who do you trust?

From: Chip Canty <ccanty_at_bellatlantic.net>
Date: Mon 02 Oct 2000 15:26:10 -0500

Last week in this forum Michael Martinez detailed his
frustration with Linkshare, which he said grossly
understates affiliate conversions. This week Lourdes
de Llano and Jeff London both slammed as unreliable the
reports produced by DoubleClick's DART system.

And Havah Hope betrayed a similar skepticism in her
suggestion yesterday of a new epinions-like service for
ad buyers.

My question: have we come to expect (and accept)
inaccurate reporting in this industry? By all players,
or just a few?

I'll contribute a fresh example. Yesterday our own
webserver awarded Flycast 5,000 chances to serve a
banner, but Flycast counted just 1,814. Flycast says
it put up paid ads nearly 75% of the time, leaving only
478 default impressions. But we've set up those
default ads to pass through to AdFlight, and AdFlight's
count was nearly 10X as high (4,618).

Now I haven't adjusted for time-zone differences
(Flycast's reports aren't detailed enough), and I know
there will *always* be discrepancies. And no real harm
is being done in our case, since we are getting paid
for every impression, despite Flycast's questionable
reporting.

Still, it makes me wonder. Linkshare, DoubleClick and
Flycast are not small players in the online ad arena.
If we can't trust *their* numbers, whose can we trust?

I don't want to turn this forum into a gripefest,
particularly one that could turn libelous. But I am
surprised, for example, that no one answered Michael
last week re Linkshare. Is it because we as a group
have come to disbelieve such complaints? Or might we
all have doubts, but just can't back them up?

Chip Canty ccanty_at_waypages.com
WAYPAGES PRODUCTIONS www.waypages.com
75 Bailey Street 617-964-9866
Boston, MA 02124 fax 617-964-9989




Received on Mon Oct 02 2000 - 15:26:10 CDT