AOL Refuses Wine Opinions Ad But Runs Its Own

America Online has refused to run a text advertisement by Wine Opinions seeking participants for consumer surveys despite the fact that the AOL food section continues to run its own ads for wine sales.

According to Wine Opinions founder John Gillespie, America Online told him that it refused to accept to ad, citing a ban on alcohol advertising.

STANDARD TEXT AD

Gillespie said that he sent AOL the standard text ad copy is standard which they have used on a number of sites, including Facebook:

Win a Wine Shopping Spree
Take wine surveys and win cash
awards of $500, $300, and $200
WineOpinions.com

The ads then  link to the “join” page of Wine Opinions

AOL EMAILS ITS “POLICY”

When Gillespie emailed AOL on Nov. 27 to ask why the ad had not run, an AOL Associate Advertising Account Manager  responded in a Dec. 1 email: “Unfortunately, AOL’s policy has changed, and we do not allow alcohol-related content to run on our network. Please let me know if you have other ads to run, or if you would like me to refund you.”

We have over 5,000 members of the Wine Opinions consumer panel and nearly 1,000 members of the trade panel.

I was going to start a campaign on some of the online properties in the AOL network (such as Forbes online, Sunset online, etc.) when I ran across the AOL prohibition. The same prohibition is in place at Google for “site specific” ad placements (as opposed to keyword search ads, where wine advertising is permitted).

GILLESPIE SCHOOLS AOL

Gillespie requested the refund on Dec. 1 and sent the following in an email to AOL (reprinted here with his permission):

1. I am not a seller of alcohol. I own a research company that performs consumer surveys for wineries. As you can see by my ads, I promise cash payments to those who take surveys (not wine).

2. I am trying to run ads in places where wine lovers are found (such as the “wine” content pages of AOL).

3. If you would ask the content providers (such as Sunset Magazine) if they accept wine advertising in their print publications, they would say yes. If you would ask if they would be pleased to have wine advertising on their sites, they would say yes. You are depriving your suppliers of revenue needlessly.

4. Your failure to conscientiously discriminate between wine, beer, and spirits and between legitimate information providers versus those who entice abusive behavior is a very slippery slope – you are already halfway down.

AOL FAILS TO RESPOND

AOL failed to respond to Wine Industry Insight’s emails asking for comment.