{"id":144,"date":"2007-11-08T22:25:20","date_gmt":"2007-11-09T03:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/08\/text-link-ads-marginally-improved\/"},"modified":"2009-08-14T15:12:47","modified_gmt":"2009-08-14T20:12:47","slug":"text-link-ads-marginally-improved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/08\/text-link-ads-marginally-improved\/","title":{"rendered":"Text Link Ads Marginally Improved"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly after writing my previous article Text Link Ads Needs Improvement<\/a> which documents my poor experience with Text Link Ads (TLA) I received a generic e-mail from them which explained that, as a current member of TLA, I was invited to try their new ad program<\/em>. A new ad program? I guess they thought they were doing so well that it was time to branch out and repeat their failures in new markets.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the thing I found most interesting about the e-mail from TLA was that it was signed by the president of TLA himself AND it listed his e-mail address. Hmmm… maybe the President would like to hear about my less than stellar experience with his company. So I wrote him a letter…<\/p>\n

\nPatrick Gavin,<\/p>\n

Perhaps you should consider improving the system you currently have before branching out into a new area?<\/p>\n

This blog post…
\ntext-link-ads-needs-improvement<\/a><\/p>\n

…sums up my experience with TLA and shows how a general lack of information is hurting your business model.<\/p>\n

I’d like to try out your advanced services, but not until your standard services are GREATLY improved.<\/p>\n

-Sean <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I didn’t really expect to hear anything back from Mr. Gavin, maybe it was my way of venting, or maybe it was a last ditch effort to rectify the situation. Either way, it was a great surprise to hear back from him within an hour’s time…<\/p>\n

Sean, sorry to hear that, I will check out your post, thx again.<\/p>\n

———————-
\nPatrick Gavin
\nPresident<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well that is definitely commendable. Mr. Gavin apparently pays attention to his business.<\/p>\n

Patrick,<\/p>\n

Thank you for your response.<\/p>\n

I look forward to hearing from you once you’ve read my post in its entirety.
\ntext-link-ads-needs-improvement<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks again.<\/p>\n

-Sean <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately that was the last correspondence Mr. Gavin and I had. He never got back to me but I did notice something. If you currently go to TLA’s site you will see some new additions to their “Get Ad Code” section.<\/p>\n

Most notably, they have added a link to a text file<\/a> (apparently they don’t have time for HTML formatting) explaining how to install the TLA WordPress plugin. It’s a pretty concise and accurate description of the process and it helps clarify what the plugin does (I initially thought the plugin might add a button to the WordPress Post Editor allowing you to place ads in individual posts). Besides, I never really had any problem installing the plugin, my trouble was getting it to work with Post Level Ads.<\/p>\n

TLA has also added this brief line of info, “If you are using the sidebar widget, you will need to drag the “Related Links<\/strong>” module into your sidebar.” Yay, at least now they tell you the real name of the widget as it appears in your WordPress admin panel.<\/p>\n

Although these are definitely steps in the right direction there is still a lot of room for improvement. When TLA asks “Do you plan on using our sidebar widget?” they offer you the following tip…<\/p>\n

\nSidebar widgets are an additional WordPress feature that allow you to easily manage the content of your sidebar by presenting you with a drag-and-drop interface of widgets.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem with this is:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Widgets are no longer an “additional” feature as they’re now integrated into WordPress.<\/li>\n
  2. They define “widgets” using the word “widget”<\/li>\n
  3. They don’t tell you what their sidebar widget does.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What does the “Related Links” widget do? Will it always be in my sidebar even when I don’t have any ads to display? Does the widget work with Post Level Ads? Does the widget show up in my sidebar site-wide even if I only want ads on my front page? This would have been a prime opportunity for TLA to provide some relevant<\/em><\/strong> information but they drop the ball instead.<\/p>\n

    Oh well, at least all of this has had some positive outcome. Not only have they added a bit more information to their site but my posts are finally being added to their Post Level Ads index. And it only<\/strong> took 10 letters to Tech Support, 2 letters to the Sales Department, 2 letters to the President of the company and 2 very long-winded posts on a blog.<\/p>\n

    Determination trumps inertia today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    After contacting the owner of Text Link Ads about my poor user experience, TLA made some very minor improvements to their site but they still have a long way to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[44,18,40],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-development","tag-plugin","tag-text-link-ads","tag-widget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pixelwit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}