AOL’s Be On advertising platform is the rebranded former GoViral, which was serving mostly video ads during the past years. Although, GoViral as Be On now, was offering three and sometimes even four times lower CPV (cost per view) than other similar advertising agencies, the quality of its video ads and the accuracy of its services was impeccable. Payments usually arrived on time, a month after a campaign was executed.
But this was back then, when the agency was named GoViral. Since now it is Be On, a lot of things changed.
First and most important, Be On doesn’t pay publishers any more.
For example, New Media Group who is now the publisher of DubaiChronicle.com, experienced Be On’s new non-payment policy two times. Once with invoiced already advertisement placements and once with a new campaign.
An advertising placement completed in May with the then GoViral wasn’t paid as usual during the next month. Moreover, a number of emails regarding the payment sent between August and October remained unanswered.
However, when Be On contacted New Media Group for new regional placements, the first thing the publisher demanded was to be paid the outstanding amount for the previous job. Be On’s advertising manager promised several times in emails to process the request and never did that until today.
Anyway, New Media Group considered the visible web reputation of Be On and despite not being paid, proceeded with a new advertising campaign just not to be paid once again as it later turned out.
How it works?
An advertising manager will contact a publisher via email with a request for advertisement placement. In the New Media Group’s case, the request came in from an email address chloe.ahn@teamaol.com. The person who sends the emails will offer some amount for editorials or video posts. Presumably, the advertising agency needs links to articles and screenshots from websites to show advertisers some activity. But in New Media Group’s case, once the content was published Be On’s representative either did not answered the emails or kept changing the requirements many times. A good five or six working hours were wasted creating and placing ads, providing you are professional and you work very fast, which most bloggers are still not.
And then comes a cold shower!
Be On advertising manager will either not answer emails at all, or will request more changes. The person who writes the emails is not aware of what works online and what doesn’t, in addition it seem he or she doesn’t read the correspondence, because the answers and the requests are inadequate. In some 20 emails, he or she was not able to explain consistently what a publisher must do. This may continue for three or four days until an advertising campaign expires. During this period of time, until a publisher realizes that something wrong is going on, effectively advertises free of charge a third party who pays Be On. For example, New Media Group gave Be On 5000 impressions free of charge in less than 12 hours.
The problem is that while the publisher advertises Be On’s clients, he doesn’t get paid for it. When New Media Group requested a number of times credit to be added to its account, the emails remained unanswered. When New Media Group contacted by phone the UK-based office of Be On, a man explained that the advertising manager in question is not in the office, but works from home and she is not available. When New Media Group contacted via email Be On’s office, shortly received an apologetic email from email address katarzyna.pietrzak@teamaol.com, which was promising and reassuring. However, days have passed and payment was neither credited, nor executed. By the time New Media Group removed all advertisement placements, which by the way is also time consuming, Be On could have shown its clients the links and the screenshots of ads placements on different websites to justify the cost of its services.
For publishers, working with AOL’s Be On, could be a waste of time and resources. The advertising agency sometimes does not pay for ads placements. Wasting hours of hard, precise and highly-skilled work, in addition to developed resources is very disappointing and unproductive for publishers.
Be On looks good online. Its video ads are professionally developed and its clients are large companies from all over the world.
However, as some other advertising agencies, Be On now doesn’t pay publishers or at least did not pay New Media Group. The people who work there disrespect publishers’ efforts and business collaboration with them.
It is not known how Be On manages to attract advertisers, but if it doesn’t pay to reliable publishers to distribute its content, the only way to generate hits for advertisers is by sourcing cheap traffic on the Internet. Such type of web traffic registers impressions from screens, but not from real consumers who act upon advertising.
Publishing and advertising business could be tricky on the Internet….
