Complaint Review: Ambassador Internet Promotions

It was only a matter of time before this company went under. As an Ex-Employee it is true they intentionally took advantage of companies. It has been proven as they have shut the doors of the business. They do however go by another name, AI Media. So beware and be cautious they still are lurking about......

Mr Thomson.

I admire your valiance toward protecting your own company. Unfortunately I too am an ex-employee of this so-called wonderful company called Ambassador Media Group or internet promotions whatever you want to call it.

First off, nice try, but there is no way in h*ll that Ambassador Internet as it's own entity has over 5,000 customers. If you want to include the yellow page customers then that would make absolute sense. But not even reach local who was one of the biggest competitors who is also much more well funded than ambassador just recently hit their 5k customer mark with a much more substantial sales force than that of ambassadors.

By no means is this a personal attack to you, but your company gave no lee-way to their sales reps and i know this because the upper management's favoritism was loyal to these so called S.E.M's who manually run google adwords in a tiny office. The platform S.A.M was also a huge joke in itself. Time after time clients whom out of goodwill and faith in what they have been sold have been ripped-off thousands of dollars blindly because AMB internet in my opinon consists of a bunch of spineless cowards who don't even have the "balls" and tries to hide behind legal clauses.

Conversion based optimization is a total lie and ambassador should be scrutinized by the F.T.C for false deliveries of this so-called technology they have. Being a huge believer myself in this industry i did not feel in anyway that this company treated the bread and butter of the company with the respect they deserve and the help when they needed it the most.

To all who read whether this consumer or professional. Ambassador Internet Promotions is almost as bad as enron, except they are not as smart as enron was.. Don't believe anything this chop shop says.

I work for Ambassador Internet.

As a response to the individual(s) who composed the criticisms above:

First off, I would like to note that Ambassador is alive and well, servicing nearly 5,000 customers who are pleased and continue to use our service, month-in and month-out. Ambassador has flourished despite very competitive market conditions and an ever-changing technological arena.

We are NOT embroiled in disputes with a majority of our customers or they would have canceled by now.

Ambassador does, however, seem to be despised by either one, or a few, of its former employees.

They have criticized Ambassador's platform, customer relations, software and, unbelievably, Ambassador's staff.

The software works fine. It continues to generate results for my customers and is accountable to them.


Admittedly, as with any business, Ambassador has had to sever ties with certain employees over the course of time.

Some were probably dismissed for performance and others left of their own accord.

In either case, I am disappointed that one or two have chosen to attempt to sabotage the livelihood of their former co-workers through petty name calling, denigrating remarks and, in some cases, outright lies.

If anyone comes across this post while considering Ambassador please let it be known that I would be more than happy to provide you with numerous references from independent clients who would refute the nonsense in the posts above.

Normally, I would not engage in what may appear to be trivial bickering, but with Ambassador as one of the leaders in our industry I feel compelled to respond on Ambassador's behalf and protect the good reputation that we have all worked so hard to build.

Thank you for listening.


-Scott Thomson

Rick is playing it fast and loose with the truth.

"Do we deliver this service free of charge? No. And we don't claim to. When you purchase a plane ticket, do you expect the airlines to divulge their internal costs and overhead required to get you to your destination? When you purchase a television set, do you demand to see the cost of creating each component that goes into the manufacture process, plus shipping, labor costs, and profit margin? Ambassador Internet Promotions is a business like any other. We deliver a high ROI to our customers, and are constantly exploring ways to lower costs and maximize their budgets."

Um, actually, Ambassador DOES claim to deliver the service free of charge. We were told by Sergio and the rest of the leadership to tell the clients that we were paid by the search engines. If that is true then why is Rick all of a sudden talking about "hidden" business costs?

Besides, this is a distracting argument. When you are told that your search campaign is going to cost you $2000 a month you expect $2000 a month worth of performance and not $1600 a month of search and $400 to go to "shipping and labor costs" When Ambassador simply takes their 30 - 40% off the top in order to cover their overhead after telling the client that 100% of their budget goes to the campaign that's fraud.

It's like going to the store to buy a flat screen for $2000, coming home and opening the box to find a $600 tv in there.

Plus, when you advertise with the search engines, or just about any other reputable advertising agency, you can get detailed reports on how much traffic each keyword generated and at how much cost. Just take a look at Google Analytics for the Yahoo platform. It breaks it all down for you so to make the insipid claim that companies don't give you an accurate detailing of their internal expenses is a total red herring here.

As a paying customer you are not asking to know how much they spent on their electricity. You are asking how much you spent on each term. The reports we generated for our clients were devoid of any actual spend information. You received impressions, clicks and all the other indicators of a real report but it is nearly impossible for our clients to ever get any financial reports.

The only reason for this is plainly obvious. If the clients ever saw those reports they would easily be able to tell that no where near their budget was being spent.

"Sergio Alvarez, our Vice President of Internet Sales, is mentioned by name in the complaint on this site. Sergio, along with our VP of Internet Strategy built this business from scratch. They have assembled a world class sales force of highly knowledgeable, seasoned professionals. Sergio has a proven track record in this industry, and has been an innovator in Local Search since its inception. He would like to personally invite anyone who reads this posting to visit us at our New York City headquarters. What better way to learn the real story of Ambassador Internet Promotions? Do you want to grow your customer base? Maximize ROI? Call us and make an appointment."

Built it by scratch? Utter and complete lies. Ambassador cut their teeth in the search world by first selling for Reach Local, a far more reputable company. "World class sales force of highly knowledgeable, seasoned professionals"? I know several people who openly admitted to the fact that they just made up the numbers of "potential searches" they showed to the clients. "Seasoned professionals"? As far as I am aware there were a few of folks who came to Ambassador with previous online experience and only one that I know of that actually had previous experience in search. He quit not soon after he started after realizing what a joke Ambassador was. The majority of people came from selling either for Verizon yellow pages or mortgages. And as for training? The training director never even sold search!

Folks, if you have the opportunity to either throw your money down the toilet or to give it to Ambassador I would suggest that you flush it down the toilet.

That way you at least have a chance of the toilet backing up and getting something back.

As CIO of Ambassador Media Group, which owns Ambassador Internet Promotions, I felt compelled to respond to the anonymous posting on this site.

First of all, you will find at the end of this message my name and phone number. Unlike the individual that posted the complaint about Ambassador, I have no desire to disguise my identity. I freely invite anyone who reads this to call me to discuss what Ambassador can do for your business.

Ambassador does have a unique relationship with Google and Yahoo. The Google Qualified Advertising Professional logo on our website attests to our relationship, and we employ the full benefit of their web services APIs in order to maximize ROI (Return On Investment) for all of our customers. We do considerably more that the average Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing campaign. Our reach extends to all of the major search engines and their networks, as well as major IYP (Internet Yellow Pages) properties.

We gather reports from all of the major search engines, as well as from our own proxy servers to track the sponsored search traffic to our customers' sites, navigation within the sites, and activity resulting in leads (also known as conversions). We deliver this information daily to all of our customers via e-mail, and also provide a secure website where they can log in to view the detailed reports we provide that set us apart from every other business in this space. This enables us to maximize ROI for all of our customers by providing demonstrable evidence that their Ambassador sponsored search advertising campaigns are driving customers to their sites, to their phones, and to their places of business.

What we call Conversion Based Optimization is real, and it is providing demonstrable results and measurable ROI every day for all of our customers. We are able to track which keyword, from which search engine, at what time of day resulted in a given conversion, whether it was an email, a form submission, a phone call, or any other definable lead on our customer's site. This information is fed back into our campaign management software, enabling us to maximize our customers' budget spends and achieve optimum results in converting search into sales. Search is a dynamic, ever-changing landscape, and we are constantly tuning and revising our algorithms to reflect this reality. What worked last week won't necessarily work this week. What worked yesterday won't necessarily work today. Conversion Based Optimization enables us to continuously track, in real time, the search terms and parameters that are driving traffic to our customers.

Do we deliver this service free of charge? No. And we don't claim to. When you purchase a plane ticket, do you expect the airlines to divulge their internal costs and overhead required to get you to your destination? When you purchase a television set, do you demand to see the cost of creating each component that goes into the manufacture process, plus shipping, labor costs, and profit margin? Ambassador Internet Promotions is a business like any other. We deliver a high ROI to our customers, and are constantly exploring ways to lower costs and maximize their budgets.

Sergio Alvarez, our Vice President of Internet Sales, is mentioned by name in the complaint on this site. Sergio, along with our VP of Internet Strategy built this business from scratch. They have assembled a world class sales force of highly knowledgeable, seasoned professionals. Sergio has a proven track record in this industry, and has been an innovator in Local Search since its inception. He would like to personally invite anyone who reads this posting to visit us at our New York City headquarters. What better way to learn the real story of Ambassador Internet Promotions? Do you want to grow your customer base? Maximize ROI? Call us and make an appointment.

Thank you for your interest, and thanks to the Rip Off Report for this opportunity to set the record straight.

Rick Oller
CIO Ambassador Media Group, LLC
Phone: 212.564.3945