We would like to sincerely apologise for the downtime you experienced over the last few days (approx. 60 hours). We realise how important AdToll is to our customers and this downtime has had a widespread impact, which will be adequately compensated for.

We respect and value our customers and therefore believe in being open and transparent in our actions.

THE DISASTER

At approximately 7:30 PM on the 24th Nov 2007 (Australian WST), AdToll became unavailable. At that time we attempted to contact technical staff at our hosting company; we were unable to even log in to our account to do so. We found a way of getting in contact with them and then learnt our account had been terminated and our servers turned off. Apparently we were in breach of a particular service condition, which initially struck us as very strange.

After careful investigation of this issue, it became apparent that the termination of our account was pre-mature and unjust. From the moment AdToll went down we were on the phone to technical staff to try and resolve the issue but were unable to do so due to availability of staff over the weekend.

Some of you are wondering why we did not order a new server, restore the database and get AdToll operational as quickly as possible. The answer is simple! The secure FTP we use for our backups was under the hosting account and once they terminated the account we were unable to access the backup area.

It was not until Monday morning that we were able to communicate with the right department to reactivate our account and servers. At 7:00 AM on the 27^th Nov 2007 we had AdToll operational.

CUSTOMER COMPENSATION

We realise there will be a backlash from our customers and we accept full responsibility. We again apologise and hope we can make it up to you by continuing to provide outstanding service and platform enhancements.

To compensate for the approximately 60 hours of downtime:

Publishers will receive Run of Network earnings for the 25-Nov-2007 and 26-Nov-2007 equal to their earnings from the 23-Nov-2007; and

Advertisers who had Sponsored Ads active between 24-Nov-2007 7:30 PM (Aust WST) and 27-Nov-2007 7:00 AM (Aust WST) will receive Account Credit for the period their ad was affected. On top of that we will also give an extra day of compensation to cater for the situation whereby Publishers removed the ad groups and needed time to get them back onto their sites.

WHAT WE WILL DO TO ENSURE THIS NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN

We have already begun reviewing and making changes to our Disaster Recovery Plan as to ensure this does not occur again. This includes;

Enhancements to our back up procedures.

Improving communication in case of disaster.

Building greater rapport with our hosting company.

 

We thank you for your support and patience during this time and we looking forward to working with you in the future.

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