I'll probably quit doing this too

» Gawker Gets Scammed

spiers:

The sponsored posts should go for far more than the $3 CPMs on display.  They’re taking a premium form of advertising and using it as an add-on, when they should be upselling it. (And there’s no inventory for sponsored posts.)

And in that email exchange, there’s no upselling, just throwing it in for free.

What’s more: this lead CAME to them! Why are you throwing in fries and a drink when the client is clearly willing to pay full price for the stand alone product? I’d understand if this was an effort to build a portfolio of executions for a new product or something… but the “sponsored post” is pretty old hat for Gawker Media, and the “client” is already starting at the 25k line!