Advertising on Adbrite a scam?

[jtsmith21]

I just started using adbrite for my proxy site and I wanted to get some cheap advertising for my credit card site. I browsed at the CPC and it was cheap at .02 CPC for one particular site with good US traffic.

I signed up for a one day ad last night. I Looked at the adbrite stats this morning and they are showing 72 clicks.

I went to my AWstats page and saw not a single click from the site I paid. To make sure Awstats was not on crack this morning I went to the site and sure enough my ad was there. I clicked on it and then went to Awstats. Sure enough it showed my click and the website as the proper referrer.

Anyone else notice this with Adbrite? Seems like a scam to me!

~JT

[dolansco]

YES .. with those intersitials , I just pulled them a few hours ago .

I stopped using adbrite before for similar stuff ... but gave them a second chance ( for 24 hours this time ! )

Never again.

[Tia Wood]

JT, have you tried checking your stats up to 48 hours later just in case?

[Adam Dicker]

I have used them before and would not say they are scammers as I always got paid but earnings definitely were not what I expected.

-=DCG=-

[dolansco]

DCG ... weare talking as advertisers , rather than publishers .

[Adam Dicker]

Oops, sorry as advertisers, they stink, I tried that as well.

-=DCG=-

[jtsmith21]

Stats are updated instantly. I saw my click on my own ad right away.

If your talking about the AdBrite stats....they are up to 107 clicks. Awstats shows 1 from this morning.

BTW...Adwords shows 15 clicks and I have exactly 15 clicks showing from google ads. Kudos to google for not being crooks....too bad the CPC is so darn high! Guess you get what you pay for though!

~JT

[jtsmith21]

Well....just called AdBrite. Guy took a look at it and said hmm...the current CTR does look a little high for that site. CTR is 2.58% for the site and now says I have 139 clicks. My stats show 1 click from this morning still.

Guy from AdBrite told me he would get back to me by COB today. We'll see what he has to say then....

[syed]

I have about 5-6 ads running through them and would really want to know what he replies.

[jtsmith21]

The guy told me they would call by 3PM central time and if I was unavailable they would email.

It's quarter after 3.....not holding my breath. I'll call them at 5 if I haven't heard from them.

[jtsmith21]

Okay...finally called them and the same guy I spoke to answered. He said he was typing a reply E-mail right then (he never bothered to call as he said he would). He basically told me that he was passing it on to the abuse department to see what they can find out. He said the site may be doing some kind of click fraud. He said they would look at it tonight and he will E_mail back on Monday and most likely give me a refund.

I had called once before to see if they accepted proxy sites and the girl told me their site review department was offsite and unavailable. This leads me to believe this company is offshoring thier IT....no biggie but I doubt I could ever speak to a real techie if I needed to argue with one.

I don't see how the site in question can commit click fraud without the click showing up on my site. Personally I think they got caught scamming and they are going to refund my money and blame it on the site.

But so far they have been polite and customer service is receptive (although it's blatantly obvious they really don't know what they are talking about).:ohwell: I will give them the benefit of the doubt and report back Monday.

Have a great weekend everyone!

~JT

[Shaggy]

Please let us all know what happens.

[jtsmith21]

Just got off the phone. I will have to say they have very responsive support. No hold times and got the same guy every time. However, they did not have a result from the investigation but went ahead and credited me. He noted that they will probably suspend the site I advertised on if anyone else reports the problem too.

In the end, AdBrite reported 345 clicks and 12k impressions. My stats showed two clicks that day....both were done by me. The site it was advertised on was a legitimate, nice looking site...no fraud there.

The support was not technically saavy as they had no response to my question of how they could be committing click fraud when I saw no clicks? Clicks that go into thin air are new to me :greenwink:

So, he assured me that this was an isolated incident and that if I advertised on a different site this should not happen again. (He probably picked the drop down on their user control panel to turn off fake reports for me:tounge_smile: ) It was only $6 so I am going to try another site for a day and see what happens.

I'll post my reports in a new post tomorrow.

~JT

[jtsmith21]

Just signed up for another one....This time I copied their conversion tracking code and placed it in the default page of my website. So there is no way they can say my stats are lying if they show 300 clicks and zero conversions.

~JT