Adwhile Reviews 

Although I did not use this company for services, I did work for them creating UGC ads under the promise of payment, which I never received. Despite my efforts to follow up, my messages regarding payment were ignored for days on end. It's been nearly seven months now. The communication was terrible, and to make matters worse, I recently came across another review stating that this company is a scam. Unfortunately, I can't help but agree.

Very clever scam.

I have a small start-up which required marketing to help get the word out. After a lot of investigations, most marketing firms required a minimum of 4 month lock-in contract to commence. Enter Adwhile.

I posted an ad on Upwork for a marketing agency that specifically could handle UGC. Adwhile were one of many to answer the Upwork ad and had a great value proposition: 1 month of social media posts, with a promise of 1 million views OR your money back.

Intrigued, I accepted a meeting invitation with Adwhile and spoke with the founder, who took me through the “alleged” process. I was told I would be provided with an account manager (true) that I would be a part of the strategy (kind of true, I was give the scripts beforehand for feedback, but that’s as far as the strategy went), and finally I was told around the 15-20 day mark, if the posts weren’t seeing the kind of numbers expected, they would start paid advertising to boost the numbers, using a video that they knew would convert numbers.

The best part: it was a one-month contract. No long in minimum four-month contract. I thought that was a great way to test the waters to see if we were a good fit to work together. I thought 1 million views via TikTok shouldn’t be so hard to achieve given the size of the platform, and the plan that was outlined to me above.

I decided to proceed and paid $5k US for 30 UGC posts. The contract stipulates if the 1,000,000 views are not achieved, the full refund would be returned 3 days after the end of the 30-day contract. (In hindsight, I SHOULD have used Upwork’s platform to make sure they delivered on their promise, but that’s on me. Lesson learned.)

I signed, paid the fee, completed the onboarding form and was told within the next fortnight my account manager (the UGC content creator would be assigned, and my scripts would be provided for review. The account manager was assigned within the timeframe, but the delays began almost immediately after that. Scripts where late, first video was late. I was provided the initial two videos prior to posting. When I received them, the quality was not what I expected. I questioned this, along with the sound. Instead of my feedback being taken onboard, I was told that “UGC is supposed to be raw and authentic.” I was not satisfied with this response, as a lot of UGC ads I see are polished. However, Adwhile’s standard tactic is to just ignore your correspondence for days on end, resulting in me sending multiple texts/emails. (I am in Australia, and Adwhile US, otherwise I would have called).

I even went to the length of writing to say that the level of communication was unacceptable and as a paying client, I expected more service. I was promised it would improve. It never did. I was constantly chasing for updates.

After almost a month after signing on, the first video went up…which was exactly the same as the one that was sent to me where I said the quality was not where I expected it to be. From here, I knew the videos were going to be posted no matter what I said, and I had no say at all. There was no further collaboration at this point.

The saving grace (now, not at the time) is that I provided them a TikTok account to use (at their request) however, they just created their own and gave me login details. I engaged a UGC creator and had a single video created which WAS to the quality I expected and posted it on my account (the one they didn’t use). This video got 9k views to the average 700 views of the videos on the other account.

Eventually, I just stopped checking the account that Adwhile had set up and waited to see if they would then start paid advertising at the 15-20 day mark as promised.

They did not.

By this point, I waited for the 30 days to finish in the hope they would honour the contract (given the contract states a full refund) and I would get my money back.

Can you see where this is going?

The contract ended on the 22 August. To date, all correspondence has gone unanswered.

In closing, is Adwhile a scam? Yes. They sourced a content creator and gave her carte blanche to create and had no further input after that. I hope she got the lion’s share of my money, because she did all the work. Adwhile sat back, cashed my money, breached the contract and now ghosted me. Work with them at your own risk.