Hi James,

I just wanted to offer some clarification on a couple of items in your blog post.

We unfortunately had to cancel our Dallas PPC Summit as we just weren't getting enough attendees to participate. One of the biggest benefits to attendees of the PPC Summits in addition to the amount they learn is the opportunity to network and share best practices with peers in the search marketing industry, and we felt that we would not be able to offer that experience with a smaller group of attendees.

While the events in other cities have been big sellers we just weren’t getting enough interest in Dallas. Even with tremendous support from DFWSEM and DFWIMA and all of our sponsors like Lyris, Adapt and Engine Ready, it seems that timing of the event just didn’t work for most PPC marketers in Dallas and they are looking at our other events to attend later in the year.

We have notified and apologized to all the registered attendees personally via email or phone and have offered full refunds for their conference registration and recompense for their airline ticket changes. Most attendees have been very gracious and understanding as they recognize how expensive it is to produce an event which is so heavy in content, and many have already signed up for other PPC Summit events in other cities.

While we are committed to trying to offer these events in locations convenient to PPC advertisers, it appears that the bigger cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Boston, Vancouver and London are just more attractive to folks willing to travel to learn pay per click, so for the future we may have to either offer the summits only in larger cities or offer less expensive scaled down events in the smaller locations.

All of our sponsors were notified in advance of the cancellation, but unfortunately Lyris had already scheduled a press release about their participation in Dallas and were unable to recall it. We have tried to bring sponsors to events that we feel have superior products of interest to our attendees. Lyris has been a tremendous supporter of our events through their Clicktracks and Bid Hero brands and we are very happy to have the opportunity to work with a partner who is so committed to advertiser education.

We are just as disappointed as the attendees at not being able to bring this event to Dallas. We've had tremendous feedback from participants about these events, and we are committed to producing a quality program where attendees can get any question they have answered about pay per click, and can really learn how to optimize and effectively manage a campaign.

I hope that clears up any confusion for your readers.

Cheers, Mary
PPCsummit.com