Auction ads going to hell

I've emailed support with hard facts about my account being 90% down in clicks since June & this was the response:

*sighs*

 

Sounds like Shoemoney saw the leaky hull and jumped.

AA is a joke anyways. They have no sustainable competitive advantage / differentiation factor that will prevent a large ad network from copying their biz model.

Pulling and posting API data isn't rocket science. Cheers to Shoe for making out Sam Zell style...

 

"Try changing the colors and sizes", "your visitors are ad-blind"

Oh my Lord, that's the most outrageous thing I have read today.

Why didn't they just advise that you wish upon a star?

You have my sympathies.

 

heh, nice.

I've been seeing nothing but great numbers and tons of revenue coming in, so I'm pretty happy. Sad to hear that it's not the same for you guys.

 

Care to post some stats?

 

He's a shill for AA.

 

Not really. It's my business. I don't freely give away our financial data. And anyone who does is foolish.

It's like I said before. I couldn't care any less if you believe me or not. I'm the one generating the money and that's all that matters for me. If you want to miss the opportunity to generate revenue, that's your choice, not mine.

 

Then I don't understand why you keep evangelizing the program. Is there some personal incentive or motivation for you to do so?

 

I am generally as vocal over something I like, as something I dislike. You may often finding me giving praise in many of the vBulletin threads (I've even been called a vBfanboy). I can not knock a person for liking something that works for them, though do find that backing up ones claims with some type of basis often is a better means of getting ones point across.

In the case of fsmedia, I can not refute his claims of making money. There are many that are making money. And you may notice that very few are refuting the claims of those not making money.

It seems that there may be some serious issues with the program for many that are in it. It *IS* strange that so many could have great stats for months, then have those stats drop right off the graph. There is just something wrong with that which goes beyond simple ad-blindness.

So it's really clear for many that there is something amiss, and my heart goes out to them. It's also apparent that for some the system is pulling in some great cash. Though with it broken for some and working for others, I sometimes ponder "what if it's broken for all?"

@fsmedia: Imagine how your stats would add up if there is a problem. What if your "great figures" are being repressed like so many others seem to be? Maybe your $xxx income is missing a zero or two.... Regardless though, I'm happy your stats are showing something other then zeros.

 

I'm making nice money as well, in ad spots that either didnt perform or I didnt use before AA. So its entirely incremental income. Do I think there have been reporting issues? Yup. I sure do. DO I think they are resolved? Im not sure yet. Sept isnt looking fantastic for me so far.

I also suspect they started before Mediawhiz took over and that originally when many of us had great numbers they were really reporting problems in reverse, causing us to make more money then we should of.

But, in the end, its all extra money. Even if im not getting what I should, its still extra money. I think AA can and will be a great ad program once mediawhiz gets the kinks worked out and some more features worked out. I especially think its a great program for forum owners who traditionally have a hard time earning money with Adsense.

So THATS why I talk AA up.

 

I agree that it can be nice for the forum owner, and how it works fits the feel of my forum the way I see it. I think it's worth giving it a try for anyone, but I do hope anyone giving it a try reads these threads (rather then just the AA blog).

 

nope, not really, but just like any other program that works, I love to encourage its use.

 

Well, I can say it still works MUCH better in most spots than Adsense (except my top left sidebar spot) in terms of revenue, but it is only a fraction of what June was.

If I had June's earnings per impression every month, I'd be sitting pretty.

 

I made decent cash with AuctionAds a couple of months back too but lately it's just bleah...on all my sites. On one site the CTR was stable at 0.6% or so, and now it's at 0.01% or less...sometimes 0 clicks per day (8000 uniques/day).

 

The same here. Traffic is the same (even more), the ads are what users want, but almos no clicks tracked!!! In the opposite corner, the clicks at CJ/ebay are pure music to my ears! Something is wrong with the AA clicks since the last days of august (at least for me).

 

He works for Media Whizz.

 

How difficult would it be to set up similar looking ads using CJ/ebay? Do they have anything similar to the AA ads? Taking the time to rework my ads using CJ would be worth it just to get close to what AA used to produce in revenue. I never signed up for CJ/ebay so do not know what formats they offer.

 

They will look different, but it's discussed here: Alternatives to Auctionads

 

I have had good success in the past with eBay via CJ. AA's main advantages for me are the increased payouts (higher tier sales/signups) due to the volume that AA does and geotargeting. The geotargeting system is kind of weak (shows eBay.com ads, but re-directs foreign traffic to country specific eBay) but it is something.

Everything else AA does you can duplicate with the eBay/CJ system.

The additional advantage of AA, is that their system makes it all super simple like adsense.

 

I must admit that my success with CJ/ebay is much higher than with AA. Lately the AA click tracking it's not working well, and the problems with the ads cache are huge, i've many times ads that doesn't correspond to my keywords!