About a month ago PayPerPost rolled-out two new marketplace features impacting both Advertisers and Bloggers, called "Bans" & "Benches." If you're not already familiar with them here's a little more about each feature:
"Benching" is a feature allowing Advertisers to expand the reach of their audience by 'benching' bloggers from accepting a particular Opportunity. Think of the analogy of "sitting this one out." Benching essentially allows for high-targeting by spreading links around to a variety of bloggers. A benching period can be for any reason--at the discretion of the Advertiser--and it can be up-to 90 days.
What is a "ban"? Well, a ban is different from a bench in that a ban will prevent a blogger from accepting any future campaigns launched by an Advertiser. If you're an Advertiser and you decide you would like to ban a blogger, you will be prompted for a reason as to why the blogger is being banned. Bloggers will have access to their bans so they can know why a particular Advertiser has opted not to use them anymore. Please be mindful if you make the decision to ban a blogger as it does have a negative effect on their tack ratings.
You will be able to use the "ban" & "bench" options once you have created a campaign in the marketplace. You can also view any current or past bans & benches after logging-in to your account.
Let's walk though this so you understand how they work:
1. Log-in to your account by clicking on the "Log In" button on the top of the page.
2. Click on the "Manage Opportunities" tab at the top of the screen.
3. Select an Opportunity by clicking on one of the links in the "Opportunity Name" column.
4. Scroll down to the "Posts for this Opportunity" area.
5. Chose a post.
In the last two columns you'll see the "Ban" & "Bench" features.
If you're choosing to "ban" a blogger click the "Ban" button, and you'll see the following box appear:
Remember, a blogger has access to their "bans" so include a reason, that way they can learn from your concerns.
If choosing to "bench" a blogger click on the "Bench" button and from the drop-down menu select the amount of time you'd like the blogger benched. You can select either 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days. Here's what you'll see:
After you've selected the appropriate time click the "bench" button, and you'll notice the green strike through graphic disappear. As long as this blogger is benched this graphic will be gone -- you can't ban and bench a blogger at the same time.
You can always log-in to your account and reverse a ban or a bench, but please remember when you "ban" a blogger it impacts their tack rating.
If you have any questions about "bans" or "benching" please don't hesitate to contact us.
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Comments (RSS)
Colleen said...
It's worth mentioning that a bench is by blogger, not by their blogs. When you "bench" someone, you can't get any action from any of their blogs, even if they haven't written about your sites or opps on any other blogs. I much prefer the opps that say "Don't take this if you've blogged about us in the past X days", because it allows people to place the opp on another blog.
Jun 18, 2007 2:23:00 PM
Mama BoK said...
And should we be banned with reasons like "Not a sport blog"..? even though the opp that we took didn't say that we "SHOULD" be a sport blog to take this opp..?? Is this fair.. ?? since it affects the blog negatively..???
Jun 18, 2007 3:05:00 PM
Kalamaf said...
It should also be pointed out to advertisers that banning a blogger affects their rating. I'd much rather see more specifications in the opp than to get banned by them later for a reason that could have been easily avoided."Note: Bans will negatively affect your overall rating."
Jun 18, 2007 3:05:00 PM
Kalamaf said...
Oops, they did point that out! don't mind me.....
Jun 18, 2007 3:07:00 PM
Weirdgrrl said...
I think PPP should also be reminding advertisers that PPP reviewers still have to approve opps. So if an advertiser is concerned about a post, I think they should contact PPP about their concerns before making the decision to ban a blogger. There seem to be many bans out there that would have been completely unnecessary if PPP had been contacted first or if the opp had been worded more precisely or the requirements had been chosen more carefully (as with the sports opp mentioned above). Just my two cents.
Jun 18, 2007 10:07:00 PM
Anonymous said...
This is nice, I need to read more of this.
Jun 18, 2007 11:45:00 PM
techie said...
What about doing some clean up and changing people's previous bans into benches when the ban reason was to give more opportunities to other bloggers.
Jun 19, 2007 1:14:00 AM
Weirdgrrl said...
What about doing some clean up and changing people's previous bans into benches when the ban reason was to give more opportunities to other bloggers.I think they have done some of this already. I was told that PPP was "removing bans from our end in cases where it's clear that the advertiser had a misconception concerning the basic function of a ban." So if you think you have bans that fall into that category, maybe you should put in a ticket.
Jun 19, 2007 4:27:00 AM
elbav said...
From us as an advertiser, I would like to see two things improved on bench and ban:1. Allow to bench certain blogs, not the "blogger itself".2. Extend the bench time form 30,60,90 days to at least 360 days, in order to get more flexibility on "new fresh links" vs. "links from an already linking blog".Both of the above would certainly lead to less use of the BAN feature .
Jun 20, 2007 6:44:00 AM
Tricia said...
I had hosting problems over the weekend and had to change my web host. As a result of my problems my sites were down over the weekend.
Guess what? On Sunday I got a ban that said "Page Down!" ... Can I politely request that if an advertiser discovers something that might be a temporary problem such as a page being unreachable that they either hold off making judgment or flag the post so that PPP will pay attention to it.
I'm certain that if my sites hadn't come back online by now, or if they never came back online that that advertiser would not have to pay for the post I wrote for him or her.
These are things that the PPP staff should handle.
As a result of the ban ... that advertiser and I can no longer do any work together and for all that advertiser knows he or she might have loved my post and my site and now I can't do any more work for them - because of the ban.
All I'm saying is that if an advertiser comes across something that should be easy to fix - a spelling mistake, an url or image that's not working or perhaps a page that's temporarily unreachable - please be patient and let PPP handle those kinds of problems.
Jul 25, 2007 1:15:41 PM
NicoleBarretmnev said...
I much prefer the opps that say "Don't take this if you've blogged about us in the past X days", because it allows people to place the opp on another blog.
NicoleBarretmnev
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