If you’re looking into marketing with an ad network, please take my experience as a guide to making sure you run a successful campaign with the network of your choice.

In this case, it’s not the campaign we ran, but the company we ran it with…ValueClick. ValueClick began in 1998 and states in their ‘About Us’, “ValueClick’s experienced team provides advertisers and publishers solutions which:

• Generate maximum return on investment
• Reach lifelong customers globally
• Deliver quality leads
• Build brand awareness and preference
• Utilize all online channels to reach audiences

About a month ago or so, we began our campaign with ValueClick as our sales rep told us that with no problem, they would be able to deliver quality leads and drive qualified traffic to our offer (financial service). Everything looked promising and $10k upfront seemed reasonable for what they promised out of the campaign.

The campaign was launched and the leads did in fact come in. ValueClick decided to start the campaign on a Friday (leaving us no room to stop the campaign with a 72 hour clause during the weekend), and approximately 300 leads or so came in over the course of the next few days. As marketers our eyes lit up, and we thought: “that’s it, our client is going to love us!”

The results were in…and they were horrific! Nearly EVERYONE (i.e. 99%) our client had called (and they did call all the leads, unfortunately for us) said they were filling out what they either thought was a survey to win a prize, had no idea what our client was offering, stated they never filled anything out of that sort, et cetera.

We went back to our sales rep at ValueClick with this information and they were good at spinning the story saying leads are a sensitive issue and must be called right away. Even with a written log from our client detailing the nature of the “leads”, it wasn’t enough.

We decided adding more fields would qualify the traffic more but here comes the big punch which we failed to notice ourselves, but — most importantly and dishonestly — was never pointed out by ValueClick. ALL TRAFFIC DRIVEN TO OUR OFFER HAD PRE-POPULATED INFORMATION AND WAS INCENTIVED TRAFFIC!

ValueClick generates leads from sites such as http://www.myshoppersrewards.com/ and according to Scott Spaulding, director of sales at ValueClick, this is in no way incentivized traffic but “promotional traffic.” No matter how many fields you would add to the existing offer, but lead would be QUALIFIED…this traffic is all driven by the fact the user thinks they will get a free item by filling out the information in the offers which most put wrong names, phone numbers, etc and even the right information sometimes not having a clue about the offer, but wanting the free item. In this case, by filling out all the information, you would get a free Razor phone.

We kept insisting this is incentivized traffic and our offer simply wouldn’t work using this method which was never made clear to us or even spoken about, but they (Scott Spaulding) insisted it is not incentivized traffic. I’ll quote the website:

“To receive the incentive gift you must: 1) Register with valid information; 2) Complete the user survey; 3) Complete at least two (2) Silver offers Page, two (2) Gold offers Page, and two (2) Platinum offers Page; and 4) Refer one (1) unique household that also must complete these requirements. Purchase may be required. Purchase may be required. Please read Terms & Conditions for details. Upon completion of all requirements, we will ship the incentive gift to you with free shipping.”

Can it get more incentivized than that?!? ValueClick still held the position that they do not drive incentivized traffic and refused to reply to our emails demanding a full refund. Several days later, we were notified that a partial refund would be given, but we were provided no explanation as to how they arrived at the monetary figure. No reason was provided as to why a full refund wasn’t being issued. And no comments were provided regarding our complaints about incentivized traffic. All email follow-ups to Scott Spaulding and his salesman Lee Jones went unanswered. Our only conclusion was that they held back a portion of our 10K for the BOGUS LEADS they generated.

Instead of doing right by their new clients and accepting the fact this wasn’t a fair way to generate leads for our offer, they made us foot the bill for their valueless leads. A public company of this magnitude (or any company for that matter) should never leave their clients in this precarious position. It is a truly embarrassing and disappointing experience.

If anyone from ValueClick has the courage to come out and point out that the site talked about in this article isn’t incentivized traffic, I will take all this back and become a ValueClick evangelist…

WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN CHOOSING AN AD NETWORK?

1. Experience- Before starting a campaign with an ad network, really try to find someone who has run a campaign before, and who is willing to share their experience with you. It’ll be the most valuable aspect of your research in choosing which ad network to try.

2. Traffic Sources- Extremely important you find out and make sure how traffic will be driven to your offer.

3. CPA/CPC/CPM Basis- Try finding out what the ad network of your choice offers. They may be able to charge you per lead or per click, and it’s important you calculate which one would generate a better ROI for your campaign.

Pablo Palatnik is Managing Partner of eTrend Media Group, which specializes in Pay-Per-Click Management & Lead Generation.