We have had numerous requests to make our ad code (ad serving) SSL compatible. This is VERY important for publishers serving ads on pages within a secure area.

As part of our promise to deliver on your suggestions we have now made this available.

How do you use it?

Very simply actually… all you need to do is change the URL of the ad code from http://adserve.adtoll.com to https://adserve.adtoll.com

For example your current ad code may look something like this:

<!-- START ADTOLL.COM CODE V1.0 -->
<style type="text/css">
A.at_adv_here_15956, A.at_pow_by_15956 {font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-variant: normal; text-transform: none; color: #000099; text-decoration: none; }
A.at_adv_here_15956:hover, A.at_pow_by_15956:hover { color: #0000FF; text-decoration: underline; }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
adtoll_see_your_ad_here = 1;
adtoll_your_text = "Advertise here";
adtoll_show_powered_by = 1;
</script>
<script src="http://adserve.adtoll.com/js/at_ag_15956.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<!-- END ADTOLL.COM CODE V1.0 -->

If serving pages in a secure area (SSL) then change the ad code to this:

<!-- START ADTOLL.COM CODE V1.0 -->
<style type="text/css">
A.at_adv_here_15956, A.at_pow_by_15956 {font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-variant: normal; text-transform: none; color: #000099; text-decoration: none; }
A.at_adv_here_15956:hover, A.at_pow_by_15956:hover { color: #0000FF; text-decoration: underline; }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
adtoll_see_your_ad_here = 1;
adtoll_your_text = "Advertise here";
adtoll_show_powered_by = 1;
</script>
<script src="https://adserve.adtoll.com/js/at_ag_15956.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
<!– END ADTOLL.COM CODE V1.0 –>

The only change required is to the second last line where you change the http to https. This tells the web browser that the requested page is coming from a secure area.

That’s all you need to do and you should now be successfully serving ads to your secure pages with no errors.

If you are having trouble finding or adding our ad code to your web site then this step by step instruction guide is for you. We do recognise that not everyone has experience with using services like ours and need some help getting started.

I am going to assume you are completely new to AdToll and have not attempted to add your site yet.

If you follow these steps below you will successfully add your site into our system, create an ad group and then get the ad code required onto your site.

STEP ONE: ADD A SITE

To get started you need to be in your account area - http://www.adtoll.com/account

The account area is the central hub that you will use frequently to perform a variety of actions. Once there you can start off by adding your site. To do this click “Add a New Site” in the Publisher control panel.

This will take you to the area where you add the details of your site such as URL, name, description etc… Fill out all of the details accurately then click on the “Add Site” button at the bottom of the page.

It is important to fill in all the details correctly as it is this information that is used to review (then approve) your site and more importantly is seen by prospective advertisers - so you want to impress them!

STEP TWO: CREATE THE FIRST AD GROUP

Now that your site has been created you need to create the first ad group for your site. Select the ad format and provide all of the details required and then click on the “Proceed to Ad Group Layout” button.

Again it is important to note that you should provide all of the information accurately!

STEP THREE: AD GROUP LAYOUT (GRAB AD CODE)

Now that your site and your first ad group has been created you are ready to format how you want your ads to look. On this screen you can do exactly that. I encourage you to have a play with the options available and format the look and feel of your ad group to your liking. When you are done you are then ready to copy the ad code provided, which will look something like this:

So from there you select the text (ad code) provided in the text box, copy it, and then paste it into your web sites HTML where you want the ad group to appear.

Once you have done that all you need to do is upload the modified page to your web server, normally using an FTP client such as wsFTP or LeapFTP. In some cases you might use a web editing tool to edit your web pages but the theory is the same.

Getting your ad code if your site and ad group is already created

You might already have your site and ad group created and just want to get to the layout screen where you can alter the layout and copy the new ad code. You can do this from the account area by expanding your site and clicking the green edit icon to the right of the ad group details.

It really is that easy! If you do have any questions though please get in contact with us or reply to this blog entry with questions.

Launched in December of 2005, Game Abode promises to deliver the best online flash games available to its loyal players. 2,000 games are provided in the niches of action, adventure, board games, card games, casino games, classics, fighting, girl games, puzzles and more!

Registered players are ranked on their performance and are featured as the top players on the main site.

Game Abode receives up to 3,000 unique visits per day and serves 4,000 games per day. These vitals are growing as this trusty arcade becomes popular and reaches mainstream arcade players.

With majority click traffic originating from the Unites States and the United Kingdom, advertising on this site is highly recommended.

Game Abode is a Premium Publisher and advertising opportunities should seriously be considered by Advertisers. Check out the Rate Card at http://www.adtoll.com/rate-card-for-game-abode-269/

I have just finished compiling all the feedback we were able to receive from the Questionnaire and I must say I am blown away with the level of support and the effort some people have gone to!

It took me hours to go through all of them and put it all together but it was worth every minute. From your feedback we will be putting together strategies to see that your demands are met, if they haven’t been already.

Below are some of the more common and what we feel to be the more important points that were repeated.

“More payment options”
We are looking at soon incorporating our own merchant facility for those advertisers that do not have access to any of our current payment options.

“Improve ad serving”
Only a few weeks ago we commissioned new servers to improve not only the performance of ad serving but to ensure we are capable of growing over the next 12 months.

On top of this we have a team dedicated to performance tuning and system administrative duties. They are responsible for fine tuning our systems and for keeping the “lights on” at AdToll.

“Support ticket system”
At the moment we communicate with our customers via e-mail and a few people mentioned perhaps using a support ticket system. This would mean improved communication with customers and the ability to have a history of communications. We think it’s a great idea and is something we may be looking at implementing in the future.

“Make Autopricing smarter”
At the moment a new site that uses our Autopricing feature starts off with a very cheap price, basically because our system has not started to collate any statistics. This leads to fast bookings by advertisers but also fast denials by publishers, which really hasn’t impressed our advertisers.

To stop this we have just added in an extra feature that is available when a Publisher first creates their ad group. Now, a Publisher is able to set a starting price which will be used as the price of the ad group in the first 48 hours while our system is building performance statistics. If however the calculated price is greater than the starting price then that price will be used.

“Instructions on how to add the ad code to a site”
We realise now that not all Publishers have experience with HTML and adding code to their web site in order to get ads serving. What we plan on doing is putting together a good step by step guide on how to add a site and finish off with adding the ad code to your HTML.

“More geo-targeting options”
Advertisers want the most targeted users and the ability to target users in particular countries/regions is very important. We do recognise this and in fact we have already enhanced the geo-targeting options available to Advertisers. Have a read of all the enhancements here.
“Rate Card customisation”
The site Rate Card is really the tool used to entice an Advertiser to book an ad. Publishers are now demanding the ability to customise their Rate Cards so they can present information clearer and in a more appealing nature. One way we can do this is providing the ability for Publishers to have control over the way their information is presented by allowing them to use what is known as BBCODE. This will effectively give them the power to use bold, underline, italics etc…

“Video player like AdBrite’s InVideo”
At the moment our video player simply displays ads and Publishers have no control over the video that is played. What our Publishers are demanding is a video player that allows them to show their own content (videos) and ads are provided in a post/in/pre roll nature allowing them to effectively monetise their video content.

We have had plans for awhile now to release our own video player and this is still in the works so watch out for more information on this soon!

“Better navigation in areas such as the Earnings Report”
We do recognise that some areas of the site need changes made to make navigation easier and we will be doing this from the feedback provided by customers.

“Images with text ads”
We released our PicText™ Ads on the 4th of March which actually encompass the idea of having images with text ads. Read more about it here.

“Ad Bundles”
Since we launched we have had Ad Bundles on our list of enhancements so it is on the cards. Basically Ad Bundles will make it easier for Advertisers to book Sponsored Ads on a group of related sites.

“SSL on ad serving”
Our infrastructure is now in place to support this and we are actually currently working on it. The commissioning of the new ad server last month came with the necessary changes for us to implement secure ad serving (SSL).

These are just some of the suggestions people made, there were lots more. I guess what you can really take away from this is that we are taking on board feedback and from this we can enhance our platform based on the demands of our customers.

As per normal as we make changes to AdToll we will notify you via this blog so stay tuned!

Thank you to everyone who completed the Questionnaire! We have received hundreds of them and I am now compiling the results. I am about half way through them and it’s actually interesting to see the common themes.

I will be putting together a list of these common themes and if necessary a solution (if it is an issue). I plan on having this done in the next few days so keep a look out for it on this blog. Looking through the questionnaires quickly, we have actually already addressed a lot of peoples concerns, which is great!

We have randomly selected a winner from the hundreds of entries we received and a big congratulations goes to Ali Lahery! You have won $500 worth of Account Credit which you will now see in your account!

Many of you know that we provide a Default Ad facility for AdToll banner ad groups. This allows you to display ads from another network (or your own personal ads) in replacement of the AdToll Run of Network ads - giving you complete control of your ad inventory! Read more about Default Ads at http://www.adtoll.com/publishers.php#da_1

As an example for Publishers I have taken this a step further hoping that it gives you the initiative to perhaps try it with your sites.

What I have done is used our own PicText™ Ads as the default ads on the 120×600 ad group on our blog (left hand side under the 125×125 ad group).

Why would I do this? Quite simply to ensure ads are being served on that 120×600 ad group and to provide variety to readers of the blog. This in turn attracts more clicks on that ad group and hence more revenue!

How did I do this? Well I am going to spell it out for you so that you can try this for yourself.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Woochoo Arcade Network consists of 3 flash arcades; MaskedArcade.com, Woochoochinchilla.com, and the largest being KingdomArcade.com.

Woochoochinchilla is about 2 and a half years old and has a wide variety of contents including flash games, flash animations, videos, and a small funny pictures section. It gets 200-400 UV and 300-1000 game plays per day.

Masked Arcade has near 1500 flash games and is still small. It was launched in late May of 2007.

Kingdom Arcade was launched in early May of 2007 and in it’s first month had an average of 1500-3000 game plays per day. It is now growing very fast with 1000-2000 unique visitors and 4000-7000 game plays per day. That is up from 300-800 UV per day in January. It is constantly being promoted and has 4 exclusively sponsored flash games available for download on the site. 2 of the games have become quite popular and there are many more exclusive games to come.

Woochoo Arcade Network is a Premium Publisher and advertising opportunities should seriously be considered by Advertisers. Check out the Rate Card at http://www.adtoll.com/rate-card-for-woochoo-arcade-network-166/

We have just released some enhancements to our Geo-Targeting options for our Run of Network campaigns.

Geo-Targeting is very important for advertisers as it allows them to target users located in specific countries and regions. We have always offered a range of options such as specific country targeting or group targeting such as English Speaking.

Due to feedback from customers we have now released some changes to our Geo-Targeting options which allows our advertisers to target specific countries based on a range of characteristics. For example we now have a “PayPal Accepted “option which allows the advertiser to target countries that have PayPal access.

We make it easy for the advertiser by grouping up all the Geo-Targeting options into “Unique”, “Grouped” and “Specialty”, as can be seen below.

Once an advertiser selects their choice of targeting they are then presented the available options, of which they select one.

Some of the new Geo-Targeting options include:

• PayPal Accepted
• Arabic Speaking
• High Income
• Premium Asian

Due to the sophistication of some of the new Geo-Targeting options we have also provided a matrix that allows you to see which options target which countries exactly - leaving nothing unclear.

Run of Network Geo-Targeting Matrix

The changes have actually been in place for about 24 hours and already we are receiving some great feedback and advertisers are using the new options on their bookings.

If you have any ideas for new Geo-Targeting options please let us know!

We opened our questionnaire at the end of February to gather feedback from our valued customers.

We have had literally hundreds of questionnaires completed and we have already started summarising the feedback and as expected there are common themes. That’s great as it allows us to pinpoint areas that need improving - and that’s exactly what this is all about!

If you have not completed the questionnaire you can do so from http://www.adtoll.com/questionnaire.php

If you can spare 5-10 minutes and give us your opinion and feedback we would be very much appreciative.

This ends at the end of March and at that time we will select one customer and give them $500 worth of account credit absolutely free! That’s a great incentive for you to spend the time and put some effort into the questionnaire.

We look forward to compiling all of the results and using that to come up with strategies to take AdToll even further!

ad:tech is the place to be if you are involved in online advertising. It’s a great event to network, meet people and learn. The experience for us was extremely valuable as it gave us the chance to get the AdToll brand out there and build business relationships with various companies.

We are actually still in Sydney and I am writing this blog entry from my hotel room at the Vibe Hotel - yes that’s how dedicated to AdToll I am! We get back to Perth next Monday and between now and then we plan on relaxing and of course getting some work done, after all that’s why we are here!

Having been in business since only June 2007 we were very proud to be attending the event. It made me personally realise how far we have come in so little time. Talking to the various exhibitors about their business and ours gave me a lot of confidence in our platform and where we are going.

We took a few photos of us at the event:

So who did we meet? Everyone! We took particular interest in exhibitors we felt we could build business relationships with. That’s not to say we didn’t talk with anyone else, not at all! One of our objectives was really to network and meet new people, which is actually quite important because it means opportunities present themselves when you least expect it.

Off the top of my head here’s a list of companies we met with - Clixgalore, VideoEgg, Google, Viva9/Commission Monster, Click2It, First Rate/The Performance Network, MediaSmart, eChannel, Mobile Messenger, Traction, Femail.com.au/girl.com.au, Returnity, EasyAd, Intela, Websalad, Clearlightdigital, Bluefreeway and StrongMail…. to name a few!

Overall the conference was a great success for us and the relationships we were able to initiate will be developed over the coming months which will have a direct impact on AdToll and our customers.