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Anyone ever had an account banned by Exo? (10)

05-30-2014 09:59 PM #1 phillian (Moderator)
Anyone ever had an account banned by Exo?

Hey all - set up a fresh campaign on a new account with exo on Tues. The offer I was promoting was returning a series of garbage pages in EU countries. (Think domain landing pages with lots of links and similar).

Exo let me know what was up and rejected the ads, but kept the campaign in "pending" status.

I went over everything in my landers and tracking to make sure I didn't pick up something buggy from github, resubmitted, and emailed them back asking if they knew to view the offer through a proxy in the relevant geo. The contact at Exo assured me:

We are aware of the geo targeted campaigns you have created and our location has no impact on the landing page verification process.
I was able to completely duplicate the pages they were getting yesterday by running the offer URL (across two reputable networks - Peerfly and F5) through a European-based proxy. I emailed my contact there to let her know it was an offer URL issue and switched the offer out, ending with "Please let me know if you see any other issues!" and "Many thanks for your patience."

Today I get this:

I am contacting you from ExoClick Customer Services.

Your campaigns have been stopped after your account has been categorized as *High Risk* by our security filters.

Please be aware the criteria of our security filters remain confidential.

As a result, we will stop our collaboration and any remaining funds of your Advertiser account will be refunded to you in the next few days.

Best regards,

James
ExoClick Customer Services
I quickly respond with:

Hi James,

May I give you guys a call? This is just a misunderstanding. I am a new publisher and apparently the offer I was promoting is having difficulties outside the prescribed geos (... country list ...) - but I've been in contact with Lavinia about it throughout the week to try to resolve the issue.
And the most recent Exo response:

Thank you for contacting me back.

I am afraid that we do not discuss account verification or security over the phone.

Our decision has been made on this subject based on the emails that you have Lavina have exchanged.

Your balance is being refunded.

I hope you understand that any further emails on this subject could be ignored.

Kind regards,

James
ExoClick Customer Services

Has anyone ever had an issue like this with Exo before? It seems like such a silly thing to ban an account over? [Note: I'm completely white hat, don't cloak or any nonsense like that.]

I'll just take my advertising dollars elsewhere, it's nbd - but is there something here I could have handled differently?

05-30-2014 11:21 PM #2 gettinpie (Member)

Hey Philian,

Yeah I've actually had my account banned by them because of some geo-redirect to some 'app installs' for VOD offers which
were being flagged as 'malware'.

Just contact them and tell them it was a misunderstanding due to geo redirect (through e-mail).

Just clear it up basically, I did, and the account was re-instated.

Cheers

05-31-2014 01:45 AM #3 karim0028 (Member)

yeah, i just had my account banned and i havent gotten it back yet...

05-31-2014 01:51 AM #4 maynzie (Moderator)

Hearing of account bans left right and centre at Exo at the moment!

05-31-2014 02:08 AM #5 cosmeivan ()

They won't ban you because of GEO redirect as the rep. from Exo said.

They keyword here is "account verification", since you are a new user on their platform, you have to build your rep or at least show them you are real.

Which method of payment did you use?, They usually ask for a small wire and ID and give you your account bank.

05-31-2014 02:14 AM #6 swiftclick (Senior Member)

short answer is yes, i was being bad tho. had nothing to do with geo's or redirects.

05-31-2014 03:22 AM #7 vortex (Senior Moderator)

@ phillian: Something else you could try is ask your AM (from the network of the "problematic" offer) to quickly put in a support ticket at Exo to explain the problem. To make it as easy as possible for your AM, you could even write the support ticket yourself and just ask your AM to submit it with their contact email. If the ban was because Exo didn't trust you enough, having an AM from a reputable aff network vouch for you may just do the trick. It doesn't sound like you're holding your breath but it's worth a shot.

Good luck!

Amy

05-31-2014 06:08 AM #8 zeno (Administrator)

Traffic sources and reviewers should never have to use a proxy to get to the offer page...

They should be able to test the URL as is > get to offer. Then, as due diligence, check via a VPN in the targeting country to see if the redirect path and lander is different.

In any case, if they load your URL and don't land on the offer, it's your fault for not having geo-redirection in place to guarantee your click pathway. It's not just important to do this on Facebook. It's important everywhere.

Until affiliate networks stop with annoying catch-all offers it is something you need to do.

05-31-2014 06:40 AM #9 gettinpie (Member)

I forgot to mention that I had the AM contact them saying it was one of their offers, etc.

Though they did initiate that themselves for 'verification'.

Cheers

05-31-2014 11:26 AM #10 phillian (Moderator)

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

Quote Originally Posted by cosmeivan View Post
They won't ban you because of GEO redirect as the rep. from Exo said.

They keyword here is "account verification", since you are a new user on their platform, you have to build your rep or at least show them you are real.

Which method of payment did you use?, They usually ask for a small wire and ID and give you your account bank.
^ I prepaid (can't recall if I ACHed or paypaled it, probably paypal'ed). But good advice on needing to build a rep. I'm sure that was part of what happened here, noob being a noob and without a reputation preexisting they decided it's better to just cut their losses and run.


Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post
Traffic sources and reviewers should never have to use a proxy to get to the offer page...

They should be able to test the URL as is > get to offer. Then, as due diligence, check via a VPN in the targeting country to see if the redirect path and lander is different.

In any case, if they load your URL and don't land on the offer, it's your fault for not having geo-redirection in place to guarantee your click pathway. It's not just important to do this on Facebook. It's important everywhere.

Until affiliate networks stop with annoying catch-all offers it is something you need to do.
^ That's the lesson I needed to learn - what I was missing. Thanks Zeno.

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