need a new neverblue rep

[mattfca]

people need to know they can trust Neverblue. when someone is allegedly screwed over a large sum of money (in this case, $14,000), that network has the responsibility to publicly respond why they made the decisions they did

I question Neverblue's credibility based on your response alone

I would think its sort of like a church confessional. There is some sort of trust between the network and affiliate about not publicly communicating unless both parties agree.

Either way, probably broke the rules somehow because neverblue has always been there for me. Even when they got ass raped by the advertiser.

 

[Pr0xyhub]

Broke the rules? Nope, not in the slightest bit. Ran volume to an offer, yep. Non capped offer, no notifications to stop traffic, nothing. When I was contracted on a CPA basis that's kind of what I expected. But apparently Just when payment time came around they said their advertiser wasn't paying because they suspected fraud traffic. I sent ads, and landing pages. But just like all networks, their terms say they don't have to pay if they don't want to. My AM (Craig) was a prick too, don't recommend him. Bad at communicating, lousy efforts, and just didn't give a fuck if they paid me or not. You'd think they would just take the 7k hit so I'd run volume in the future, and gain their trust.

And actually my bad. I did end up getting half of it, so only lost $7k. The advertiser refused to pay all of it but did end up paying half because they wanted a chance to work with me again because of my volume. Ha!

Wasn't trying to make a big scene, just wanted to post my experience. That's it.

 

[Hurr-Durr]

Broke the rules? Nope, not in the slightest bit. Ran volume to an offer, yep. Non capped offer, no notifications to stop traffic, nothing. When I was contracted on a CPA basis that's kind of what I expected. But apparently Just when payment time came around they said their advertiser wasn't paying because they suspected fraud traffic. I sent ads, and landing pages. But just like all networks, their terms say they don't have to pay if they don't want to. My AM (Craig) was a prick too, don't recommend him. Bad at communicating, lousy efforts, and just didn't give a fuck if they paid me or not. You'd think they would just take the 7k hit so I'd run volume in the future, and gain their trust.

And actually my bad. I did end up getting half of it, so only lost $7k. The advertiser refused to pay all of it but did end up paying half because they wanted a chance to work with me again because of my volume. Ha!

Wasn't trying to make a big scene, just wanted to post my experience. That's it.

Did you run anything on neverblue, BEFORE running that offer?

If it's the first time you ran something and did mad volume on it with crappy quality (in their opinion of course), then they're would be reluctant to pay you more so, because you don't have any track record with them...

Much in the same way, if it's a new advertiser with no track record or background, that cries fraud on some affiliate's (that the network knows is a legit affiliate) traffic , I'm sure neverblue would be very doubtful.

On the other hand, I've been running stuff with them, on and off for about a year and they know that my traffic is legit and I feel confident that they'll protect me when the advertiser screws them.

I think it all boils down to networking, and how well you have connected to the network (aka having good relations with your aff manager, etc). If you never talk to your AM, don't run anything prior to blasting an offer out of the blue and throw 5 figs of traffic and advertiser doesn't like it, they take everything you say, with a HUGEEEE grain of salt.

That's my :2twocents:

 

[Mr. Websites]

My AM (Craig)

Haha that's your problem right there.

 

[sgtryan]

Haha that's your problem right there.

for surreee.. guy was a total slacker.

I even got asked at their party at ASW by some random female Neverblue AM why I was such a dick to him.. I was speechless

 

[androo]

people need to know they can trust Neverblue. when someone is allegedly screwed over a large sum of money (in this case, $14,000), that network has the responsibility to publicly respond why they made the decisions they did

I question Neverblue's credibility based on your response alone

I don't think the issue is that we are scared or ashamed to argue our side of any problem publicly, trust me, the decision was not made quickly by an AM who just didn’t care if their affiliate got paid or not; as a business we have to make TOUGH decisions every now and then. I believe what Bryon was trying to convey was that these matters are better and more easily dealt with one-on-one, rather than through forum posts. I’m sure you can understand that this forum is obviously not the ideal place for us to discuss such matters. You wouldn’t walk into a lion’s den with a steak would you?

I'm sure many here would all love to hear each other’s side of the story, and I'm sure all would most-likely side with the affiliate, which is totally understandable. What you have to realize is that we are a middle man and we have to deal with these situations and reach a resolution that makes both sides of our business happy. If this was more of an advertisers forum you'd hear a lot more complaints such as "affiliates screwed me over of Big time $$$". And if we argued our case there, those users would side with the adv, no doubt. We are open to discussing any matter, professionally and one-on-one. Neverblue is essentially a customer service medium, and yes we want your business and we strive to make you happy; we are always willing to make things better and smooth things over.

I work on the advertiser side of NB, opposite of Bryon - but communally together, and I can tell you that their team fights extremely hard to get you paid in full, every-time. They know firsthand how these situations can harm the affiliate-network relationship. Myself and other members of NB also push back on our advertisers all the time; we too totally understand the value of getting a publisher paid in full, we know you drive the traffic and make it all happen. But in some instances this is not possible. Please understand that having to deal with a “pissed-off” advertiser who has just been charged from $1,000 to $100,000 of “useless”/bad quality traffic is not an easy task as well. If we never “sided” with the adv there would be a lot less offers out there and we would be cashing down even more advertisers to pay-up. Many advertisers have already been scared off by affiliate marketing and have chosen not to return because they got “burned”. The NB advertiser side works with these “pissed” off advertisers to get them back on-board, we do this one-on-one as normal business professionals. The arguments in these conversations are much the same as on the affiliate-network side.

An overwhelming majority of our relationships with affiliates and advertisers are “peachy”, but every now and then these issues occur. More often than not, it is usually due to, as others have pointed out on this thread, a lack of communication by all parties; be it an affiliate not fully disclosing their traffic/method or walking a fine line in the "grey" area, or an advertiser not communicating expectations/quality clearly or in a timely matter, or just a miss-communication of NB between affiliate or advertiser. Bridging this communication gap is a daily task we strive to get better at EVERY day, and we definitely learn from our mistakes and strive to not let it happen again. I think we are pretty good at it, if not let us know and we will try even harder.

So basically …. If you have been "screwed-over" or "mistreated" the fastest and easiest way to get a resolution is to contact Bryon or any NB rep directly. As network manager, Bryon is to oversee that the AMs are doing an exceptional job, if not contact him and he will get it sorted out. If you no-longer work with NB, we would like to know why and how we can re-earn your trust and business, reach out to Bryon or any NB rep, we will hook you up with whatever you need.

As for info on this matter with Pr0xyhub, I don’t know any of the details, it sounds like we landed on a decision to pay for half the traffic. To me this was probably a decision that resulted in both sides (Affiliate and Advertiser) not getting screwed over. If you still feel that you got the short end of the stick and choose to never work with us again that is completely understandable, if you want to hear what we can do to help smooth things over contact someone directly.

We are not looking for any sympathy, we are a business that has to make tough decisions and deal with the consequences. BUT it would be nice to “publicly” hear the instances where NB managed to get pubs paid in full, but this happens behind the scenes, typically pubs are not aware of the conversations/arguments we have with advertisers to make sure you get paid in full. It’s probably best kept that way anyways.

 

[wwwyatt]

I have Roman as well, he's the best.

 

[Jackeyy]

Worked with Neverblue for three years now and never had a problem what so ever. Only issue i had was delay of payment which was resolved instantly. Even when they get fucked in the ass by advertiser, they still paid me. I dont see a reason why you wouldnt trust them.

 

[Chianti]

Thanks for that post Androo. Being a noob, it was an eye-opener.

Out of interest, does anyone know happens in the 'real world' when an advertiser spends hundreds of thousands on a traditional media branding/Ad campaign that fails? Do they sue the marketing agency? Does the agency have to refund all the money? What happens when the agency is happy with a 2% increase in sales, but the advertiser was expecting more?

It occurs to me that aff networks play the same kind role of advertising agencies, except for instead of inventing and executing clever, humorous, stylish ads in traditional mediums, networks only have one marketing strategy - 'we will get hundreds of people to create websites, make videos, and send lots of email for you'.

If the advertiser knows that this is the plan, knows the risks of failure, and has balanced that risk against the low cost compared to advertising within traditional mediums, then why do they expect not to have to pay the network if the campaign fails in some way? Would they be able to do that with a traditional ad agency?

And what is failure exactly? It seems to me that in traditional advertising, advertisers seem to be happy with 2-10% ROI, whereas for some reason they seem to expect an online ROI of 50-500% and start taking tantrums if they don't achieve that?

Anyone help set a noob straight here?

 

[joseb]

If you're talking about a traditional ad agency, then none of this applies, as traditional ad agencies work solely on branding. Then there are media buying agencies, and while there are some metrics to evaluate the efficacy of a media buy such as same-store sales, they are buying gross ratings points in order to ensure they hit a specific target of reach and frequency.

When talking about direct response media buying agencies in traditional media, then it's a simple CPM arbitrage.

Usually, agencies are very happy with a steady ROI. They make 15% off all media bought, and they are given a budget to work with; they are quite loathe to do anything that would potentially upset that budget and cause the brand to put accounts in review rather than re-signing contracts.

For DR media buying agencies, the same rules apply - if the advertiser feels the brand has been harmed by bad quality, they will have the same arguments that we all do in the online space. That said, there are far more ways for grey methods to be used to drive traffic in online than in traditional, which is why it doesn't happen very often. That's why more and more online lead gen companies are pushing for cost-per-call - it's a much more motivated consumer with much less chance of fraud or quality issues.