Couple of days before, I decided to test AdBrite advertisement services for FundsZine to reach new readers. That was my first experience using CPM type campaign with AdBrite. I used AdBrite before to buy flat rate ads from certain web sites and it worked just fine.

So, I created a new campaign, set maximum bid to $0.05 and maximum daily budget to $5. Not much, but it’s good for a test drive. First day, I’ve got 100 clicks all coming to FundsZine (I expected about that amount of clicks for the money I offer), the second day it was only 13. I was very curious about this big difference, and decided to check statistics of the clicks. To my surprise, I saw zero impressions accompanied by 2-3 clicks from the most of the participating web sites. How is it possible to have zero impressions and some clicks?!

Anyway, some of the publishers who sent me the clicks were registered with non-existing or well-know web-site like General Electric corporate site Non-Existent Publishers. Check the images on the right: one of them shows the list of publishers, and another shows an account of the first publisher (as you can see, it shows very strange data and points to the General Electric corporate site which does not run any of the AdBrite ads)…

I picked up the phone and called AdBrite. I need to admit, that AdBrite’s customer service is quite good. I explained them the situation. They even returned me the call to inform me that they will investigate those publishers and my money will be returned to me for all the fraud clicks. Well, I hope. It seems like they are good guys. The only thing that left the iron taste in my mouth is that the manager did not apologize for the inconvenience… Good thing I ran a very small test, and just spent about $5.50 on my experiment…

If you are publishing with AdBrite and see some strange publisher accounts on your campaign click report, pause the campaign ad call the office. You might’ve paid for clicks that were not clicks produced by humans.

I’ll keep you informed with the situation.

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