LookSmart PPC

need advise

[tomasz]

I just want to know if this is worth if any one out there used them before.

[wildbest]

We have used them and we gave up 1 year ago. Massive amount of fraudulent clicks and no conversions. You may have a better experience though.

[GameMasterM]

I would gladly open an account if I could direct my ad to particular verticals within their network. I don't really want my ads in Search123 or some of their other partner sites. One partner I do like is Local.com.

[wsm2006]

I had the opportunity to speak with LookSmart's CEO David Hills a few weeks ago. He admitted that click-fraud was an issue in the past but he said (snippet from my article) “We’ve developed some good systems and a good understanding of our vertical… we’ve dealth with it (click fraud) decisively.”

I think they have indeed made some headway. The integration of the 161 verticals make ad clicks much more targeted and they do in fact (after a little work) enable you to drill down and advertise to the niche vertical.

[edited by: seth_wilde at 7:16 pm (utc) on Feb. 17, 2006]

[Houndstooth]

I have a some of my larger programs live on Looksmart. They try very hard to optimize the program on their end, turning on or off partners as needed.

[hal12b]

Tried them about a year ago.. complete crap. $500 was depleted and not one conversion. Luckily this was for my old pain in the you know what employer!

[GameMasterM]

I read this today on another forum, the annual report from LookSmart states this. (not confirmed)

"Revenues from affiliates are earned on a per-sale basis or as a percentage of sales rather than a per-click basis. Revenue is recognized in the period in which a merchant finalizes a sale and reports to us via our affiliate network."

Can someone explain this? Is it new and if so how can this be a bad thing for me? Is this a run of network offering?

[tbird]

We've had plent of sales from Looksmart, but in the end the ROI was extremely low. If you call them, they can adjust which of their distribution partners your ads appear on. They have some very scummy partners.