The new version of our PicText™ Ads are finally here! Initially we are releasing them as a BETA and are now calling on any Publishers interested in giving them a go.

To use the new version of our PicText™ Ads just create a new ad group for your site and select “PicText Ad Version 2 Beta” - then as normal follow the instructions!

What’s different about Pictext™ Version 2?

• The ads are automatically served in an IFRAME so our ads do not slow your web site loading time.
• You will be served far more relevant and a higher volume of ads then ever before.
• You will see a better payout rates and payout rates will vary with niche.

Technical things to consider

• There is no need to put the ad code into your own IFRAME as our new ads do this automatically for you.
• You can only alter the values in the ad code for the styles and other parameters. Do not alter the ad code in any other way - such as moving the styles to an external stylesheet.
• Testing has been conducted in a variety of browsers including IE6, IE7 and FireFox 2 and 3.

What should you do if you see a problem?

If you are using our new PicText™ Ads and you discover a problem or have some feedback please get in contact with us immediately. It’s through your help in this BETA stage that we will improve and iron out any issues.

We already have a number of Publishers who have been trialling the new version with some fantastic success! We look forward to working with all of our Publishers to help you monetize your web sites even better than before.

Keep in mind this is a BETA release and as such Sponsored Ad bookings will not be accepted, however you will be served a variety of relevant ads (based on your site restrictions, ad rating, vertical and user geo-target) .

** BIRTHDAY ADVERTISER BONUS AT END OF ARTICLE **

It’s incredible how quick time passes by. A year to the day we launched AdToll and in that time we have grown and matured to become the reliable, well-known and trustworthy service we are today.

In a market flooded with big players and literally hundreds of small players (who seem to disappear as quick as they pop up), we are proud to be here providing our service to thousands of customers on a daily basis. This one year milestone acts as a sign of credibility in a market riddled with scams and untrustworthy services.

On a personal note this last 2 years has been one of the most intense times of my life in terms of effort and stress. Such tasks as putting together our business plan, going through the design and build phases, pre-launch promotion/marketing, the launch and then in the last year working on bringing in new business, supporting our loyal customers at the same time as continuing to enhance and evolve our system to keep up with market demands (as well as our own).

Special Thanks

I’d like to take the time to mention 2 very special people that have been involved with AdToll literally from day dot and whom without we would not be where we are today.

My brother Paul who takes on the responsibility as our Business Development Manager who has done an outstanding job all round bringing in new business and also working on many other facets of the business including dealing with customers on a daily basis, product development and more.

Tara who has been on board since our launch was given the very demanding role as our Promotions Manager who has been responsible for a wide range of things but in particular external relations. Tara is the person responsible for getting us to ad:tech Sydney earlier this year where we promoted and networked with many players in the industry.

Of course there are people involved with the day to day running of the business and I’d like to thank them all as well.

What’s next?

So now that we are one year old what’s next? Well being the fast moving company we are, we are already working on the latest changes to our service of which we hope to have released later in the week. The changes include enhancements to our PicText ad format and help address some of the issues raised by customers in the questionnaire from a few months ago.

AdToll Performance

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out we have grown over the last 12 months. We currently have just under 1,800 active sites in the network in a range of verticals, with ‘Entertainment & Games’ and ‘Internet & Technology’ being our most popular.

These sites in total help us deliver over 1 billion ad views per month and by the end of the year we hope to double that throughput.

In terms of fill rate, each day we achieve approximately an 80+% fill rate across the board and again by the end of the year we want that figure to be around the 90% mark.

While fill rate is important so is ad relevancy and quantity. Over the next few months in particular we plan on working on increasing ad relevancy and quantity across the board. Keep in mind though that Publishers should be strict as to the ad industries they allow on their sites to keep the relevancy as accurate as possible.

A good indication of growth is the Alexa Rank and while some people don’t like is, I still think it is useful when used in the right way. Our current Alexa Traffic Rank Trend graph can be seen below.

As you can see our growth has clearly been in an upwards trend and currently our daily Alexa Rank fluctuates between 6k and 10k on a daily basis.

Our blog has been a very useful communication tool which we feel has worked well. Our RSS subscriber count grows on a daily basis which means our blog entries are hitting more and more people every day. Below is the graph of our Feedburner RSS count over time.

Well, while we could continue to reminisce on the last 12 month, we are more focused on the next 12 months and where we intend to take AdToll. In saying that I’ll close off by just again thanking everyone who has made AdToll a huge success over the last 12 months and we look forward to working with you all in the coming year.

BIRTHDAY ADVERTISER BONUS

To celebrate our first birthday we have a bonus we are offering! For every Tier 1 Run of Network campaign booked in the next 24 hours we will give you an extra 15% clicks absolutely FREE! For example by booking a $1,000 campaign you will receive an extra $150 of clicks absolutely FREE!

As you most likely already know we pay our Publishers on the 15th of every month.

Today, on the 15th of June 2008, we have hit an important milestone by paying our Publishers on time and in full for the 12th month!

While that may seem a small thing to some in the scheme of things it is very important as it gives the market confidence in our ability. Publishers looking to come on board can have confidence and feel safe about doing business with us.

There’s always lots of talk about how to make money online, who’s making it and how… here’s 5 tips from me, if you want to be one of those successful money making moguls:

• Be passionate about what you do.
• Make sure your web site has relevant, unique and valuable content.
• Make yourself an expert in your field - and make sure people know about you!
• Know whats out there in terms of how to make money online. ie affiliate marketing.
• Be completely dedicated - if you expect to make money doing nothing then quit now and go get a job at your local Burger King.

Those are 5 very important tips that I can give you. The last one might sound harsh but that’s exactly what it’s like in the real world of making money online… only the strong, dedicated and passionate people will make it. Are you one of them?

We often get asked by Advertisers if we provide CPM based Run of Network campaigns. The good news for these Advertisers is that we are now working on introducing CPM based Run of Network campaigns to accompany our CPC based campaigns.

This is also great news for Publishers as they will now be able to earn on a CPM basis!

We expect CPM Run of Network campaigns to be released sometime in June and further release information will be available on this blog in the next month.

We are offering Advertisers a pre-release special whereby if you pre-book a CPM RON campaign before release you can take advantage of our wholesale price. If you are interested please get in contact with us. 

We asked ourselves the question, “what is a video ad?”. A simple question but it made us think. We came to the conclusion that a video ad is simply a type of ad media. At that time we had a dedicated video ad format (300×250) and that really didn’t make much sense based on our discussion.

This discussion, as well as feedback from our customers has lead to this change. What we have done is changed the 300×250 video ad group into a normal banner ad (Medium Rectangle) and now video ads can be booked on any of the banner ad sizes. We figured that video is simply an ad media, just like a JPG, or even flash (SWF), so why shouldn’t you be able to book video as well!?

To accompany this change we have also provided more flexibility to Publishers when setting up their banner Ad Groups. Now they have the ability to select which types of ad media they will accept and display.

This in a sense killed two birds with one stone because one of the things Publishers were asking for was the ability to disallow GIF and SWF ads; now they have the ability to do that and more.

You will also see changes on the Rate Cards and booking screens. On the Rate Card, on each available Ad Group it will show the Advertiser what ad media is allowed, and this information is also shown at the top of the booking screen for Sponsored Ad Bookings.

Also on the booking screen, as part of the ad media section, the Advertiser is required to select the type of ad media they wish to use. This helps make it clear to the Advertiser what type of media they can book and provides them with the necessary information and fields required when they select their option.

This change is a step forward for AdToll and provides a lot more flexibility and options to Publishers. We look forward to hearing any feedback or ideas so please feel free to contact us if you do!

We have recently changed our minimum site requirement criteria as a result of feedback from advertisers and close monitoring of active campaigns.

The focus on these changes is to increase the quality of sites in the directory which will directly impact the effectiveness of advertiser campaigns.

The new minimum site requirements:

• Site must contain useful content or perform a function. Sites over populated with advertisements or spam are not accepted.
• Sites offering or promoting “get paid to read” or “get paid to click” programs, pyramid schemes or similar programs are not accepted.
• Sites reproducing or containing download links to copyright protected material are not accepted. e.g. Rapidshare links.
• Sites promoting illegal activities are not accepted. e.g. hacking.
• Sites that are incomplete or under construction are not accepted.
• Sites that do not meet our in-house quality criteria are not accepted.

The first five requirements straightforward, but many publishers will have questions regarding our sixth requirement, which is a basic quality assessment of the site.

Sites are required to be a complete package with an obvious theme or function that fit into our vertical categories. We look for a well balanced site that will perform for the publisher as well as for the advertiser. A professionally designed, informative niche site is a perfect example of what we look for.

We believe these requirements will be welcomed by advertisers as well as publishers. Nothing is more important to our team than maintaining a quality directory of dedicated publishers, and this is a step in that direction.

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.

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!

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!