I own an online dating related business. Tried publicity on Plentyoffish.com with their new interface which lets you publish ads directly without going thru an intermediary like Google Adsense.
They say that the CTR is 0.15% on their site. I ran a test and the CTR was 0.013%, 10 TIMES less than what they said.
There were no conversions in the Testing period. I won’t bore you with more details, but the customer service guy, someone called Benjamin, suggested that changing creative and images would be good (he agreed that the click thru rate was too low). You would think I had placed ads selling potatoes if I could bump it up by 10X.
In sum-plentyoffish is a scam company. It attracts traffic, but stay away from their custom system of advertising, the 0.15% CTR is an outright lie I challenge them to show data showing it really is that.
I have blocked them from Adwords also.
(I had US$17 left in my account before closing it-when I asked for a refund of that amount, it was not used, this Benjamin sent me a message saying all sales are final. What a bunch of thieves)
Wow, that’s some response to Sangandhi’s original post. Calling ‘plent-o-fish’ a scam is a bit extreme, however, I’m not so sure that Sangandhi should have been put through the mill.
I guess he was just dissappointed with the performance of his ads on POFs site and their easily misundertood statement about CTRs of 0.15%. I can’t imagine how much money he paid for the ads but it must have cost a bit.
Sanjay, legitimate companies don’t guarantee a click-thru ratio. That being said, you should be careful throwing around the word scam. For all we know, your experience with POF could be isolated. Just saying.
Yes, sangandi, post here what your ad looked like. Post what it said. Also, post how many impressions it got. If ads get a really low # of impressions, then it’s difficult to judge performance. How long did the ad run? Long enough for you to get impressions during peak hours? Peak days? Or did you wait only 1 day and panic?
Like most members have said, I don’t see anything that represents they “scammed you”, but merely that your campaign didn’t perform.
This could be due to a lack of proper targetting, poor creative, or simply because your ad isn’t relevant to the market. Dating sites are extremely use based, like a social networking portal, but even more focused. As such for an ad to result in immediate sales you truly need to be relevant to the user and worth disrupting their session. You also need to be seen and have a compelling enough offer. Even if you are in the category it doesn’t mean users care for your service… or your service the way you have spun it (remember, they are a mostly free service).
I’ve run on dating sites at a variety of businesses, at times it’s worked, others have not. But that doesn’t make them scams, it simply means the advertiser must be savvy about the value.
And of course don’t forget that the bigger the site (POF is rather large) the bigger the campaign you need to test a true run of site as you are reaching a broad demographic.
I would suggest you try another site you are more fond of and invest in other creative versions and some demo targetting to see if you can get a better result. If you do then you know POF isn’t for you, if not, well then you have work to do.
If you only tried the ad with Plenty O’ Fish, then that’s a sample size of one. All you did was establish a control, but no variables. Why not start a campaign with a few other sites (especially if you are certain you have a killer ad)? The other sites will be the variables. So when you compare POF to the many, you’ll ascertain whether or not it was a good investment. All compliments of the scientific method.
Tadaaaa!
Might I also wonder out loud if it’s a good plan to advertise a dating site on a different dating site? Aren’t the visitors generally ‘locked in,’ to the one they’re on?
From a quick read of PlentyOfFish, they don’t appear to be guaranteeing their CTR, but just stating the average CTR - which is a pretty standard piece of info to have on advertising info pages.
I agree that 0.013% is a pretty low CTR, but every ad has a different response from users, and it would normally up to the ad buyer to flag up any issues during the test period. The CTR needed for the ad campaign to be profitable is different for everyone and it is up to the advertiser to pick their campaigns wisely.
If you need high click through rates, it may be worth looking into running a CPC or CPA campaign - CPM campaigns do not offer such certainty.
In my years doing internet marketing I have learned that anyone who promises a specific CTR is outright lying. Marketing campaigns DIFFER drastically and are subject and influenced by so many things.