AuctionAds - Great concept, needs some work
First off, I love the idea behind AuctionAds. I have talked to Jeremy a bit and know more than I probably should about how their system works. At this point, however, I'm discontinuing my use of the service.
For some sites, it's not a big deal to display whatever shows up. For a commercial site, that's not the case.
Our theory was simple. If someone searches on ToolBarn.com for a phrase where we have zero results, show them AuctionAds results to try monetizing that traffic. On the surface, it sounded great.
When we started getting complaints on some of the results, we started digging a little deeper. The tests I had done last week were all fairly decent. Talking with Jeremy, I understand that queries that don't get done too often won't have decent results. But when results like pictured below started to show up, I had to pull the plug.
Since it's tough to see, here's a zoom on the block in question.
Now, I don't know how many sites have had a similar idea, or even how many sites that run AuctionAds would see that and think "This isn't good", but ToolBarn.com is one such site. I've already had a discussion with Jeremy about why we're removing those ads and what is needed to fix that so we could put it back on, but they're going to need to get their new hardware up and running first so it may be a few weeks.
I certainly hope they can get this resolved soon, because the program has great potential. But as it stands, I don't feel that a commercial site can use it.
For some sites, it's not a big deal to display whatever shows up. For a commercial site, that's not the case.
Our theory was simple. If someone searches on ToolBarn.com for a phrase where we have zero results, show them AuctionAds results to try monetizing that traffic. On the surface, it sounded great.
When we started getting complaints on some of the results, we started digging a little deeper. The tests I had done last week were all fairly decent. Talking with Jeremy, I understand that queries that don't get done too often won't have decent results. But when results like pictured below started to show up, I had to pull the plug.
Since it's tough to see, here's a zoom on the block in question.
Now, I don't know how many sites have had a similar idea, or even how many sites that run AuctionAds would see that and think "This isn't good", but ToolBarn.com is one such site. I've already had a discussion with Jeremy about why we're removing those ads and what is needed to fix that so we could put it back on, but they're going to need to get their new hardware up and running first so it may be a few weeks.
I certainly hope they can get this resolved soon, because the program has great potential. But as it stands, I don't feel that a commercial site can use it.
Comments