Thanks to Joanne (jamjo69) for the Dublin update and for letting us know about David Hooker attending presentations evenings. My nearest meeting is Hyde, but I can't do Wednesday,so despite it being a wet miserable night I dragged myself across the Pennines on your recommendation and was glad I did.
I will re-iterate that if you can get to a local meeting over the next couple of nights you should. David Hooker's title is Director International Compliance and Business Development and for the first time someone has clearly iterated what Banners Broker do. (I think I was getting there with the help of everyone on here, but it was piecing it together -DH has completed the jigsaw.)
These are a few key points which I picked up:
When BB talk about a blind network, they are talking about the market place where the vast majority of banners are posted. Also I have seen it bandied about that there are 200,000 or 300,000 websites on this blind network. I asked him directly about this afterwards and this is apparently nonsense. There is a blind network of of billions of websites and the market is controlled by about 10 big brokers. BB have hooked up - literally - with one of them. BB have no control over advertising, they don't sell advertising they simply buy and sell space through this network. It is a market like energy brokers that buy and sell electricity, money brokers, stock brokers etc. They are now in the process of hooking up with another larger broker which will give them more scope. Interestingly this is apparently because Banners Broker have been of massive benefit to the main broker. (My understanding is not that this necessarily access to more websites, just more leverage in the market - I am not really sure where the original figure came from?)
I have probably already overcomplicated it, so if you can get it from the horses mouth, get along to one of those meetings - he does clarify it very well and makes it clear why you don't need to take any notice of anyone whining about "well where are the adverts?"
He suggested that when asked what you do you, say you are a banners broker! (The clue is in the name of the company!) Then when they ask what that means you can invite them to look at the business or attend a presentation to find out.
With his compliance hat on, he advised that they have a team checking the net for non-compliant websites and that there will be a lot of accounts locked, with a seven day window to apologise and take your site down. It seems harsh, but as he says he is just trying to protect the business - (and with the income this business can generate I really would avoid risking getting your site shut down, or even worse have some case brought against the company for illegal statements on some punters website, which ends up affecing us all; that's my opinion. It might seem more reasonable to give you seven days to take your site down or you account will be locked - except that you have already broken the Terms and Conditions. Anyway if you have had approval, you want to make sure you have a record of it.
Also be very very careful to avoid the term investment. There are very specific rules around investments and selling investments without being licensed is illegal. Promising someone that they will double there money, or guaranteeing a return, is also illegal. Which is a shame, as it is quite difficult not to mention or imply it with BB. But we don't want to be risking our income by breaking the law.
As for the business being a ponzi he note that BB are paying our multiple millions monthly - he wouldn't give us the exact figure but it took him most of the fingers on two hands to mentally estimate it - of course who was counting? The point being that there is a hell of a lot more going out than there is coming in - ponzis just don't usually work that way!!
He noted that we need to understand that we are affiliates - not MLM. We don't need to get into training our team, we should be encouraging them to learn about the business themselves. We just introduce them to the business and help them to get started. And we do not go into their accounts at all. Someone can sign in and you can look over their shoulder. Afterwards in response to someone's question he suggested that we should not be advising people what panels to buy either. People need to be learning and doing the business.
He will be reviewing all the information, developing new introductory videos, simplifying the main presentation and hopefully will be making it a lot easier for everyone to explain the concept without getting tied in knots. This will all get updated and posted in our back office.
Of course with the big man there he had to field a lot of people coming up to ask about "db error" and "when will my ID be approved". He very patiently answered these repeatedly.
To the first he said massive growth has put pressure on the server again due to pure volume and they are working on upgrading and developing version 3 for the new year sometime, maybe February. (What he actually said was that the box was to small and they were getting a bigger box[size=78%]).[/size]
To the second, with the volume of people coming into the business they have got massively behind on their approval process as every ID needs to be approved manually. They have a team on it and hope to be up to date by the end of December.
They have employed a lot of new staff recently and they have moved into larger offices, but they are still sorting that out.
And there was a lot more. The above is not necessarily in order and some was from listening in to the personal question and answer session afterwards. I stood on his shoulder to pick up what I could. I would have to say that his manner is superb. Having had a long delayed flight from Dublin to Heathrow, hired a car and driven up to Bradford and arriving very late, presenting with humour and passion, all after what must have been a pretty full on weekend in Dublin, then having to field a series of questions, many repeated, he showed great patience and answered every question clearly and directly.
Hopefully the next presentations will allow for an open question and answer session at the end.
I think that 2013 is going to be very very exciting for Banners Broker (not that have done too badly so far!!). I think David Hooker is going to sort out the training and communication and people will start to see and understand what Banners Broker is about - both current affiliates and the general public. One day people will be coming up to you asking if you can introduce them to the company.
