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BAD Experience with AdBrite: PPC Ad Network Reviews Part 5

AdBrite is actually a CPM ad network (you pay for impressions, not clicks) so it’s not PPC but I will share my horrible experiences with them anyway since I tested AdBrite along with the other PPC systems in this series.

I setup an account with them several months ago and put in a very low CPM price for a single ad - at the time my maximum amount was too low to run anything on their partner sites, so nothing really happened. Since nothing was happening, I sort of forgot about my ad in their system.

Fast forward a few months later - I saw a massive amount of traffic to our site. I looked at the stats to try to figure out where it was all coming from and the referrers were all strange foreign sites (lots of Korean sites) - hundreds of them - most looked like foreign versions of MFA sites - some were not even sites, but cloaked pages, non-pages, ad pages, frames - just complete garbage. But they were sending our site a ridiculous amount of traffic.

Confused, I started digging deeper and logged into my AdBrite account. Lo and behold, my ads had gone active 3 days ago and I was being charged $100 per day for a total of $300. So I went from $0/day and 0 visitors to $100/day (my maximum) and thousands of visitors.

I called AdBrite and they told me that they had just changed some things in their system to “allow more exposure for our advertisers”. I asked them to refund my money since I was not told about this change, and all the traffic I had received was from spammy sites. They sent me the following response:

I spoke with you today regarding the clicks your ad received. We upgraded our system to optimize the ad servers and on Thursday we introduced those new filters, which is why you saw the increase in traffic. Looking at your network, it doesn’t look like there was any fraudulent activity going on, but you can send us any statistics and sites that you would like us to review. Let us know if you have any further questions.

I then proceeded to study my stats and make screenshots of the reports. Fun facts: A lot of the top referrers were not even websites but blank pages, 100% ad pages, redirects, etc. 50% of the traffic was coming from a single IP in Korea! When I contacted AdBrite again with the stats, they referred me to their quality control department and asked me to provide specifics, which I did. This was August 21st.

I followed up several times with them and was told that they were investigating the matter. One whole month later on September 22nd, I received the following email:

Thanks for writing. We have concluded the necessary research for the network ad in question. There was total of $101.64 invalid clicks generated in your network campaign. The invalid clicks has been refunded back to your credit card as requested.

So after a whole month of “investigation” I only got 1/3 of my money back. The methods they used to determine clicks? Who knows. Needless to say, I am not happy. My opinion of AdBrite: STAY AWAY FROM THEM.

As a bonus, on the bottom of their emails they usually had the following:

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: DFU-######
Department: Online Support
Priority: Low
Status: Closed

So I’m glad they considered my click fraud request LOW priority and considered it CLOSED even before it was resolved.

September 25, 2006 · Filed under marketing, pay per click

Kevin said,

September 26, 2006 @ 4:50 pm

In order to prevent this in the future, you might want to try using AdBrite’s Geo Targeting.

I

Markus said,

September 26, 2006 @ 5:06 pm

Oh, you can rest assured there will be no “in the future” with AdBrite.

Allen said,

September 27, 2006 @ 8:07 pm

I have tried adbrite on both publisher and advertiser sides and must say that the experience was horrible. Their admin interface is pityful and half of the time I have no idea what I bought or sold. No idea how to turn things off, etc. So as Markus says, there will no “in the future” for me either.

Very unfortunate too.

Junk Clicks from Adbrite Content Ad Network « Webmaster Outsourcing said,

October 13, 2006 @ 3:17 am

[...] Here’s another very informative blog posting, where the author describes a similar bad experience with adbrite PPC network ads. [...]

danny said,

October 13, 2006 @ 3:25 am

I can report a very similar bad experience with the Adbrite network ads. They run ads on junkie high traffic file hosting sites like 2kdown.com and badongo.net, and charge $.15 per click from them. The traffic is very low quality, and as far as I can tell there is no option at all to block sites.

takaru said,

March 27, 2007 @ 2:24 am

You have a very good review on adwords, adbrites and so on. Recently, I came across this Kumomo.com which allow users to buy and sell ad space online for free. Maybe you should have a look and tell us how is it doing. I understand that they are using booking system to book an ad space.

Peter said,

May 4, 2007 @ 8:38 pm

I must agree, I have bad experiences with Adbrite too, their web administration is not really online, their actions always need review, that means LONG time… adbrite NEVER AGAIN… NEVER AGAIN!

Peter said,

May 4, 2007 @ 8:42 pm

And yes, their traffic is really junk… its true

Marc Klein said,

June 2, 2007 @ 1:54 pm

You really got into the detail for many ad marketing providers. Every ad system has its pros and cons. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

I have joined the AdBrite market place some time ago. As I have recently noticed, they have removed my website PIXEL TEMPLATES (Category: Arts & Entertainment > Visual Arts) from their site directory. That doesn’t make any sense, thus advertisers will never find me on their advertising platform. So, it is getting difficult for me as a publisher to reach potential advertisers. Until now, I have not received any response from AdBrite on this concern. I believe they fear I would get too many free leads from people browsing their site directory. Secondly, AdBrite does no longer display any ads on my website. This said, their slogan “Monetize your website with AdBrite” does not apply.

I have posted some comments directly on my website.

http://www.pixel-templates.com/about/

And yes, it’s true. Their Site Directory contains a lot of junk, fake and adult websites. However, if more and more interesting blog sites and informative websites will jump-in, this could become an interesting alternative to Google, Yahoo and other CPC advertising systems.

I especially like the idea of flat rate ads and CPM ads, since the thread of click fraud is non-existent for these advertising methods. Being able to define your own pricing structure as a publisher is much more liberal and makes this marketplace more dynamic than any other advertising platform out there.

graphically & sincerely,

Marc Klein

There is another article posted on Graywolf’s SEO blog:
http://www.wolf-howl.com/22/adbrite-review/

Eric said,

August 5, 2007 @ 10:16 am

I put adbrite up on my website in hopes to promote it. A couple things to note: many of the websites that my ad was on, were JUNK sites or were on a .RU (Russian) domain, which would redirect to a .COM. Many of these websites didn’t even have ads on them when I went and manually looked. Several more had “Page coming soon” links throughout the site. Who knows where the traffic was actually coming from (Note the above post about the trojan). The bottom line: ADBRITE IS A SCAM - AVOID THIS AT ALL COST!

Roy said,

September 12, 2007 @ 11:02 am

They charged me for 100’s of clicks on the first of the month. Funny part is my campaign has been deleted since the middle of last month. No response from them yet!

Funds Zine said,

September 27, 2007 @ 2:02 pm

Check my test with AdBrite:

http://fundszine.com/77-adbrite-fraudulent-publishers/
http://fundszine.com/83-adbrite-fraudulent-publishers-the-results/
http://fundszine.com/85-adbrite-fraudulent-publishers-the-conclusion/

I also was spammed by various fraudulent publishers when running my CPM campaign.
I hope it will be helpful for anybody who is looking to work with AdBrite.

Malcolm Lambe said,

October 29, 2007 @ 3:43 pm

Early this month I bought what I thought was two weeks of advertising with Adbrite text ads on one site for $20. Their stats say I had 100 clicks. I bought what I thought was two weeks - the invoice said “Your ad will run for 14 consecutive days” but buried below that was “recurrent until cancelled”. HuH? how can they advertise “14 days of advertising” and keep billing you? Gross misrepresentation if ever I saw one. They took another $20 out of my credit card the other day. When I logged into my account it says “no campaign current” so I couldn’t cancel anything anyway. It takes 9 steps (count them) to cancel your spots and then you have to send them an email on their “Contact us” - which they never reply to even though the auto response tagged it as “Urgent”. I’m still waiting for a reply to my second email demanding a refund. TOTAL BUNCH OF CROOKS and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone. Oh yeah…the traffic they sent is torrent sites/porn and Viagra. Well done ADBRITE you bunch of assholes!

Best said,

January 10, 2008 @ 2:52 pm

We published ads on our site from Adbrite for a bit. After a few months we noticed some of the ads weren’t working correctly and once we contacted them about the issue they decided to close our account claiming click fraud and we lost more then $700 in ad revenue. They stated that we must find IP information from our website to prove that these were valid clicks. Of course we have no way of telling which IPs clicked on their ads because they have no tracking included in their service. I don’t know why they couldn’t strip out the fraudulent clicks, if there were any. Basically, we are forced to believe whatever they claim and take the loss. Rest assured, we removed their script and closed our account with them.

Q said,

February 19, 2008 @ 1:41 pm

Hey Best, you have the most recent experience with them. You said you “lost $700″ in ad revenue, do you mean you had to pay them or your monthly/weekly/daily revenue just decreased by $700?

Thanks for your help

Wrestling News said,

March 4, 2008 @ 2:13 pm

Simple thing to get around this is to select the exact sites you want to advertise on with Adbrite.

Lukas said,

April 2, 2008 @ 11:00 pm

Very confusing, so what is the best CPC beside adsense?

Andrew said,

April 3, 2008 @ 1:47 pm

Ouch! That sounds really bad. And I just signed up with AdBrite as a publisher, since AdSense isn’t an option for me. I wonder…

purnima said,

April 29, 2008 @ 5:26 am

Hey Best, you have the most recent experience with them.

purnima

———————

See how pwc’s looked at the internal audit

http://www.auditqualitypwc.blogspot.com/

purnima said,

April 29, 2008 @ 10:50 pm

Their admin interface is pityful and half of the time I have no idea what I bought or sold.

purnima

——————-

we can find a very good job with no scam

http://www.bestjobs4you.blogspot.com

Tanya said,

May 9, 2008 @ 12:18 am

I decided to try AdBrite and I was appalled when I woke up the next day to find that they went ahead and put graphic porn ads on my non-adult websites. They have not provided any explanation, so I immediately changed my ads back to Google.

jason said,

June 2, 2008 @ 8:42 am

adbrite generates nothing but tonnes of worthless traffic, you pay for nothing. I will stick to adword although they are charging us a crazy fees, but bottomline is that adword works!

shelley said,

June 4, 2008 @ 3:01 pm

i was scammed too by adbrite,,,assholes are constantly taking or trying to take money off my card..anyone have any ideas on how too get this money bk or who process,s there credit card stuff

Omar said,

July 4, 2008 @ 6:38 pm

Adbrite advertising is a joke, not worth the money.
what is the sense of getting 2000 visitors/day and 0 conversion. that tells you it’s all fraud or junk automated traffic not seen by humans.

john said,

July 29, 2008 @ 12:29 am

I too, had a bad experience with adbrite as a publisher. Stay away from them!

Eric said,

August 9, 2008 @ 2:59 am

Unfortunately i don’t have a success story but i will tell you my own experience with them.
In short, Adbrite ripped me off!!! I decided to give them a try and advertise my website in their marketplace and after i signed up and created my campaign then a while later i was trying to do some edits and i paused it but even though i did they kept charging my credit card for over 3 days after and i e-mailed their support million of times to get a refund with no use :(
Moreover, the quality of traffic they bring is useless cheap junk traffic.

Whether you are going to advertise in their marketplace or monetize your website traffic..Do yourself a favor and STAY AWAY FROM THEM!

Lament said,

August 12, 2008 @ 11:58 pm

Abdrite is 50% good and 50% unknown….They did take away lot of my clicks for unknown reason and I completely stopped using their service…6 months later they send me my 500$ paycheck which I just received today…Maybe they want me back but I am not going back to them until google adsense bans me for life..

Andy said,

August 23, 2008 @ 2:20 pm

Adbrite is JOKE. I had a publisher account with them. I have a site which is targeted to Indian customers and the site has ONLY and ONLY Indian visitors since the TLD is .in
I get on an average 35 unique visitors (Approximately 1000 UV a month). My traffic generated $2 in month of May, $3 in June and then around $1.50 in July. Needless to say that it sucked to see such a low conversion. Never mind, since beginning of August, the ads disappeared from my site. I waited for 3 weeks and finally contacted Adbrite to know whats wrong.
They replied back saying, my account was flagged since a lot of false impressions and clicks were generated on my account.
I really laughed like hell. What kind of idiots would say that a lot of false impressions and clicks were generated looking at the revenue I earned for 3 months …
They asked for my 3 months stats alongwith information about refers and IPs that visited my site. Not only that, they asked me to send them a copy of my driving license or Passport and latest utility bill.
I told them to kiss my ass .. they replied : Since you were unable to provide any proof, your account will not be re-activated. I again replied back that take those $5 up their cheeks. Finally they got the message.
Adbrite sucks like anything. I don’t care about losing money, but I am so pissed about being called a cheat/fraud. Man, do they even use their brain at all before sending such nonsense statements??
I mean, with 1000 uniques a month and a few clicks, I earned $2 and they crying about that too .. What a shame!
Adbrite sucks badly!!

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