Filtering in PPP Does not filter Blogger Powered Blogs - Just blogspot domains
by
Brett Bumeter
It has been a while since I ran a marketing campaign through PayPerPost. I returned to try the service this week and did find many improvements from my past ventures with the company.
I found many many more improvements in SocialSpark, which I’ll discuss in a separate future series.
As I ran a campaign for a client, I made the determination that we needed to block blogs with .blogspot domains. I do feel that there are many very good ‘Blogger’ blogs out there, but as a general practice, they are far out numbered by less than desirable blogs on blogger. So as I was spending my clients funds, I did not gamble, nor did I hand select the blogs that we would run campaigns on as that level of consultation was not in this budget.
Two Less than Obvious Issues
One of the historical challenges with running campaigns on the old PPP system (some of which has been addressed in SocialSpark), is that when you select a check box or a category to filter on, you do not always get what you expect.
The WYSIWYG factor at PPP has always been confounded by the numerous levels of human subjectivity from the bloggers that think their sites are about one thing, and subjectively label it that way, to the PPP reviewers who either subjectively agree or subjectively disagree, to the advertisers that have one notion about a categories subjective meaning to the actual readers of the site who have yet an additional one. These interpretations sometimes line up very well, but usually are closer to 180 degree tangents with each other.
That said, I prefer with these campaigns to do my best to trust the bloggers. They usually mean well, and will give a high level of effort and energy in their work for above what they are typically paid by way of marketing funds.
However, it becomes very difficult to set campaign expectations when you do not know what you are going to get until you get it. Its like commissioning an apprentice DaVinci to make a clay pot for you. You never know if it will actually turn out, if it will be a master piece or whether it will look like a child’s mud pie leaking water on the floor.
So that said, here are the two less than obvious issues that I picked up on this week.
- Blocking .blogspot domains doesn’t block Blogger Blogs - When you attempt to block articles from blogs with .blogspot domains, such as some-nifty-blog-name.blogspot.com, you might (incorrectly) expect that you will not see any subsequent articles on blogs that sport blogger themes, are powered by blogger, etc. The thing is that Google owning Blogger sells domain registrations for $10 a year. So a person can set up a blogger blog for free on Google’s blogger in 3 easy steps, and then later (when the blog is successful or hasn’t faded) can convert it to their own domain for $10. For a blogger blogging at PayPerPost, earning $5 - $10 per campaign opportunity, it is a no brainer to convert and thus make your blogger powered blog eligible for those screened ops.
- Blocking Blogs from certain Countries does not Block Blogs written about those countries nor blogs written by bloggers in those countries - On my campaign, I needed to specifically target potential readers in the US, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. I went in and specifically, first checked the continents for these areas, then unchecked all of the countries that PPP, groups on to these areas as in a way that I would not group them (like putting all of the islands of the Pacific Rim on the continent of Australia!). The thing is even after going to all the appropriate checks and unchecks in the system, I still managed to get an article about Indian models, which was neither about the topic category I had required, nor was it remotely within the regions I had targeted. However (loophole here
), the site is hosted through a hosting company, in Utah( HostMonster ) and as such the site resides in the United States and fits within the loose categories allowed in PPP, which in fairness are sometimes corrected by the PPP review team.
So those are the latest two revelations that I’ve picked up there. It is not really something that I think needs to be ‘fixed’ by PPP as they have already essentially rolled out a replacement service in SocialSpark, but for anyone that continues to utilize the PPP tools in situations where SS, doesn’t quite fit, they should realize these limitations of the tool.
That said, for most advertising campaigns that fit on PPP these days from services trying to build buzz about personalized gifts, to press release publications to reviews and introductions to new movies, TV shows, books and more, I do not think it matters. The tool is truly functional at gathering together a macro result by compiling the efforts of a vast microcosm of micro bloggers.
