New AdVolcano Coming Soon – Jason Rodriguez Speaks

A Special Insider Story with AdVolcano VP Jason Rodriguez

I have been a member with AdVolcano since May of 2007. Initially when I joined I came with high hopes and a very positive feeling about their advertisement system and business model. All in all, it looked great and appeared to be something that could work.

What is Advolcano?

As provided on their website they say, “AdVolcano was founded in 2004 by several aspiring entrepreneurs that shared an innate desire for success. AdVolcano’s model allows publishers to create innovative ad placements without the restraints of a traditional network.” And what that means is that AdVolcano is one of the first agencies that allow publishers to create their own campaigns for their blogs or sites. If you want to create a sidebar campaign, top page campaign or even a footer section campaign… AdVolcano gives you the tools to do so. Second aspect that captured my interest in their system was the fact that I can set my own prices and advertisement terms. I can create a home page only campaign and offer advertisers to join a 1 day only display, a 7 day only display, 30 day display, etc… Advolcano allows you to build your own ads the way you want and how you want; from there, they will help sell them.

This all sounds amazing, doesn’t it? It sounded great to me when I signed up. But as the months have gone by I have seen a complete different story unfold. The truth of the matter has been the fact that I haven’t generated any income from AdVolcao since May. Yet, my blog is one of the leading blogs that advertise and promote their service. As covered in a previously written article, my blog lead the way for the entire business category:

A few days ago, I decided to finally pull out and drop their program. Prior to dropping out, I gave the Advolcano team many opportunities to come forward and talk with me. On Sept. 9th I sent in an email with a very simple and legitimate question:

I never received a response from them, but I was patient and still continued to broadcast their Advolcano name and display a beautifully designed custom campaign on my sidebar:

My email never got returned and I on Sept. 27th I attempted to contact them again by email:

Along the way, I had made numerous attempts to contact them by phone. A few hours later, I decided to go ahead and go live with an article that I had been preparing for a few weeks. Sure enough, just two days after publishing the story, Jason Rodriguez paid a visit to my blog and dropped me a comment:

In an article I found after doing a Google search, it is claimed that Jason Rodriguez is the vice president of business development for AdVolcano, but I wasn’t able to find any information about him on this page. So, as it stands I really don’t know who he is, other than the fact that I finally have the attention I have been requesting for about three weeks. Overall, I wanted to learn more about AdVolcano and their future business plans. A few hours after Jason left the comment on my previously written article, he took the time to write me a personal email. In the email it shared quite a bit of information about a “New AdVolcano” that they have in the works. He addressed one of my more important questions regarding how bloggers can find success using AdVolcano. Jason Rodriguez says, “Some of the new features in our system align directly with the question you asked in your last email.” He then continues to explain to me about what we all as bloggers, advertisers and publishers can expect to see that will help us all find success using their “New AdVolcano” service. “We will be introducing several major updates that do just that.” Jason also wanted to make it known that they do value the importance providing superior levels of customer support. Even though didn’t witness an example of that first hand, he replies, “I’d like to apologize for our lack of communication. Customer support is something our team takes very seriously.” he then adds, “but rest assured this won’t be a problem when we go live with the new AdVolcano.”

I really hope to see all of these positives happen for AdVolcano and Jason Rodriguez. He continues on by giving me an inside scoop on some of the new things we can expect to see from AdVolcano:

Default CPC Ads, where publishers will now have the option to run CPC ads to backfill any unsold ad inventory. Jason mentions, “This will help publishers generate revenue during transitional periods where ads are unsold.”.

Jason further mentions that they will have a new Offer Platform where advertisers will have the ability to negotiate prices directly with publishers. His comment about this is as follows, “One of the problems I often encounter is the difficulty publishers have in pricing their own ads. If the price is too high the advertiser is deterred and opportunities hit a dead-end.”

I must add here that I ran a $1.00 campaign for three months and never made one sale. So, this new “Offer Platform” I hope that works… but as it stands, I don’t know how much cheaper I am willing to advertise people on my blog!

But, keeping things in perspective here, Jason continues on by saying that by opening the negotiation process advertisers will be able to produce value where it lacked previously, influencing more sales. I really hope that works out and I can find that being very useful. But I just can’t help but to be reminded about my $1.00 campaign.

Jason reiterates his point by adding, “Let me put it this way… if a publisher has five ad placements available, and continues to sell three spots month after month at $100 he will gross $300/month. Although, if the publisher allows advertisers to place lower offers he has the chance of generating more interest and possibly selling the remaining two ad placements for a lesser price, such as $75. In the end, more ads go sold and publishers see a healthy boost in their bottom-line revenue.”

In closing of the email Jason was very professional and invited me to join back and bring my business once again to AdVolcano, “These are all tools we have built specifically to influence more revenue opportunities for publishers. I hope that you can look past our foul-ups so that we can reopen business relations in the future.”

In an email back to Jason, I asked him for permission to cover the story and he agreed, but stated that I wasn’t allowed to mention on specific part of their “New AdVolcano” that he mentioned to me… you guys will just have to wait and see.

Overall, I totally respect Jason Rodriguez and his AdVolcano team. I have to remind myself that in the business world of the Internet, its a lot different than the regular corporate world of America. Businesses like AdVolcano comprise of teams of people that are just like me. AdVolcano was founded in 2004 by several aspiring entrepreneurs. And in my book, that deserves a lot of respect and support. I think I can accept the previously made mistakes by AdVolcano and I am totally willing to give them a second chance. You should too! I will re-open my account with them once they have made a public announcement of their release of the “New AdVolcano”.

For more questions, comments and suggestions, I would almost guarantee that the lines of communication have been re-opened between the public and AdVolcano. You can find their contact info here.

I really look forward to the release of the “New Advolcano” in the near future and I want to thank Jason Rodriguez for finally taking the time to contact me back and answer a few of my questions.

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