For a wee while I was including Text Link Ads on this site. No more. Despite TechCrunch liking them enough to give them real estate at their place (Mike Arrington has a policy of including companies he likes as ad sponsors. I feel the same way.) TLAs support is dreadful.
For reasons that are still a mystery, the ad code doesn’t work on sites that use Wordpress and have sidebar widgets enabled. The ads just don’t appear. And it doesn’t matter which site theme is selected. Ok – so it’s a problem.
I send an email request for support. No answer. And another email. No answer.
Then an email from support pops into my inbox saying my ad code isn’t there. Email goes back saying I know, explaining the problem – and I’ve asked for help on this but received no answer.
There then follows an exchange of emails where I’m asked if I can manually insert the ads into the sidebar. Apart from the fact this defeats the object of TLA I assume this means the detail code contained in a special file so I do that but it looks awful. I explain this. I’m then directed to the TLA site to see the ads which are supposed to be appearing. I know this already so I explain that maybe they’re missing the point and explain the issue again. (So now I’ve done this 4 times.) Two days later and still no answer. Ads gone.
If I’m giving over real estate to an advertiser, they need to do the right thing when that ad is part of a service offering. And because it is your attention they want, I have the choice as to the actions I take in respect of that service when it doesn’t match what I believe readers expect.
That’s the fundamental difference between this medium and traditional media. Yes, I do want advertisers but it has to be a partnership arrangement. In a traditional media environment, media is beholden to advertisers.
Technorati Tags: client relationships, customer support
