Saturday, February 23, 2008

A strange, unsolicited email I received

Anyone else ever get something like this?

Subject: Advertising Inquiry
From: advertising@polimedia.us

We have reviewed your blogger.com blog on behalf of one of our
clients that would be interested in placing advertising with you.

Client profile :
DoingFine (http://doingfine.org)
New project (<1 month old) Theme A forum dedicated to those things that came out right and worked out fine.

We'd like either a 150x150 button, 160x600 skyscraper or 468x60 full banner (or footer). Alternatively, we may be interested in text-only advertising.

This would be a weekly, monthly or yearly arrangement. In either case we will require a one time, one day (24 hours) free placement in order to test the quality and quantity of traffic your website can actually provide*. Within this interval, we will make a final determination, based on the traffic volume, quality, and your asking price. Should we find your terms acceptable, this trial day will count towards the agreed interval.

Kindly let us know if you would be interested, which arrangement best suits your editorial needs, and what rates you would like to charge. We prefer using PayPal but may be able to accomodate alternative payment methods.

Thank you.

*Please note that we employ software that reliably detects autoclick and autosurf bots, pay per click and paid to surf type traffic, and other such non-human traffic. This may be a concern for you, especially if you are buying "bulk traffic", or employing the services of dubious "SEO experts".

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah I got that too. I haven't blogged (which makes me rather sad actually) in maybe six months? So.. they are just mass mailing..

lebanesa said...

there is a lot of it about. I recently read some stuff about how we can get ourselves into trouble inadvertently with some of the ads and click stuff, so I have steered clear of all that.
How do you feel about advertising on your blog, anyhow?

dianeclancy said...

Hi Debi,

I steer clear of anything like that - tho I didn't get that one. I made a decision that I didn't want to be taking ads ...

I would be VERY leery of anything like that unless you heard from lots of others it is legit!

~ Diane Clancy
www.DianeClancy.com/blog
www.YourArtMarketing.com

Richard Soderberg said...

It's definitely spam. I don't have anything of interest (or anything at all) on my Blogger blog.

CaptSpaceBat said...

In my cavalier spirit of "derring do" and probably "derring don't", I have decided to respond to this enquiry, just to see what happens.

Will report back, if/when I hear or find out anything.

Unknown said...

How odd. I just got that email on a blogger blog I haven't blogged on in forever (if really much at all). I decided to google around about it and came across your blog. I'm always wary of those that come unsolicited.

On another blog I blogged about Dove and their advertising company actually got ahold of me about it but I did a lot of research to make sure it was legit. It was a little freaky.

I'm curious to see what we see in 'net news about this in the coming days.

Irene said...

I have Google adds on my blog and this sounds like a similar thing. I haven't earned a penny yet, so it really isn't a very profitable thing to do. I wouldn't bother with it if I were you, but I do think it is legit.

J. Silverheels Gray said...

I got the same message today, and looked up doingfine.org and polimedia.us. Doingfine appears to be nothing more than a bunch of chats about how things are pretty much OK, and polimedia is apparently a Romanian company that does Web and print consulting and production.

All I can figure is that polimedia wants everyone to run a free ad for Doningfine, which would generate a bunch of traffic for that site and possibly some advertising revenue if people actually click through on the plentiful ads.

I doubt that ads for doingfine.org will actually be placed on very many blogs, but we'll see.

Bobbie said...

I did not receive this, or if I did I recognized it as spam and deleted it. My question is really this: How did they get our email addresses off blogger anyhow?

As to advertising I must say that I abhor it and will do everything I can to eliminate it from my life. Surprisingly my life goes quite well anyway without it :)

Anonymous said...

Guys, be careful of such e-mail.

If I'm guessing it right, they are using our websites or blogs on some get paid by visiting their sites - sometimes it could also be something like google ad sense but done in a very smart way, using others to pay.

Otherwise, it's just another way to attract cheap publicity so that people would come and buy or visit some porno URLs. It's all to serve their own ends..

I've seen their so-called client's blog and even the extension name after the e-mail polimedia and found nothing interesting at all.

Trust me..it's a hoax!

CaptSpaceBat said...

Report so far:

Replied with a quote, with a salutation to the two people named on the web site. Received the following:

> Hello,
"Hello,
Should you wish to contact our CEO/CFO, I can forward your email to
them,
however, please note that they're busy people and I should only forward
email for a legitimate business reason. Your call, please don't abuse it." accompanied by links to ads.

I replied that, even as CEO of my company, I had bothered with their enquiry over the weekend, to which I received:

"Sir,

It would seem you were offended in some manner. Please accept our apologies
if that was the case, and do enjoy the remainder of the week-end. "

That's about as far as I fancy going with this; the customer service experience seems unpleasant enough. I can only hope that they are "doing fine."

Debi said...

Thank you everyone for your comments. Ultimately to me this doesn't seem like a high caliber venture.

I considered deleting this post so as to not further endorse this group, but changed my mind. I'll leave it here (with comments now closed) for others to find if they get a similar email and use the comments here to make their own judgment.