund would be given, but we were provided no explanation as to how they arrived at the monetary figure. No reason was provided as to why a full refund wasn’t being issued. And no comments were provided regarding our complaints about incentivized traffic. All email follow-ups to Scott Spaulding and his salesman Lee Jones went unanswered. Our only conclusion was that they held back a portion of our 10K for the BOGUS LEADS they generated.
Instead of doing right by their new clients and accepting the fact this wasn’t a fair way to generate leads for our offer, they made us foot the bill for their valueless leads. A public company of this magnitude (or any company for that matter) should never leave their clients in this precarious position. It is a truly embarrassing and disappointing experience.
If anyone from ValueClick has the courage to come out and point out that the site talked about in this article isn’t incentivized traffic, I will take all this back and become a ValueClick evangelist…
WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN CHOOSING AN AD NETWORK?
1. Experience- Before starting a campaign with an ad network, really try to find someone who has run a campaign before, and who is willing to share their experience with you. It’ll be the most valuable aspect of your research in choosing which ad network to try.
2. Traffic Sources- Extremely important you find out and make sure how traffic will be driven to your offer.
3. CPA/CPC/CPM Basis- Try finding out what the ad network of your choice offers. They may be able to charge you per lead or per click, and it’s important you calculate which one would generate a better ROI for your campaign.
Pablo Palatnik is Managing Partner of eTrend Media Group, which specializes in Pay-Per-Click Management & Lead Generation.
Comments
20 responses so far ↓
Mari on Sep 6, 2007 at 10:07 am
great article!!!!!
Brian Turner on Sep 6, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Any chance you’re going to threaten legal action over this?
Terry on Sep 6, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Count yourself lucky that you got out when you did and learned your lesson fast (and relatively cheaply–on the scale of things). The incentivized market is full of well-organized shenanigans that you would not believe.
Pablo Palatnik on Sep 6, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Just found this by checking out “Valueclick” in googles sponsored search…if you have bought VC stock in the past 2 years or so…should check it out.
http://www.kaplanfox.com/investigates.php?&id=200
CVOS netpaths on Sep 6, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Unfortunately valueclick has engaged in many unfair business tactics. Doubly unfortunate is their ownership of commission junction, which is a quality service.
Jon Kelly on Sep 6, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Pablo, I’m really sorry to hear about your experience. I think it confirms what a lot of folks are saying about those guys right now. I believe this started to come to light when Jordan Rohan (stock analyst at RBC Capital Markets) wrote a scathing report on them a few months back. You can find that at http://www.internetoutsider.com/files/rohan_vclk_070426.pdf It is pretty damning.
Pablo Palatnik on Sep 6, 2007 at 11:50 pm
@ Jon-
Thanks for the link…looks good. Getting a lot of feedback from this post and will put a lot of the comments and more on my blog, http://www.PalatnikFactor.com, with updates, etc.
It’s not so much about money but about business ethics.
Mari on Sep 7, 2007 at 7:39 am
it’s http://www.palatnikfactor.com
Mitch Johnson on Sep 7, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Your first mistake is to pay everything upfront. You lose all of your leverage for settlement when disputing lead quality. Plus your contract should have outlined several unacceptable practices. This puts more on them to deliver quality leads once they realize you won’t pay for garbage.
Brian Free on Sep 7, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I agree with Mitch … while it sucks this happened to you, it really is your fault in the end. You weren’t protective of your money and they got you to bite. In the future you should be more careful with the way YOU do business. Don’t sign contracts if you haven’t read them, and don’t sign a contract if you don’t agree with it. Just smart business.
Pablo Palatnik on Sep 7, 2007 at 3:46 pm
@ Brian Free-
1) Should I assume that ValueClick is an unscrupulous company employing shady tactics to generate traffic?
2) There was absolutely nothing having to do with incentivized traffic in the contract. Obviously, I read the contract before I signed it.
3) It’s the job of the sales rep to clearly state the terms and conditions of the campaign and be honest. It’s called business ethics. Full disclosure is the responsibility of the company offering the service/product to its client. (Obviously, terms and conditions should be laid out in the contract.)
Jon Kelly on Sep 7, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I have to back up Pablo on this. I think Brian’s comment was overly harsh. Valueclick is a large, well-known, public company that should not be engaging in these types of tactics. Pablo, thanks for sharing your experienc, it took guts to tell the story. I’ve been buying online media for 9 years and have made some similarly poor buys (that’s you, InfoSpace). It occasionally happens to anyone who is willing to take on some risk.
Mari on Sep 7, 2007 at 4:13 pm
I agree, no pain no gain… you must risk yourself sometimes in order to be successful. No business is 100% safe.
Brian - read the article: “We kept insisting this is incentivized traffic and our offer simply wouldn’t work using this method which was never made clear to us or even spoken about,” - it states pretty clearly that there was no mention of incentivized traffic in the contract don’t you think??? or else, the article wouln’t have been written.
Brian Free on Sep 7, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I’m not trying to say that ValueClick wasn’t in the wrong here, they are clearly at fault, but in the end it comes down to you agreeing to the contract and paying a lot of money up front for a service that hadn’t offered you any proven results. They were shady on their end, but you were too trusting
Pablo Palatnik on Sep 7, 2007 at 4:51 pm
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=67051
Brian Free on Sep 7, 2007 at 4:56 pm
In my opinion, even more of a reason you should have looked deeper into what you were getting yourself into … and you shouldn’t have paid the entire lump sum up front. I’m not trying to be an asshole, but from my perspective you are at fault just as they are.
Brian Pearce on Sep 7, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Terry hit it square on when she pointed out that it’s about learning lessons fast.
Always be willing to take a chance, limit your bet to that which you can afford to lose, and then TEST TEST TEST.
My bad experience? Lost $1500 to Bravenet and salesperson Kirk Clarke. I was very specific about placement - and it was totally ignored. We got shafted.
Eddie Ng on Sep 12, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Another lead-generation company - Netblue (now they changed name to ConnexusCorp) even WORSE, it rip off advertisers and pissed off lots of users.
Sog Nigelmeyer on Sep 17, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Pablo, what is your product, what was it that you were offering and what company is it that you own or work for. Without that information, it is unfair for others to judge your campaign.
Secondly, most if not all of the Ad serving networks I have every worked with required that the Advertiser specify the campaign start and end dates in which they are running their offers.
Lastly, is your company a publically traded company? If so, the SEC is very strict on companies that publically value or devalue other companies. You, and the company you work for could be in real trouble yourself by creating this blog, which by the way, I found on the first page of my Google search for Ad networks.
- Sog
Ron Laughton on May 1, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I saw this old thread and felt it was appropriate to share a positive about ValueClick.
The ValueClick publisher policy clearly states no incentivised offers 2(c)(5).
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