Promo Nigeria Open Publishers Review - Scam, Fraud And Click Bombing

The initial plan of the Promo Nigeria digital advertising platform wasn't to develop a publishers' network. It was a small advertising project to help clients place ads on premium blogs and websites. We had just about 7 websites our clients' ads were being placed on. The goal of the platform was to help small companies test out digital advertising using very low budgets. We launched the platform early last month and we started having applications from more premium websites who wanted to add an additional revenue source to their website and to also support SMEs.

Due to the huge demand from more website owner, we decided to quickly automate the publishers application process, hence we finally came up with the publishers network. The network was to pay up to N10 per click as we usually would collect at most N17 per click from the advertiser, but then there were not much adverts to accommodate the over 3,000 blogs and websites that joined the network within 4weeks.

Rather than serve non-paying ads or 'no-ads' on these websites, we decided to run discounts and price slashes to encourage more advertisers to come on board. Advertisers were charged during this period about N7/click and N5 from this was to be paid to all publishers.

The growth of the network was amazing but that also came with a cost outside our budget which was already used up. We had to move from a shared host to a dedicated server $2,400/year but that also couldn't hold the rising traffic. We finally settle for a dedicated server of about $3,840/year.

Was a fraud detection technology added? NO!

The system was built with little or minimal fraud detection algorithm. It was porous, but that became a blessing in disguise, people were clicking into millions of naira within few days and they went out blogging about us as the next big hit in Nigeria. More bloggers trooped in. ASUU strike also added a push as over 50% of the publishers on the network are students using crazy wapsites and naijaloaded clone scripts to rip the system of some quick money. All they needed to do is create a blog and start clicking the Promo Nigeria Ads.

Due to the click bombing activities from publishers, most advertisers had to opt out because they were seeing gigantic total clicks which never resulted to a reasonable ROI on their ads. At this point we had to quickly develop a fraud detection algorithm to help rescue the network; partially completed, but was still able to fish out the fraud publishers from the credible ones because there was no time left before the payout date.

The future of Promo Nigeria

We very much believe in the Nigeria dream. If google can do it, we can too but though in a more simplistic and basic level. Technology is expensive and we would love to be small and serve our clients (advertisers) better. A couple of hundreds of thousands monthly in revenue is sufficient for us. We live in a small town with very low cost of living and doing business.

Promo Nigeria Ad is an additional(secondary) income source to the publisher not a primary source.

Payouts for September
All qualified publishers will be paid tomorrow Monday 30th Sept.