I was approached by a company last year regarding advertising on their online business directory. I’m not going to name the company concerned as it would be quite embarrassing for them and wouldn’t help me much either.

Let me explain why: The offer was a 2 month free trial campaign whereby they were to replace existing Yahoo Search Marketing results that they were displaying in their directory with their own managed sponsored listings.

I was told the company had recently secured several million pounds for future development and advertising. I was also told a selection of statistics regarding various search terms relevant to my site which were all quite attractive. If the stats were accurate, the campaign could have easily paid for itself despite a monthly cost of £940 (£11,280/year).

I said yes to the trail and secured a selection of ‘keywords’ for which my site would appear at the top of the search results. 2 months later after not a great deal of communication there had been what I can only describe as well, 2 clicks. According to my website stats I had had no more than 2 clicks from their site in a 2 month period for search terms that were supposedly used in their thousands each month.

Needless to say I decided not to continue the campaign or make any payments towards it.

Recently I discovered my results are still being displayed.

Certain ‘keywords’ used in this directory still bring up my ‘sponsored’ listing above all the other results!

Sadly, the number of click through rate hasn’t increased by any means and I can only hope the millions in funding they had apparently secured will be used to further develop and expose their directory!

I find this all quite amusing for two reasons.

1. I’m currently getting a little bit of free exposure from the occasional search visitor.
2. A company capable of securing millions in funding can’t keep track of their own marketing campaigns and are currently missing out on the opportunity of selling my ad space to someone else!