Frequently Asked Questions
How do I subscribe?
Click here to be redirected to our payment pages.
Do you offer a free trial to possible
subscribers? We do not offer a free trial as such. However, if you
purchase an Annual Subscription to Adbrands, you have 30 days in which to decide whether or not
the service is of use to you. We're confident that it will be; but if you
decide Adbrands doesn't suit your requirements for any reason, you may cancel your
subscription and we will issue a full refund of the
amount charged to you. This offer only applies to full annual
subscriptions and not to the reduced price one-month term. We can not refund any charges after the first 30 days of
your subscription have expired.
Do you offer reduced rates for students? I only want to see one
profile. We do not feel the subscription rate to Adbrands.net is expensive,
and many students already subscribe at full rate. Unfortunately the work
involved in managing reduced rates or charging for access for just one
profile make this uneconomic. So we regret that the answer is no.
Can I cancel my subscription if
I'm not satisfied? We're confident that you won't wish to cancel your
subscription. But just in case, you may cancel an Annual Subscription
at any point during the
first 30 days of your subscription period, and we will refund the full
amount charged to you. This offer only applies to full annual
subscriptions and not to the reduced price one-month term. We can not refund any charges after the first 30 days of
your subscription have expired. If you feel that there is a strong
possibility that you may wish subsequently to cancel your subscription, we
advise that you purchase a full year subscription in order to retain this
option. All subscriptions are non-recurring, and will expire at
the end of their agreed term, subject to your specific decision to renew.
Somebody at my company already
subscribes. Can you tell me who it is? Unless otherwise arranged, subscriptions are for individuals, not companies. We request
all users to have their own individual subscriptions. We offer an
extremely competitive discounted rate for multiple subscribers within a
company, as well as an intranet solution allowing full access to all
employees. See here for more information.
Can you invoice me?
Currently the only instant subscription option we offer to
subscribers outside the UK is via credit card. However, we may be able to accept a direct
transfer of funds from your bank. If you are subscribing from the UK, we can invoice you prior to
payment, and we will accept payment by cheque (provided it is in UK Sterling,
drawn on a UK account). However, your account will not be opened until
payment is received. Please contact us if
you wish to proceed along these lines. If you wish us to send you a receipted
invoice after you have paid online by credit card, please email us separately after your subscription has been
accepted.
What are your terms & conditions? Click here to be redirected to our
terms & conditions pages.
I've lost my password. Please click
here to be redirected to
our reminder service, which will also tell you the term of your current
premium subscription, if you have one.
I can't remember when my subscription expires.
Please click
here to be redirected to our reminder service, which will also tell you
the username and password for your current premium subscription, if you
have one.
I subscribed, but I am having problems
logging on. There are only a very few reasons why this could
happen.
Either: You are not entering correctly the username and password you requested. You will have received an email confirming these shortly after registration. Check them carefully, and make certain you are using the same combination of capital and lower case letters you input.
Or: Your subscription has expired. Please click here to be redirected to our reminder service, which will tell you the term of your most recent premium subscription, if you had one. You can renew easily and quickly using a valid credit card by clicking here. Please contact us if you require further assistance
If you are getting a message that another user is already logged on using your username and password, this is a problem sometimes caused by subscribers accessing the site via AOL. Unlike any other ISPs, AOL accesses external websites using proxy servers. These connect to Adbrands.net via multiple different IP addresses. There is no way for our server to determine whether this is a single user accessing us via AOL's proxies or multiple users trying to log on illegally using a single user password, and so access is blocked. You should contact AOL for instructions on how to change your settings to avoid proxy accesses, or alternatively connect to us via another ISP.
Your payment server won't accept my
credit card. We accept virtually all Visa, Mastercard, American Express,
Diners, Switch and other major international credit cards. However
subscribers in the US occasionally experience problems using their credit
cards to subscribe via Netbanx, our main UK-based payment service provider.
If your card is declined, it is always because the transaction has
not been authorised by your credit card company. This is entirely out of our
control and is almost certainly caused by a security measure imposed by the
card issuer to preserve the integrity of your account and prevent possible
fraud. Many card companies are especially cautious in the case of
international transactions via the internet. However you can easily resolve
any such problem by contacting your card issuer - they will be able to
explain the reason for the stop and will be able to release it to allow your
transaction to proceed. Alternatively you may wish to subscribe via the
US-based Paypal system.
I can't access your secure server in order to subscribe online. If you are unable to access our secure server, it may be
because your company does not allow online transactions through its
firewall, or because your internet settings do not allow secure connections.
We provide a fax subscription page
here.
Simply complete it and fax to us.
When I try to print a Profile, part of
the page gets cropped off. This is a common complaint with all web pages using tables. Microsoft
suggest changing the margins in the print options menu of your browser, or
printing in landscape format instead of portrait. See Microsoft Support: Printing Problems for more information.
But the best way is to open the pages within the full-featured version of
Adobe Acrobat (if you have it) and print them as PDF files. Alternatively, PDF995
is a free utility which will allow you to convert our web pages into
correctly formatted PDF files which you can print in Acrobat Reader or even
Word.
General
How up-to-date is Adbrands? Adbrands is updated each week with the latest news and
account changes. All information held in the assignments database is sourced
from information issued by advertisers and their agencies, and from scouring
the weekly and monthly trade press for account moves.
What is Adbrands Weekly Update?
We send out a free weekly newsletter to all past and current subscribers.
Non-subscribers may also sign up to this service. To find out more, and to
see past mailings, click here to be
redirected to the mailings index.
How do I get listed on Adbrands.net? There are two main factors we take into account when we
choose which companies to list or profile within the main section of Adbrands.net.
One is size; the other is popular demand. If your company is already one of
the World's Leading Advertisers & Agencies, you are on our list to be
added, but it may take some time. The key factor we take into account when selecting
companies is popular demand. Each month we analyse the search requests on
the site. We get more than 130,000 searches a month of our site,
and if your company features high in the rankings, we'll list you as soon as
we can.
I have a complaint about a consumer
product or a great idea for an ad. Can you help me? In a
word, No. Adbrands.net is a wholly independent
information service, and is not affiliated in any way with any of the
companies profiled or featured. We receive many, many emails from users who
mistakenly think they are mailing, for example, Procter & Gamble or
Philip Morris or a particular advertising agency. Although these emails often make interesting reading, we are unable to do anything with them, and can not
forward them on your behalf. They just get deleted. If you have a question
or comment about specific products or services supplied by one of the
companies we list within Adbrands.net, please address your enquiries directly to
them, and not to us. Many companies offer a customer service area on their
corporate website.
If you are looking for Material Data Safety Sheets, otherwise known as MSDS, you may find the relevant information on each company's own websites - try searching with one of the established search engines - or alternatively you can look at MSDS Online at http://www.ilpi.com/msds/. We do not carry this information on Adbrands.
What is your telephone number? We no longer publish our telephone number on the site. The
site currently receives well over 4,000 visitors every day, many of them
referred from search engines. When we published our phone number online we
were literally besieged by telephone calls from users with questions or
comments or complaints about consumer products. We are not connected in any
way to any consumer product manufacturer, and the role of Adbrands.net is
to provide business information services to the advertising and marketing
industry, not to field consumer enquiries on behalf of manufacturers. We will usually respond to enquiries immediately we receive
them, provided they relate to our business information services. Please
contact us via our online contact form.
Who owns Adbrands.net? Adbrands is published by Mind Advertising
Ltd. The site was launched in 1997, initially under the name
Mind-Advertising.com, by publisher Simon Tesler. Simon has considerable experience in consumer and business
publishing. From 1980 to 1991, he was co-founder and editorial director of
the influential British fashion and style magazine BLITZ, as well as
publisher and editor of a portfolio of large-circulation customer magazines
for clients including HMV record stores and The Guardian newspaper. In 1991,
he launched information services company The Magazine Business, which
published a range of directories and newsletters about the international
periodical publishing industry, and also produced the annual IPD
International Press Awards. In 1995, The Magazine Business was acquired by
Pearson plc. Simon worked at Pearson for two years, during which he was
managing director of the marketing directory ALF and electronic databases
Genesis and Apollo. He left Pearson in 1997 to launch Adbrands.net. He was
also for several years a director of interactive agency WorthMedia and a
member of the Executive Committee of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB)
UK.
What is your Privacy Policy? Click
here to be redirected to
our privacy policy page.
simon tesler