I recently received the following email from Pulse 360, the people who run the Today / MSNBC advertiser network:
It has come to our attention that you are still running video or story box units which were discontinued by Pulse 360 as of Tuesday, December 11. As has been communicated previously, Pulse 360 will not be paying any advertising revenue share against any impressions generated by the old video and story box units as of December 11.
Now here's my question. Pulse 360 continued to place advertisements on my site after December 11th. They continued to get paid by their advertisers.
Do I have any legal recourse to the money they received while displaying ads on my sites?
Let's just say that this is not hundreds of dollars...it's thousands of dollars. I'd like to recoup some of that ad revenue which I believe is rightly mine.
ouch
From what you're quoting above, you're still entitled to everything prior to Dec 11th. Are they saying you're not? And did you not receive notice? You don't say above.
I'm no lawyer and i don't play one on TV, but I'm guessing that if you did not receive notice, then you're entitled to at least appeal to them.
Depends... But it isn't Likely
There's no real way to answer the question with the information here. The key is going to lie in the agreement you signed when you joined the service.
I'd wager that, in that contact, they gave themselves some kind of ability to modify the agreement with X number of days notice. It's a pretty standard clause and they might even have a section that deals precisely with discontinued ad units.
If they notified you before hand, and they claim to have, then you likely don't have much recourse. I'd start digging through your spam folder, couch cushions and anywhere else you tend to lose email to see if they did. The fact that you didn't get it doesn't mean that they are liable.
The fact that they displayed ads while you were not getting paid is not necessarily the end all of the matter. If they warned you that impressions after a certain date would not be paid and you didn't act, once again, regardless of whether you got said notice, then they aren't under an obligation to pay and they could claim that they were only keeping the ads up as a service to avoid breaking your site.
In fact, we don't have a guarantee that they were paid at all for those ads right now. That would be something learned with a subpoena after legal action started.
My advice is to find that email they claim to have sent and rummage through your agreement. If something is amiss, for example they didn't give you enough time to take action, then seek a lawyer. Otherwise, they probably have themselves pretty well covered.
Is it unprofessional? No argument from me. I would have sent in a torrent or warnings and then, on the eleventh, replaced the ads with PSAs or something that doesn't earn revenue.
Generally though, these companies don't make many mistakes. Then again, I lived in an apartment complex that hadn't even read their own lease (I'm not joking). You might be able to call this one but the key is going to lie in that agreement.
Hope that this helps and if you want any assistance with that agreement, let me know!
Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com
Post new comment