NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Royalty Studios - are they legit?
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Royalty Studios - are they legit?
David Thompson (david_at_domainsource.net)
Thu, 9 Jul 1998 13:44:17 -0400
"Mark J. Welch" <markwelch_at_ca-probate.com> asked:
>I just came across a web site called "Royalty Studios"
>which claims to be selling large volumes of advertising
>with demographic targetting and other claims. I had
>never heard of them before.
>
>Has anyone heard of these folks?
>Has anyone had actual business dealings with them?
>Are they legitimate?
>
>
>http://www.royaltystudios.com/advertising/index.html
>
To protect myself legally, the following is just my opinion and is not
intended to defame or slander Royalty Studios in any way. The short
analysis is that I've done some business with them, and I was somewhat
unsatisfied with the results.
I ordered two packages of advertising from them, totaling $500. They
promised a total of 30,000 clickthrus at this price (1.6 cents per
click) on banner ads placed "on their freeweb site" and "in the browser
they distribute".
One of the ads was for a free web acceleration product
(www.webcelerator.com/domainsource/) that normally has a success rate of
about 50% (half of the people who click to the site download the
product). I took a look at the logfiles and saw about a 1% success
rate, which immediately aroused my suspicions. I looked around the
Internet and found that instead of clickthrus on a banner, they were
using a popup window with an advertisement for their hosting services
that used an "onclose" JavaScript to automatically open our product's
site in a new window when the user closed the first popup.
I called Mark Bevins (he and Tim Barker seem to be their main sales
representatives) and he claimed that is was an accident. I repeatedly
asked for some URLs showing the banner ads, and he repeatedly promised
to e-mail them to me. I never received any URLs that showed our banner
ads in use, and because he would not give me a copy of their "browser
software", I was unable to confirm that the ads were running there
either.
I have contacted several others who used them for advertising (ranging
from their $50 package to someone who ordered and later charged back
$4500 worth of advertising) and nobody seems to be able to make a solid
analysis of them. In addition, I attempted to contact some of the groups
that the site lists as investors, and I could only find a listing for
one of them, who denied making an investment in the site.
My recommendation - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is...
If you are curious, make a $50 investment to satisfy your curiosity, but
don't commit any more until you see the results (both in terms of unique
visitors to your site and sales actions resulting from the visitors).
Feel free to contact me if you have more specific questions.
Good luck,
David Thompson
Put a LIVE sales representative on your site 24 hours a day! Increase
consumer comfort, answer their questions, and complete the sale ahead of
your competition with a 24 live operator on your site!
http://www.domainsource.net/live/
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