I am having far too much life these days.

'Nutwise, we continue to suspect serious problems with data collection for the new websites. Unfortunately, the guy primarily responsible for the code is off on his honeymoon, so all we can do is to collect questions until he returns. Things are going to the wrong place, winding up in the home office because the system can't figure out where else to send them, or seeming to disappear into thin air before magically reappearing hours later.

I'm helpless without the reporting tools I need. Things might look wrong, but if I can't get the data I need, I have no way of figuring out if they are wrong. This is a very seasonal business. Are the performance changes we're seeing related to seasonality or are we a disaster ticking toward total meltdown?

I really don't want to think about it.

Also 'Nutwise, me taking on the Ontarians campaign has proven to be a problematic suggestion, involving political and financial complications I was previously unaware of.

Because the 'corporate' office for our northernmost neighbors found it easier to pay for the advertising themselves than to convince the Ontarians 'Nuts to kick in, the individual Ontarians have come to view lead generation as SEP. They expect a magic flow of free and constant leads.

Because said corporate office is now tired of funding the advertising, they're reluctant to keep paying.* They want us to take it on (and, not incidentally, make the Ontarians pay for their own advertising from now on).

Because the whole northern set-up is quasi-independent, we don't make as much revenue from the Ontarians as we do from the Stateside 'Nuts, under the best of circumstances. That means we will need to charge a slightly higher campaign management fee for the Ontarians than we charge the Stateside 'Nuts. This is a problematic suggestion to a group of people who aren't even paying for their own leads, much less for campaign management.

But--and this is where the migraines start--the new website structure means the Ontarians campaign is now driving traffic to the Café's .com website, instead of the original .ca website. That means that their poor quality scores and poor campaign performance are, for the first time, having an impact on what I do. A very unsavory one. The campaign cannot be left as it is. Someone has to start actually managing it.

I've had little or no time for routine campaign management for my own 35 campaigns in the last 30 days. Website issues and other 'Nut-related projects are taking up almost all my time. I logged in and glanced at a few campaigns yesterday and found my own quality scores in the basement, headed toward the sewer. (The affect of the Ontarian campaign now sharing our domain name, yes.)

I really don't want to think about it.

In the land o'Bernie, I haven't heard from him in two days. That's fine. I spent all weekend trying to explain to him that this account was doomed before we started, because of the client's "I don't know what I'm doing but do it my way anyhow" approach and I'm still not sure I got through to him. Now that the entire account is garbage, he's convinced the client to stand back and let me manage it--with the unexpressed but clearly implicit assumption that any failure from here on out can be blamed on me.

I haven't touched his campaigns since Sunday--just didn't need to be depressed that badly--but I do plan to glance at them today. I have my fingers crossed that some of Sunday's massive changes are producing performance improvement--no matter how minor. The campaign was pretty much in the sewer, so any change in performance would almost have to be an improvement.

I really don't want to think about it.

I had little time to manage Gidget's campaigns this past weekend. Haven't really heard from her this week (or last) that much, either. A few requests for data that I pulled and emailed. Must find time to see/chat with her this week. She wanted me to set up a lunch date with DiamondGirl, but neither my work day nor my brain are leaving me the freedom to do that at the moment.

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* Also, their campaign is appalling. The first commandment of campaign management is, "Thou shalt not leave a campaign unmanaged." As far back as I bothered to check the data, they've been breaking that one almost daily.