by · 34 Comments

Boycott LeadImpact Day?

Here ye, here ye!

So I am going to throw this out there to see if it gets any traction. With all the protests going on across the world and the United States, its time for PPC.bz to get in on the action. If we want change, we gotta vote with our wallets.

For those unfamiliar with LeadImpact, it is a PPV platform similar to MediaTraffic and Trafficvance.

Why Boycott LeadImpact Day?

  • 1. Outrageous Click Discrepancies – What LeadImpact bills you for and what they actually deliver is the biggest gripe among many of its advertisers. A 20% click discrepancy is not uncommon, while 10% or so is the norm. Some people are reporting discrepancies as high as 25-30%. This is fraud of the highest order!
  • 2. Obscene Minimum Bids – Yes, it’s their platform and they can charge what they want. But Trafficvance, a platform with significantly better traffic quality, only requires a 1 cent minimum bid. LeadImpact’s bare minimum is 1.5 cents, but some categories go as high as 2.3 cents (just a minimum – there doesn’t even need to be competition), and others even higher (maybe, the highest I’ve seen is 2.3)

    So yeah, it’s their platform and they can do what they want. But when you combine their click discrepancies with the minimum bids, it’s a pretty amazing feat to get a profitable campaign going there.

  • 3. Approval Process – LeadImpact requires some pretty outrageous disclaimers on advertiser’s landing pages that kills conversions. This has never happened to me but its been reported by others.

How Can I Support the Cause
Leave your feedback in the comments, and if you support the cause, along with your daily spend in terms of $xx, $xxx, etc so we can have a rough estimate of how this will effect LeadImpact. You may also call me a tard and stupid turd if you think this boycott is utter nonsense.

What Are Our Demands
1. Fix the issue with click discrepancies because it’s fucking ridiculous.
2. Lower the minimum bid price.
3. If you have other demands leave it in the comments.

Is there a set date?
No. If this idea gets any traction then a date will be set.

But won’t people just run their campaigns while everyone else is pausing
Probably. But those people are scumbags.

Is anyone that’s actually spending big at LeadImpact going to follow through with this?
I don’t know. That’s why this post is here.

Will This Even Work?
Who knows. I don’t know what % of their revenue is made up of affiliates and what % is brand advertisers, nor what % they run internally.

Am I Just Being a Bitch
Absolutely. But if this actually worked, most advertisers should be happy with the results.

  • Jackass

    You are a joke. I’ve gotten a lot of profitable campaigns on there. Why decrease bids and let newbies jump in? (although I’ll admit their international inventory is a bit on the expensive side due to minimum bids)

    And another point, why do you try to act like you are a god at affiliate marketing? I saw your tweet that you use hostgater hosting, lol wtf? That shits peasant. You must not push any volume.

    • 1) JEALOUS. For one, their minimum bids have no effect on newbies jumping in. If you wanted to prevent that problem, you’d increase their minimum deposit. Next, competition would drive up bid prices… but then they’d just go up to what their minimum bids are now anyway.

      2) Everyone keeps breaking my balls about Hostgator. I only have it for this blog and random / temp sites. Give me some credit people.

      • My Country

        I used to spend 4 fig’s a day ad-spend on a $2.99 a month godaddy account.

        • Ralph

          me too!

          • I run a $50k+ a month full-time affiliate business on HostGator shared hosting and despite what everyone says, have never had a problem.

            Spend more if you want, but don’t hate others who do just fine putting the difference into their ad spend!

            Cheers

    • Damn, I’m getting “Hater Envy” nobody comments with so much hate on my blog and about my tweets… Damn, you must be doing *something* right.

    • conv3rsion

      I have several dedicated servers, vps boxes, and shared hosting plans with 4 different providers.

      hostgator is fine, people rag on it because they try to run 202 or ppv to a shared host. its great for cheap shared hosting and ok for vps

      also fuck off.

  • Adam

    100% agree with this. I’m currently facing a click discrepancy of around 25% on a daily basis and the international minimum bids are a total joke. 0.022 for most countries in major categories makes it difficult to work it. BOYCOTT!

  • Hannah

    I totally agree, but don’t spend too much with Lead Impact (never do 4 figures/day with them) so it wouldn’t make too big a difference.

    Plus their interface sucks so many balls. And their support is just about non existant.

    Basically literally everything about lead impact sucks, except the fact that the traffic converts.

  • Fuck em.. id rather use TV instead anyways… LI traffic is garbage.

  • Jun

    Low $xxxx/day with them now. Dunno I’d need to see a few more people do this. I think something around the mid 5 figure collective mark might catch their attention.

  • A99 Operation LeadImpact Rebellion – Communication #1

  • James

    Their traffic actually converts better then traffic vance and there issue with the clicks is they told me my tracking was off and that I could not use any third party tracking platform to run stats against. Spending low xxx/day.

  • ace

    agreed, they are god fucking awful but they do have some volume. i can understand why they don’t list a phone number on their contact page.

  • Pingback: 15% Discrepancy b/t leadimpact vs. CPVLab Impressions. Normal? - CPV Den Members Forum()

  • Josh

    Barman this is like the gas station boycott situation. 1 day isn’t gonna do shit. Although I totally get what you’re saying and I hate Lead Impact as well. TIP: Just mark all your campaigns as “Lifestyle, Other” and they’ll all start at .015 lol.

    Yeah the click discrepancies piss me off a lot too. Also they pop on their users SO much. I have Hotbar installed and I feel like they’ve subconsciously trained me to just hit x on the pop no matter what since they come in so often.

    I’ve been trying to get into TV but I haven’t had any luck with getting a referral yet. It sucks. Wanna help me boycott LI by giving me a ref? :P

  • Joseph

    Same — low $xxxx/day. Email me if this takes off.

  • Napolean

    It makes sense to boycott things like companies that are near monopolies who take advantage of people who dont have other choices.

    But boycotting an advertising network doesnt make a lot of sense to me. If they were so bad to warrant a boycott, how are they even in business today? Somebody has to think their service is worth the money if they pay the higher prices.

    If you really want to teach them a lesson, then instead of banding together to not use their services, band together to create your own network and compete with them. If they are running their business so horribly, and are still successful, then how hard can it be?

    • thats like, a lot of work, man

      • Napolean

        pffft, is not.

        step 1: slap openx on a server
        step 2: pay a bunch of bloggers net-90 to put ads on blogs
        step 3: charge a bunch of affiliates for ad space on blogs
        step 4: ????
        step 5: profit

        • if only it were that easy :) and anyway, it costs a ton of money… are you sure you’re getting profit?:)

    • Tracy

      Yeah, that’s a cool long term plan, but right now, LI provides a lot of converting traffic, and they’re total bastards about it. That needs to change.

  • LI can suck me off

    Hey barman,

    legit statements here you speaking the truth no doubt. I for one on one of my gaming campaign have seen click discrepancies of 70-80% with reports of 2000 views and only 1200 showing up in my network stats.

    It’s bulllshit, plus their auto bidding does not work and the bugs, man the bugs are horrible. Not to mention the continuous downtime where your campaigns are still running and you can not do anything about it.

    Amen Barman

    • The auto-bidder is a royal joke.

  • I would be in support of it if I thought it was going to do anything. If we got enough people in here to really make a dent for a day I might jump in.

    I totally agree that their minimum bids are BS, I’ve seen as high as 3.5c mins on some categories. Besides, changing it by category in the first place is BS. That’s not even my main gripe with them.

    My main gripe is with keywords. I’ve had them kill keywords out of the blue that I’ve spent $xx,xxx on with no issues. Just gone out of my account, and then when I email and call them to get it back, they ended up disapproving my entire LP.

    Another gripe is the LP thing. I have personally had them make me add a disclaimer and completely change the nature that I was marketing my offer. Pissed me off. I wasn’t misleading anybody, scamming, phishing, or anything like that. It’s completely uncalled for.

    And finally, their approval times and the lack of a personal rep are complete BS. How they got to be one of the leading PPV networks with such bad customer service is beyond me.

    Currently spending $x,xxx a day on LI.

  • james

    i am seriously looking to ship out from LI.

    Apart from TV, which other cpv networks are the shitzles?
    Yes i said shitzle.

  • taimoor

    i too bailed out after wasting x,xxx on testing.

  • Tracy

    I’d definitely support this if I thought that it would make a difference. They are super shady and irritating.

  • Lee

    I get 30% discrepancy on a good day.

  • Are you sure that this boycott will make an impact and it will change a thing on LeadImpact? I’m not against boycotting LeadImpact but I’m still searching for enough reasons if this campaign will really work, eh.

  • radical

    Not only do I get click discrepancy but they shut down my campaigns so that they can run themselves and cut us affiliate outs after we spend thousands on finding the data for them/

    Fuck leadimpact. I just shut off my budget with them. I am still making money with them, but I don’t like to support bitches.

  • $500/day , CUT OFF

  • Christopher M. McDonald

    LeadImpact wants Publishers’ Money but Make it Hard for Them to Make Money – see below:

    http://leadimpact1.blogspot.sg/2014/08/leadimpact-wants-publishers-money-but.html