I am sure everyone has their own gripes about ad networks they use and I figured I would share some of mine.
Mind you these range over a ton of ad networks and apply to none specifically.
- When I log in I want to see my balance right away
- The ability to delete campaigns shouldn’t be an option
- 24/7 approvals should be standard for big networks. (There are people that grind in the wee hours and like to see results)
- Campaign pixels that don’t include your username (C’mon…)
- When they show you Suggested bids instead of what your competition is actually bidding. (Really think we are that stupid?)
I haven’t even broke the surface on this…more to come.
Feel free to include your gripes in the comments below, perhaps we can make a list for new ad networks to look at before opening shop.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Funny post but it also shows how many problems we face.
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Great ideas, which ad networks are on the right path to you?
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6. Realtime stats – if facebook and twitter can handle the billion+ status updates they get per day in realtime, ad networks should be able to EASILY update stats for a few thousand pubs more than once every 30 minutes.
7. Easy campaign/ad group duplication, especially on mobile networks and other places where you need to test lots of different variables that are controlled on the serving side.
8. Instant pause/resume of campaigns – Leadimpact is a great example of this working. With the exception of VERY high volume campaigns where you may get overruns if your ad is served out to hundreds of sites per second, requiring more than a few minutes to pause/resume campaigns is ridiculous.
9. Having a way to easily edit a disapproved campaign – lots of times campaigns are disapproved if there are minor issues with the (ie: the inclusion of an exclamation mark, omission of a url/brand name on creative, etc). In these cases, there should be the option to simply change the error rather than have to submit an entire new adgroup, with creative, targeting, etc.
Just a few off the top of my head.
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Ability to delete campaigns shouldn’t be an option? Why’s that?
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Clint Lenard Reply:
July 13th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
This would be my question, too. I guess I don’t understand that one.
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Emmanuel Ajesin Reply:
July 17th, 2012 at 10:38 am
Sounds foreign!
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Bryn Youngblut Reply:
September 11th, 2012 at 8:48 am
There are some networks I have come across with no delete option just activate/pause. It’s not a big issue I just like to look at a clean list of campaigns.
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Hi Bryn,
I have one for you, more specifically for CPA networks. Why is it that they never seem to have a list of offers available before you join? Worse, not even a list of verticals that they operate in.
You fill out the application form, phone them three times to try and convince them that you are not a spammy con man and then once accepted, they don’t have a single offer available in the vertical you operate in!! And they didn’t mention that on the phone, did they…?
What a waste of my time! I think that in those circumstances they ought to offer compensation for deliberately wasting time.
And once we have discovered that they have nothing useful for us, it is typically impossible to have any of our personal and corporate information deleted. Who knows who has access to it…
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Bryn Youngblut Reply:
September 11th, 2012 at 8:51 am
I completely agree with this point, however there are many reasons they don’t. Mainly to do with other networks snooping around.
My advice is hit up affiliate managers from those companies on facebook or twitter first and ask them if they have a few of the offers you are looking for before signing up.
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After reading this, I’m hoping that you’ve got some posts for beginners with PPC?
Can you recommend some ad networks that don’t have all these problems? Which ones do you use?
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As someone who works for a network I really liked reading this list. I couldn’t agree more. As an affiliate I always found it super frustrating to have to look for my balance, have stat delays, tracking codes with my username in it (which I can’t change and can’t sign up for a new account and I didn’t think using my name as a username would cause this issue)
I find CPS networks generally have better admin panels.
Anyway I appreciate reading this and who knows maybe I’ll be able to convince our programmers to add some of these features.
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