13 replies to this topic

[alan]

I did some searching based on certain keywords on Google and found a site at #2 that is quite related to what I sell. The site's topic is Self Help. I sell self help hypnosis programs, so I'm sure that you can see the connection.

Their home page is a PR6, as are most of their inner pages. They were willing to sell a 60 x 468 banner at the top of their home page for $200.00 per month. They claim 7000 unique visitors daily. So I figured that my PR4 site would both get a boost for ranking purposes, as well as a lot of click-thru traffic - the best of both worlds.

So I told them I was interested in the home page banner, and two other banners. Of course there is a catch, there always is. When I clicked the existing banner on their home page, the one that I would be replacing, it didn't go to the site that was advertising. It went to another page (PR0) on the site were the banner was placed (problem number 1). That page basically said (I'm paraphrasing here): STOP, YOU ARE LEAVING OUR SITE. WE DON'T ASSUME ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU IF YOU LEAVE OUR SITE AND GO TO SOME OTHER SITE. ARE YOU SURE THAT YOU WANT TO LEAVE OUR SITE? (Big, big problem #2)

When I spoke to the site owner, she poo-pooed my issues with their policy and said to take it or leave it because it's their policy (To charge someone $200.00 per month for a banner, and then try to talk whoever clicks it into NOT going to the advertiser's site.) So I told her I would leave it.

Am I stupid and unreasonable? Because to me it's like selling a food company the use of a billboard on the highway, but then the company that owns the billboard plasters across the customer's ad: "Don't buy this food because it will poison you!"

Would someone please either confirm or deny my sainty on this issue? Has anyone every heard of this nonsense? What would you have done?

[lisety]

I think you did the right thing to leave. They weren't being up front with their service and obviously you would get a much smaller click through rate.

[qwerty]

I wouldn't expect a banner ad to boost your rankings, but that's neither here nor there. It should link to your site, or it's completely useless. If they're telling their readers it's potentially unwise to go to your site, that's not much of an advertisement.

Since you probably wouldn't get a ranking benefit from this, if you still wanted the ad just for the traffic you could tell them that they can put a title attribute of something like "off-site link" on the banner, and even run the link through a jump script. All of that would still be ok in my opinion. But "STOP"? Forget about it.

[Randy]

Put simply, I wouldn't give them a dime. And my stance has nothing to do with any potential link popularity transfer.

It has everything to do with user reaction. If you're buying and ad you're buying an ad. To put that kind of sinister blocker in the middle of the mix makes the ad useless.

[bullet_prove]

gosh..you are in a big trouble, did you ever asked about their policy before? I'm just saw this situation as unfair deal for you.

I got no experience on this type of deal, but for me you should know more about their policy.

[Michael Martinez]

I agree that you made a good choice in not taking a banner contract with the site because of their policy. However, I'm a little concerned about your method of choosing sites for banners.

Their home page is a PR6, as are most of their inner pages. They were willing to sell a 60 x 468 banner at the top of their home page for $200.00 per month. They claim 7000 unique visitors daily. So I figured that my PR4 site would both get a boost for ranking purposes, as well as a lot of click-thru traffic - the best of both worlds.

Toolbar PR tells you nothing useful about whether a site should be helpful with your advertising. You should be identifying the keywords that people use to find content like yours and then contacting the sites that rank highly for those expressions regardless of what their toolbar PR values are.

It's bad enough that people waste their time looking at Toolbar PR when they seek out links, but looking at PageRank of any form whatsoever for selecting advertising just makes no sense at all. Banner advertising is about visibility, not PageRank.

A site is a good candidate for banner placement if:

• The page(s) where your banner(s) will be displayed are high traffic pages
• Your banners dominate the on-page advertising
• The page(s) where your banner(s) will be displayed are highly relevant
• The reporting mechnism is reasonable to you
• The cost is reasonable to you

[rolf]

I think you did the right thing. The setup suggests a really crappy attitude towards their business partnerships, further reinforced by their response to your questions. Personally, it woud have to be a really amazing deal for me to even consider dealing with people like that.

[alan]

However, I'm a little concerned about your method of choosing sites for banners.
Toolbar PR tells you nothing useful about whether a site should be helpful with your advertising. You should be identifying the keywords that people use to find content like yours and then contacting the sites that rank highly for those expressions regardless of what their toolbar PR values are.

Hi Michael and everyone else. Thank you all for confirming my sainty.

As I said in my original post: "I did some searching based on certain keywords on Google and found a site at #2 that is quite related to what I sell."

The keywords that I they rank #2 for are "self help" so that is definately the right type of site & audience for my site. The owner of the site poo-pooed me when I told her that her redirect would eliminate any PR benefits to my site.

And when I complained about the warning about leaving her site and going to mine, she said that I was grasping at straws with my objections to her "offer."

I was born at night, but it wasn't last night.

[Jill]

Am I stupid and unreasonable? Because to me it's like selling a food company the use of a billboard on the highway, but then the company that owns the billboard plasters across the customer's ad: "Don't buy this food because it will poison you!"

No, you're not stupid and unreasonable, just the opposite. They on the other hand...

[qwerty]

Of course, if her offer is so very valuable, she won't mind giving you contact information for companies that have previously advertised under the same system, and they can show you some reliable documentation showing an increase in traffic and conversions.

Then again, they'd probably still be advertising there if that were the case

[Christopher]

I second exactly what Jill said.. I've never heard of such a thing.. heh.

[MaKa]

I was born at night, but it wasn't last night.

That made me

and your still sane IMHO.

[alan]

Thank you everyone for your opinions. I honestly feel better because the way the lady who owns the big popular site acted, I felt like she was saying that I'm some sort of idiot.

[LeftoverJoe]

Alan - that does seem to be an aggressive sales technique used by less than reputable vendors. Being pushy and implying that you are uninformed or stupid...I am glad you thought twice and asked around.