DailyBlogr - A disappointing experience with BuySellAds - SEO News

Posted July 14, 201113 yr

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Im a big fan of BuySellAds. They made media buying simple and efficient like no other service.

As many bloggers, Ive been using their service to sell ad real estate as well as buy ads on other sites for a long time now.

This incident happened last week, when I tried to buy a 300×250 image ad on one of the popular sites today, thenextweb.com through BuySellAds.

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Actually, I was searching for 300×250 impression based Ad options on technology related websites and thenextweb popped up. They had two options for image ads. The 125×125 one and the 300×250 one. The 300×250 one was promising as it estimated 2,800,000 impressions with 95% availability.

I bought the Ad for $420 and BuySellAds confirmed the purchase promising that it would go live in about 24-48 hours.

But it didnt. The Ad spot on thenextweb was occupied by another ad and my Ad didnt make it. I waited for another day but no luck. Contacted BuySellAds over email and Twitter, and they replied back saying theyll investigate the issue and get back.

Waited for another day more, no luck, no reply.

Contacted them again on email and they said theyve already contacted the website team (thenextweb.com) and the Ad should be live soon.

Waited again for a day, no luck, no replies.

By this time I began to doubt about BuySellAds working model. I realized that there is no way to track or confirm whether the Ad you purchased is actually in the queue to get published.

Even the availability mentioned in the Ad details made no sense. Typically they mention 2 out of 3 spots available or X% availability. But since this is plugged in by the publisher manually, I think this can be completely wrong.

Where the model goes wrong is that BuySellAds does not verify these details automatically or manually unless and until an Ad is bought when its already late.

All the Ad details (may be even pricing too) on BuySellAds is not verified and accurate as the publisher can change their mind anytime, even after the ad is bought, and there is nothing one can do.

In my case, I bought the Ad on July 8th with full payment and was promised the Ad would go live in 24 hours. But the email I received stating this was probably an automated email, and had I not checked the publishers website within the first 30 days, I might as well have lost my money.

Now after 6 days of purchase and several emails promising the Ad will go live soon, nothing really worked and I lost my confidence. I demanded a refund and they agreed. (No confirmation or refund yet after 24 hours though, hope it comes through.)

But the moral of the story is that even though BuySellAds has a great inventory and network of Ads, the working model is flawed. The Ad details given in by publishers might be wrong and if they are, there is no way to verify it unless you buy an Ad and screw up. Some of them are right though and there are publishers who make Ads go live instantly when bought. But not all publishers are the same and there is nothing BuySellAds can do about it.

As in my case, the publisher is still selling the unlikely spots on BuySellAds and they havent done anything about it.

In such cases, its better to contact the publishers directly, because there is nothing the middleman is doing except waste your time.

What are your thoughts ?

Join Mani Karthik on Facebook A disappointing experience with BuySellAds was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

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