I visited some of the Malaysian forums that I used to frequent yesterday and I stumbled on some serious complaints and allegations about Advertlets. Is Advertlets in trouble? In this thread in Webmaster Malaysia (the biggest local webmaster forum), a blogger complained that he’d stopped receiving payment since August while another claims that his friend has RM2,000 owed to. In Lowyat.net (the biggest local tech forum), Josh Lim started a Q&A with the bloggers but went missing after several complaints about Advertlets. And in Michael Song’s (what I can only assume to be Josh’s friend) open letter, he alleged that Josh constantly condemns Nuffnang - an extension of Josh threatening a blogger for fraudulent clicks. I don’t know what to make of these - it could be just hiccups from unforeseen growth or the start of something sinister. Whatever the case, what’s obvious is that it’s not easy running a blog network as evident from the brouhaha at Nuffnang previously and now Advertlets. I only hope that the new blog advertising networks are aware and tread carefully in their business plans.
There’s another one here on nuffnang and advertlets too.
http://rudesingaporeans.blogspot.com/2007/12/is-nuffnang-ever-going-to-pay-up.html
Comment by Rudesingaporeans — December 19, 2007 @ 1:07 pm
“I only hope that the new blog advertising networks are aware and tread carefully in their business plans.”
That’s a fair comment :)
Comment by Nic — December 19, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
I guess the true test is when the networks become big and there’s a vast difference between the number of advertisers to publishers. And it doesn’t help that you’re caught in a chicken and egg issue, i.e. no advertisers without bloggers and no bloggers without advertisers. :)
Comment by Larry — December 19, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
Cash flow problems for nuffnang and advertlets is my guess.
Comment by Rudesingaporeans — December 19, 2007 @ 1:22 pm
Chicken and egg?
Bloggers were around before advertisers.
Bloggers will stay even without advertisers.
There’s just a lot more bloggers now, or more blogs anyway (same bloggers) because of advertisers.
Comment by Entrepreneur — December 19, 2007 @ 1:23 pm
Entrepreneur: I meant for the blog advertising networks, i.e. they can’t attract advertisers without having bloggers on their network and vice versa.
Comment by Larry — December 19, 2007 @ 1:33 pm
Dear Mr Lim,
We’re pretty confident of our fraud detection system. We haven’t stated which user belongs to this graph, but I think you have a good idea?
http://www.advertlets.com/weblog/2007/12/06/advertlets-your-questions-on-click-fraud-answered/
As a tech savvy person, what can you make of the graph? Its in our interest to make sure that only legit payouts are delivered. I’m quite sure you’ll agree that that’s valuable to the future of any advertising network.
Regards,
Mr Lim
Comment by Josh Lim — December 19, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
Hi,
just learnt about this post from ping.sg.
Just to clarify BLOG2u.SG pays upfront once the banner is up at the blogger’s site. I dont wanna get into those wars with comparison here and there. It is not healthy to the blogsphere and business environment.
Comment by Paddy Tan — December 19, 2007 @ 1:45 pm
Josh: thanks for the explanation and kudos with the FAQs - good PR effort. Please don’t call me ‘Mr. Lim’, just Larry will do. :)
Now, I’m unsure about that blogger’s capability but it seems unlikely that she did it, I mean she has other ads (e.g. Adsense) too and would’ve likely tried and got caught already right? But that’s just my assumption.
Is it possible that someone else ran an auto-click bot on her blog? Could Advertlets’ detection system make that distinction? If not, would you start banning more bloggers if they got click-bombed too?
Instead of banning outright, Advertlets should probably consider other friendlier methods, e.g. smart-pricing, limiting the number of clicks/IP/hour, applying a discount for click fraud, etc. Just my two cents.
Btw, I think the readers will be interested to know the reasons for complaints about slow response and late payments too.
Comment by Larry — December 19, 2007 @ 2:06 pm
Paddy: you naughty fella - same comments on two blogs! Opportunity in times of chaos? :)
Out of curiosity, what happens if the banner is removed or the blogger ‘terminates’ his/her blog before the end of the period?
Comment by Larry — December 19, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
Seeing that the blogger’s gender, it does seem unlikely. We thought so too. However, after checking, our logs show that very clearly is not an outsider trying to sabotage the system.
Unfortunately some publishers have been particularly daring under the mis assumption that our system is not capable of detecting fraud. We may or may not have a few of the items that you mentioned actually, but we can’t tell you which, or how many, or to what extent, for good reason :)
I’m quite sure you understand that the network has been growing quite rapidly, and we are adding more resources to our team to keep up. We understand that payments have been delayed, however it is largely due to the fact that we wish to check whether the payments are legit. In light of the delay in processing, we have opted to release the definite legit payments and hold the ones in dispute for now.
Future legit payments should not be delayed (unless of course, there is a degree of click fraud involved in an account.)
Hope these answers your questions, “Just Larry”? :) (and to others who may have the same question)
Cheers,
Just Josh
Comment by Josh Lim — December 19, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
Larry: I guess nobody will want to risk their online reputation by removing the ads before the period. It’s just a few dollars. Totally not worth the money to cheat the system.
Comment by DK — December 19, 2007 @ 2:48 pm
DK: nope but in the short time that I’ve blogged, I’ve seen active bloggers just ’stopped and left’, e.g. Earn-Money-Blogging.com
Comment by Larry — December 19, 2007 @ 3:02 pm
Well, then they are killing the goose that lay golden eggs. :)
Comment by DK — December 19, 2007 @ 4:04 pm
Josh: thanks for the explanations and hopefully the problems are resolved quickly because there’s definitely discontent in the blogosphere. Although, I’d prefer to use the ‘friendlier’ methods given a choice.
DK: btw, cannot post comments in your blog as ‘Other’ already. :(
Comment by Larry — December 19, 2007 @ 4:13 pm
“Opportunity in times of chaos?”
nah, I can do better if I want to. :)
Action speaks louder than words.
I will let the action deliver the words, overtime.
Comment by Paddy Tan — December 19, 2007 @ 4:36 pm
Well-said, and I always love to watch things done.
Comment by Peace — December 20, 2007 @ 1:12 am
Seems like I’ve missed some happenings here :-)
Comment by hongkiat — December 24, 2007 @ 9:22 am
For those facing problems with Advertlets and ended up here, it seems they have forgotten to renew their domain name. Hongkiat has written about it here:
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/advertlets-domain-expired/
Hence, typing advertlets.com will take you to a domain parking page.
If they’ve renewed the domain and it still shows the wrong page, it means the DNS information has not propagated on the Internet. Alternatively, you can try flushing your DNS by going to your Command Prompt in Windows and typing in the following:
C:\ipconfig /flushdns
Comment by Larry — January 6, 2008 @ 12:54 am