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.
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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.

For more than ten years, ad:tech has provided media, marketing and technology professionals with the tools and techniques they need to succeed in a changing digital world. With 11 shows in 7 countries, ad:tech’s globally respected roster of speakers, workshops and exhibitors continues to make it the preferred resource and destination for digital marketers everywhere.

ad:tech is the most inspiring digital marketing forum I’ve found. It’s an efficient way of keeping current, networking with premier practitioners, and spawning ideas. In short it is high content, high choice, and consequently an enormously valuable regional conference.

– Mike Amour, Chairman & CEO, Grey Global Group

This Wednesday is the opening of ad:tech Sydney and myself and Tara are making the trip over from Perth to enjoy the exhibition and meet people. We have a lot of meetings planned so it should be a pretty busy couple of days.

We will be taking pics at ad:tech and I hope to keep you updated through this blog with pics and info!

See you at ad:tech!!!

It has been just under a week since we released our new PicText™ Ads and they are gaining in popularity quickly with Publishers and Advertisers alike. What is it about PicText™ Ads that makes them more appealing?

For Advertisers it means they are given extra opportunity through an image to convey their message to the user.

Publishers love PicText™ Ads because they generate a higher CTR as the images attract users eyes and hence attention. The images as well as the enhanced customisation ability mean that ads can be blended into a web site not only easily but seamlessly.

Below are two examples of PicText™ Ads taken from Publisher sites.

Those are just two examples I quickly found from our directory of sites using PicText™ Ads, there’s many many more!

What I really wanted to talk about though was our Run of Network (RON) pricing on PicText™ Ads. This week we also went through a review of our RON pricing and looked at things like competitors, our current ad inventory and stock etc.. From those results we came up with a new pricing model that we believe is not only competitive in the market but very affordable and realistic.

Below is some pricing on PicText™ Ads with various targeting options (based on a $50 budget):

Tier 1 (standard) - 3.99c / click

United States - 6.49c / click

English Peaking Countries - 5.49c / click

India - 1c / click

United Kingdom - 5.49c / click

You will find our pricing has dropped across the board and is far more attractive as well. We do have a lot of targeting options available so please check out our complete offering at http://www.adtoll.com/book-ron-ad

Overall we are extremely happy with our new PicText™ Ads and with the great feedback we have received from customers it’s hard not to be!

This afternoon at approximately 4:30PM AWTD we will be performing some very important upgrades to our systems. We expect a small service interruption.

At this time if you experience anything further out of the ordinary please get in contact with us immediately!

If you are unsure of when 4:30PM AWTD is you can check the Perth time at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/results.html?query=perth

UPDATE: The upgrade has been completed and we are happy to say it was a complete success. We were down for about 90 seconds while the upgrade was taking place which unfortunately had to be done. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

I’ve seen some interesting concepts over the years… good, bad and ugly! Something came across my desk today and just had to share it with you.

It’s called the “Money Magnet”

I heard about it through a mailing list I am subscribed to and for some reason it just caught my eye. It’s basically a 125×125 widget you buy and then display on your web site/blog. From there other people can buy them from you and you make a commission. That person then has one which they can use on their site and on sell the widget etc etc.. and so on it goes.

It sounds like a pyramid scheme maybe but it is only at a single level; so you only make a commission on the Money Magnets you sell directly through yours. The only way to get a Money Magnet is to buy one off someone else. So if you are interested you can buy one off us here at AdToll!

On the left hand side of the blog you will see our Money Magnet on top of the 125×125 AdToll ad group. It displays statistics which are real time and include my earnings, total network earnings and the last person who actually purchased a Money Magnet.

That’s all right? WRONG!! There are different value Money Magnets you can buy and depending on how much you spend will depend on the commissions you receive and what you can sell. I know that may sound confusing and at first I must admit I was too but just check it out for yourself and read the information provided!

You can buy your first Money Magnet from http://www.getmoneymagnet.com/

UPDATE: We sold a few Money Magnets pretty quick so I decided to invest some money into the $100 Money Magnet which you can now buy off me as well! The green $100 Money Magnet is also on the left hand side of the site under the $20 Money Magnet.

Late yesterday we made changes to the PicText™ Ads RON pricing which was accepted really well with some very good feedback from Advertisers.

To compliment, we have also gone through and restructured the pricing for all the other available ad formats. These updates have been in place for about 15 hours and the response has been phenomenal!

Early indications from Advertisers are positive and again we have had some very good feedback, and plenty of RON bookings - that’s all the proof we need of a successful pricing change!

Very much like the PicText™ Ad pricing, we have made targeting far more affordable and realistic and in fact you will notice a drop in prices across the board from standard Tier 1 campaigns to fully targeted campaigns.

For pricing and booking info visit the RON booking page at http://www.adtoll.com/book-ron-ad