As our network grows so to does our range of international sites, particularly Chinese sites. Our default ads have always been in English which is pretty useless on sites in Chinese, as their users generally don’t speak the language.

To solve this problem we just released our new Chinese default ads which will be displayed and used on Publisher sites that are in Chinese.

This gives users of these sites the ability to read and more importantly understand what the banner is saying and trying to get across, which is basically “advertise here” .

We are of course providing the Chinese default ads in all the banner sizes, some of which are below:

Advertisers want the most information possible to help them make decisions when it comes to where they want to advertise. We provide as much as possible through collecting vital statistics on ad group performance and more.

One particular statistic an Advertiser would be interested in is the number of RSS subscribers a particular blog has. This helps prove the popularity and authority of a blog and goes a long way into assisting decision making. As of today the Feedburner Subscriber Count is now available for sites that use Feedburner.

Now, in the Site Directory you will see the Subscriber Count as part of a site’s details:

You will also see the Feedburner chicklet in the Rate Card of the site to give you an up to date figure.

For Publishers we also provide this information in your “My Sites” area:

If you are a Publisher and you do not see your FeedBurner Subscriber Count in your account area or on your Rate Card then please get in contact with us and we can make it happen for you.

Before you do please make sure you enable FeedCount and the Awareness API from within the Publicize section of your Feedburner dashboard.

We are proud to present out latest available ad format, the Peel Away Ad.

Peel Away Ads are a new technology that provide a different and innovative method to advertising. A “peel” appears on the top right hand side of a web site and when the mouse moves over it, the “peel” opens smoothly to reveal the advert within.

Peel Away Ad as seen on ModYourCar.com

We already have Publishers adding the new format to their site and it looks fantastic! On top of that it’s very easy for Advertisers to book an ad; all they need is a 500×500 banner image.

For more information on our Peel Away ad format visit http://www.adtoll.com/peel_away_ads_faq

We released the new changes to our Affiliate Program late last year and to this point we are very happy with how it has helped grow our company and given our Affiliates more earning opportunity.

I myself have managed to get some referrals under me and to show exactly the power of our Affiliate Program including the reporting we provide I thought I would blog abut some of my results.

OK I will admit my results are not all that exciting but I am not a real active affiliate trying to get referrals under me. Anyone actually putting in some effort could get some huge returns! Nevertheless below are my stats as they currently stand and I hope it hi-lights some of the powerful reporting we provide.

Statistics (last 30 days)

Our Affiliate Program area provides some nicely presented graphs (as above) that allow you to get a picture of your results from the last 30 days. Graphs include ‘Number of Referrals’, ‘Referrals by Country’ and ‘Referrals by Domain’.

From my results you can see most of my referrals have come from the United States and from forums.digitalpoint.com, which is due to my high level of activity on the forum there - my signature contains my referral link.

Referrals

Under the statistics we show you a list of all the referrals under you and information such as the date they joined, the country of origin, the referring URL (if known) and details of the Site / Ad Group they came from if they were directed from one of your Ad groups. You can see from here that I currently have 21 active referrals.

Affiliate Earnings to date (1-Feb - 9-Feb)

What you are most interested in is really how much these referrals have made me. Above is the section of the Earnings Report showing my Affiliate Earnings for the month of Feb up until now (9-Feb). We provide you a summary of your Affiliate Earnings broken down by day. We also show you whether the commission came from an Advertiser or Publisher referral.

Overall like I said I am not an active affiliate looking to earn from our Affiliate Program. Even still I have managed to drum up some referrals and have commissions rolling in! If you were committed to really pushing AdToll and working on signing customers you should be able to really get some great results. We do have a number of affiliates with over 100 referrals under them and performing quite well.

For those that do not know about our Affiliate Program or who don’t even know what one is I have included below the 3 questions contained within our Publisher FAQ:

What is the AdToll affiliate program?
The affiliate program allows you to make money by referring on customers to AdToll.

How can I earn as an affiliate?
As a publisher you automatically earn commissions as an affiliate through the links provided on your Ad Groups. You can also use your affiliate link to refer customers to AdToll (see Affiliate Program in your account area).

What commission can I earn?
We allow you to earn commission for Advertisers and Publishers you refer to AdToll.

• For each Advertiser you refer, you will earn a 20% commission on profit for each Ad Booking they make for the first 90 days of their membership.
• For each Publisher you refer, you will earn a 10% commission on profit for each Ad Booking they receive for the first 365 days of their membership.

Peel Away Ads are a new technology that provide a different and innovative method to advertising. A “peel” appears on the top right hand side of a web site and when the mouse moves over it, the “peel” opens smoothly to reveal the advert within.

You will find literally dozens of web sites selling packages that allow you to create them and banner creation services are already offering to make them for you.

What hasn’t happened is the true mainstreaming of Peel Away Ads and we feel the time is now. People have been waiting too long for this to happen and now it is - “the future is NOW for AdToll customers”.

Imagine how brilliant it will be to easily book a Peel Away Ad on another site or offer Peel Away Ads to your own advertisers, all through AdToll!

Booking a Peel Away ad will be so easy you won’t believe it! In fact it will be as easy as providing the 500×500 image that sits within the “peel” - AdToll does the rest!

Sometime in the next week we will be introducing the new Peel Away Ad format and we beleive it will be a big hit with Publishers and Advertisers alike. Keep your eyes “peeled” to this blog for the release!

Apple Dashboard Widgets are described as mini-applications that let you perform common tasks and provide you with fast access to information.

For those of you that use an Apple, we have had a local company create a specially designed Dashboard Widget that you can easily download and install. The Widget allows you to read our blog entries quickly and easily from your PC.

Please feel free to download the new Widget by clicking the “download” icon below.

Special thanks goes to local Perth company Cybix for making the Widget for us. Primarily Cybix offers affordable I.T. Consultancy focusing on Linux systems but the guys there are very skilled in a diverse range of areas.

ePassporte is now available as a payment option. This is part of our ongoing commitment to our customers to deliver exceptional service and features.

Depositing funds into Account Credit
ePassport Business Account holders: No fee, minimum of $20 deposit. *Currently available, contact your Account Manager.
ePassport Personal Account holders: ePpurchase facility will be setup for Personal Account holders, fee will apply, minimum of $20 deposit. *Not yet available.

ePassporte is also available for Publishers to receive payment. $2 payment fee, minimum earnings of $20. (To any ePassport account). *This option will be available in the account area in the next few days.

Please check the ePassporte fee schedule for fees you may incur during transactions.

For those of you that know our platform well you will know we are very “click” oriented and all the information that is provided for you is focused on clicks.

There are however a lot of cases where clicks aren’t everything! Some advertisers for example are looking for good branding opportunities where their ad is going to get a lot of views; where clicks are not their main focus.

In the past it hasn’t been easy to find these “high view” advertising opportunities without visiting each site’s rate card individually. As you would imagine this would be very time consuming and let’s face it, no one would ever do it.

We have solved this problem though by providing some new information in the Site Directory. We have added a new column of data (Avg. Views/Ad/Week) which Advertisers can sort by.

This allows Advertisers to easily identify advertising opportunities based on ad views, rather than clicks.

We have also noticed it is very useful for finding undervalued advertising opportunities where clicks might be low but views very high. In these situations you will find that with the right targeted ad, you will achieve a really good result.

This change has been in place for a couple of days and already we have had some good feedback from advertisers. We have also seen an increase in ad bookings on sites that were perhaps struggling a little before simply due to the fact that they were not attracting a lot of clicks.

Check it out for yourself and browse the AdToll Site Directory - http://www.adtoll.com/directory

Until now we only offered payment via PayPal but due to demand we are working on expanding on the available payment options.

In saying that, we have just released the ability for our Advertisers to deposit funds from their E-Bullion account.

Obviously we will only be accepting payments of e-Currency®, not gold or silver.

Rate Cards are a tool for Advertisers to learn about the particular site and browse the different advertising options available. The statistics on the Rate Cards should be used as an indication only as they are based on the previous performance of the site.

Statistics on the Rate Card is calculated using an average of the data collected over the past 7 days, which helps smooth out daily variations to give a better indication of the sites performance.

A very important consideration Advertisers must make and understand, is that the statistics of each available advertising option are representative of the next ad booked in that spot. It is displayed in this way to inform Advertisers of the performance their ad may achieve if they made a booking.

As an example:

A Publisher has a standard banner Ad Group with Ad Pool size set to 10 ( so there are 10 available spots in the rotation). The Ad Group is currently being served 2 Sponsored Ads and 5 Run of Network Ads. Therefore, the number of ads currently in rotation is 7.

In the course of the day the Ad Group receives 100 clicks from 15,000 views.

At the end of the day, the data is complied and statistics calculated, as follows

Average clicks/ad/week

7 times the total number of clicks received during the day (to give total clicks in a week), divided by 8 (the position of the next ad booking). This equals 87.5 (or 88 clicks/ad/week).

Average views/ad/week

7 times the total number of views received during the day (to give total views in a week), divided by 8 (the position of the next ad booking). This equals 13,125 views/ad/week.

The Rate Card is then updated to show the average of the last 7 days of data.

To make things easy, let’s say the daily statistics were the same each day, for the last 7 days. The Rate Card would then display:

Average clicks/ad/week: 88 clicks

Average views/ad/week: 13,125 views

Average CTR: 0.7%

When an Advertiser views the Rate Card, this information gives them a good indication of the performance their ad may achieve if they made a booking. Of course, performance will vary depending on targeting, media used etc. This is why Rate Cards are only an indication. Your Account Manager can help you optimise your campaign to get the best results.

In summary,

• Rate Cards are a tool and are to be used as an indication only.
• Statistics shown are for the next ad booking, NOT for the entire rotation of ads in the group.
• You Account Manager can help you optimise your campaign.