New ASK Feature - No referral data!

[Discovery]

Only a crazy marketing campaign by Ask Sponsored Listings ASL can come up with a spin like this. Oh, perhaps there are a few political machines that can challenge them, but in the area of PPC this is a gem.

Ask.com promotion:

In a continuing effort to improve your campaign performance, we are launching a new technology - PureLeads™ - to ensure that you receive only the highest quality leads. All of our traffic is now subjected to a series of tests and filters, to ensure only the most qualified visitors are delivered to your website.

PureLeads™ is scheduled to launch on March 16th and requires NO account or campaign changes. However, there are a few important things to keep in mind:

PureLeads™-filtered traffic will be represented by the referrer name “aslads.ask.com”. As a result, all ASL campaign delivery will now appear as this referrer name.

You must bid at or above your keyword’s reserve price to continue receiving full distribution of your ads. Note, the reserve price will show up in the campaign keywords page if the bid is below the reserve.

If you dig down into their website you find this vague description of what Pureleads means.

1. What is Pureleads™?

Pureleads is our new proprietary technology that blends advanced click purification methods and automated campaign traffic management. The Pureleads system protects your campaign from unpredictable delivery spikes, automated click traffic and suspect traffic sources. The result is a powerful technology that improves campaign ROI, overall click to conversion metrics and reduces the time required to manage your campaign..

2. How does Pureleads™ work?

Pureleads acts as a 'Traffic Cop' evaluating each click and impression generated by your campaign to determine billability and overall quality of the source of traffic. This 'traffic cop' prevents campaigns from delivery spikes, automated click traffic, and improves 'click to conversion' rates, ultimately delivering a higher overall ROI.

3. Can I turn off Pureleads™?

No - Pureleads cannot be turned off. The Pureleads technology is core to Ask Sponsored Listings and all clicks are evaluated for billability based on overall click quality.

4. How does this benefit my campaign?

Incorporating PureLeads technology into your campaign adds enhanced click purification methodologies designed to aggressively filter automated click traffic, identify suspect traffic sources and prevent unpredictable delivery patterns. By utilizing PureLeads, your campaigns should experience improved click-to-conversion rates, lower bounce rates, and longer user visit times.*

*Results based on beta test campaigns. Your results may vary.

5. Why can't I see referrers anymore?

With PureLeads, all clicks from our network are first sent to "aslads.ask.com" for evaluation (multiple traffic quality tests). As a result of our servers intercepting the clicks your web server logs now will register "aslads.ask.com" as the source of all ASL clicks.

Translation:
We have not had the same ability to stop click fraud as Google and MSN and have been charging our advertisers for it for years. People were getting mad and could see the fraud from the sites in their referral reports. So now with Pureleads we're going to claim click fraud filtering and hide all referring traffic information from our advertisers.

Advertisers want total transparency into the data that is driving traffic and control over it. That is the trend. Ask, Yahoo and others are heading the other way.

[BradCallen]

Wasn't this a pre-existing technology from Sendori?

I thought it was purchased from a company back in '09, i could be mistaken though!

[Discovery]

Yes, it sure looks like a pre-existing condition to me.. with no cure.

[beu]

Thanks for the heads up!

[AussieWebmaster]

have to start playing with Ask again and see how it converts... is about toime

[Discovery]

Why is this Aussie? Did you have an epiphany last night when Mr. Jeeves visited you in your dreams

..... AUSSIEEEE Advertise and they will come.... echo echo echo

[AussieWebmaster]

lol... they have to get it right some time... and search tied to good content converts well

[SEORockStar]

Even I feel the same guys and sad to hear that there is no way to cure it