What to do when an advertiser drops you?

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rgordon83

rgordon83

it's a wig
Dec 27, 2007
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www.tribe9interactive.com
Hey,
I just recently got dropped from one of my best performing offers b/c advertiser said my leads weren't backing out.

I've been running the offer for 4 months, so it's strange they dropped my now.

Anyway, i've only been on yahoo for the past month b/c of a big google slap and i've been reworking a site that will do much better on Google. But i think maybe they dropped me b/c the Yahoo lead quality was shite, as i never had a problem when i was on both Google and Yahoo.

So my question is, this offer is on a bunch of other networks. Should i just start it up again on another network once i can get back on Google? Or can the advertiser find out they already banned me and not pay me for leads i earn on another network (and then i'll lose everything i spent on PPC.)

Anyone have this problem before?
 


I am an advertiser, and I could notice, but not all advertisers as savvy I suppose. I would talk to the advertiser, tell them why you think the quality went sour, and explain to them that you are making improvements, and quality will return to it's previous level.

Honesty is getting rarer, and it goes a long way.
 
How would the advertiser find out?

I was running an offer that got shut down site wide for a while so I went to another network. Now get this I had been running that offer on the first site for more than 6 months and they loved me. Had it not been for the offer themselves shutting down I would have still ran it there. Anyway when I went to the next network and pushed the same traffic to their offer they told me it wasn't good traffic and shut it down. O'rly?? I ended up just going back to the first network when the offer reopened with them and haven't had a problem since.

The point is networks are different and if you aren't purposely sending shady traffic then I would say if one shuts you down go to the next one. Why the hell not?

When one door closes another opens. ( Or kick the door down if it doesn't. ;) )
 
Also remember that not all networks drive the same volume of leads to their advertisers. Perhaps the network you were working with for 4 months was doing a combined volume of 10000 leads/day and you accounted for just 100 of those. Your crap leads get mixed in with good ones and the advertiser doesn't really put a priority or notice the poor 100 leads/day until they decide to optimize down the road.

Go to another network who maybe brings in 500 leads/day and you're gonna make them look like chumps by making their poor lead ratio almost 25%.

Tons of other factors to consider:
- How far down the food chain is your affiliate network? Did they get it direct, or re-pimped through another network?
- Some advertisers will take any and all leads regardless of quality in order to reach critical mass. Then they start being anal quality probers.
- Maybe you got an unlucky bout of traffic. Talk to the network. If they're any good, they'd be able to help you pinpoint what leads were bad and why.
 
Absolutely fire the same offer up on another network, especially if you had good quality for 4 months.

An advertiser has to be very savvy and have nothing better to do all day than to track down affiliates and match them up with the network where their traffic is coming from. They would have had to know your site from before you switched traffic also. I wouldn't worry much about that happening.
 
If you were passing different subids for yahoo vs google, you can have the network ask the advertiser to evaluate your lead quality based on this.
 
I've been in this business a long time and there's a few rules I've always tried to follow.

1. Find something you can get traffic for, get it working and pulling cash then move on to the next offer.

2. If you think you might not get paid negotiate up front with your network or advertiser what will happen in worst case scenario.

MOST IMPORTANT ONE -> 3. If the advertiser isn't happy, try to negotiate a deal that will work for both sides.

So for example I have an affiliate that runs FB apps and has incent type traffic. He likes email submits as they work well for him. So he jumped from network to network getting kicked off offers. Spending 50% of his time worrying if he's going to get paid or when they're oging to cut him off. We took his traffic the advertiser guaged it and decided they could pay 75 cents and email submit with no-scubs. That was still profitable to the fellow and he could focus on building new apps and generating more traffic. Because as affiliates that's how we make the most money is getting more traffic. Now I'm not suggesting be stupid and don't move to a better offer. More find what's a win win for everyone.

If you're trying to make a quick buck with only yourself in mind I think you won't last in this business a long time. Even though my background is Blackhat SEO inter-industry I was always sure to make sure everyone wins.

I've also had advertisers that were just ridiculous. Bidz is a perfect example they wanted to see a 1:5 return, hahhahahaha wouldn't that be nice. I was sending them 1:2 traffic, basically for every dollar they paid me they made 2$. I think 100% return is pretty good but they weren't happy with the traffic. That's just greed.

Try and see what you can swing so you can make a profit and the advertiser can make a profit and you'll be a happy camper and off to get more traffic and more cash :)
 
lukem said:
Also remember that not all networks drive the same volume of leads to their advertisers. Perhaps the network you were working with for 4 months was doing a combined volume of 10000 leads/day and you accounted for just 100 of those. Your crap leads get mixed in with good ones and the advertiser doesn't really put a priority or notice the poor 100 leads/day until they decide to optimize down the road.

Go to another network who maybe brings in 500 leads/day and you're gonna make them look like chumps by making their poor lead ratio almost 25%.

Tons of other factors to consider:
- How far down the food chain is your affiliate network? Did they get it direct, or re-pimped through another network?
- Some advertisers will take any and all leads regardless of quality in order to reach critical mass. Then they start being anal quality probers.
- Maybe you got an unlucky bout of traffic. Talk to the network. If they're any good, they'd be able to help you pinpoint what leads were bad and why.
Click to expand...

Agreed, in my opinion you hit it right on the nose Lukem. It's all about the network you're with. An advertiser typically analyzes the overall quality of a networks leads (especially if they're pushing huge numbers.) Like Lukem said, there's most likely a certain ratio that each advertiser looks for before they start weeding out bad affiliates.

rgordon - I ran into a similar situation about 6 months ago. I was pushing 300+ leads/day with an email submit for about a month. I had a smaller network make me a better offer but after switching my traffic they called almost immediately saying that the advertiser wasn't happy with the traffic. I obliged and switched back to the larger network and didn't hear a word about it until the offer eventually expired 2 months later.
 
Good feedback here.

As of now i asked my AM to check with the advertiser and see when the leads started going bad. That may be able to help me pinpoint the issue. I'll take it from there and see if i can renegotiate or maybe the advertiser will let me make some changes and give me a test run for two weeks.

In my prime i was pushing 500-600 leads a day and netting at least 400 a day, so it's def. worth it for me to focus on a long term solution that works for both me and the advertiser.
 
smaxor said:
I've been in this business a long time and there's a few rules I've always tried to follow.

1. Find something you can get traffic for, get it working and pulling cash then move on to the next offer.

2. If you think you might not get paid negotiate up front with your network or advertiser what will happen in worst case scenario.

MOST IMPORTANT ONE -> 3. If the advertiser isn't happy, try to negotiate a deal that will work for both sides.

So for example I have an affiliate that runs FB apps and has incent type traffic. He likes email submits as they work well for him. So he jumped from network to network getting kicked off offers. Spending 50% of his time worrying if he's going to get paid or when they're oging to cut him off. We took his traffic the advertiser guaged it and decided they could pay 75 cents and email submit with no-scubs. That was still profitable to the fellow and he could focus on building new apps and generating more traffic. Because as affiliates that's how we make the most money is getting more traffic. Now I'm not suggesting be stupid and don't move to a better offer. More find what's a win win for everyone.

If you're trying to make a quick buck with only yourself in mind I think you won't last in this business a long time. Even though my background is Blackhat SEO inter-industry I was always sure to make sure everyone wins.

I've also had advertisers that were just ridiculous. Bidz is a perfect example they wanted to see a 1:5 return, hahhahahaha wouldn't that be nice. I was sending them 1:2 traffic, basically for every dollar they paid me they made 2$. I think 100% return is pretty good but they weren't happy with the traffic. That's just greed.

Try and see what you can swing so you can make a profit and the advertiser can make a profit and you'll be a happy camper and off to get more traffic and more cash :)
Click to expand...

great reply here. I could not agree more. Also shows why ads4dough is a good network, if smaxor will go to that extent to help an affiliate and advertiser come together and be profitable together.
 
Great advice on this thread. In general an advertiser can't tell that you are the same affiliate if you switch networks as long as you take some precautions first. If you take a substantial percentage of their volume with one network and simply move it one day to another they will probably notice so be smart about it. Change your domain, use different subid's, clean referrer data, etc and possibly rev up traffic slowly or leave it paused a few days before starting it back up on the other network just to make sure.
 
Excellent thread. Good advice Smaxor and lukem.

Try getting another CD# or several from your current network, but you might as well go ahead and split test the offer with another source.

Who knows? You might find a better conversion rate somewhere else.
 
RGordon, there are a few things that you didn't mention.

Good answers on this thread as well. Consider:

1) What's the offer that you were advertising? Was the advertiser the end user of those leads or were they re-selling? It could be that their client shut it off which caused them to shut it off for some reason.

2) "Leads not backing out" can be just a lame reason for them shutting it off just because. If it was a lead gen offer, maybe they couldn't close the leads, even though they were decent quality.

4) Did they tell you why the leads were not backing out? Having experience with many lead gen campaigns there could be number of factors, maybe some of which weren't in your control. Maybe the criteria they were looking for wasn't being met. For example if it was a debt settlement campaign and they were getting leads with $5K in debt, when their requirement was $10K in debt, you know where your problem lies. Once you know that, then you can change your marketing on yahoo, etc, to target people with $10K in debt. Another reason could be they were all just wrong numbers. A good combat to that would be real-time verification on the form (just one suggestion out of many)

If and when you pull the offer, if it's really a good one for you, from another network, strengthen yourself by asking lots of questions about the offer before you run it. What is the advertiser looking for? How can we make this successful from the get go? That way you'll have more power in the relationship.
 
Great posts. As an advertiser we are always open to talking more about why things are working well or not so well. We also have had direct discussions with affiliates that were sending traffic that did not perform as well as needed, but at a lower price, it worked for us and it still worked for the affiliate.

In terms of "leads not backing out" -- if it is mortgage, that is a tough space right now. If it is not, find out why because if the traffic is good, the advertiser should want as much as you can send. If not, PM me and we will take it or refer you to a good offer that will take your good traffic.
 
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