AdToll Blog

PicText™ Version 2 has been RELEASED

Dan — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:40:54 +0000

The new version of our PicText™ Ads have been released throughout the network! The one week BETA release was very successful with a number of publishers giving it a go. Statistics we gathered proved the CTR of the new version of PicText™ was more than double and the fill rate was much higher with more relevant ads and more variety.

If you are using our PicText™ Ads you will now see they have been upgraded to the new version - spotted by the loading icon before the ads load.
There are a couple of technical considerations which you may require you to make some changes, these are below:

The ad code must not be altered apart from changing styles or variables. DO NOT separate the styles from the javascript area, they need to be together.
The ad code MUST be placed between the tags on your page.
You must have height and width properties set in your styles. The top style in the ad code has this, for example “.at_table_style_19875 { width:200px; height:50px; background-color: #0000CC; padding: 3px; }”.

Thanks to everyone that helped with the testing, it was much appreciated. If anyone does discover anything strange or has any questions please get in contact with us!

PicText™ Ads Version 2 BETA Released

Dan — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:15:51 +0000

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) .

Happy Birthday AdToll!

Dan — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:01:09 +0000

** 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!

12th Publisher Payment made and 5 online money making tips!

Dan — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:57:34 +0000

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?

Advertiser Spotlight: ISawItIn.com

Dan — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:23:48 +0000

The Devil Wears Prada, but is it a bag, a dress or a great pair of sunglasses?

Consumers have the chance to find out when they visit ISawItIn.com, the website dedicated to helping movie fans take Hollywood fashion from the big screen and put it into their closets.

Our site features information for consumers on where they can purchase the clothes, jewelry, watches and other cool fashions from a rapidly growing list of Hollywood Hits. Every day new links are added as users find the clothes worn by their favorite stars at stores and websites all over the world and hop on to ISawItIn.com to share the information with the online community.

ISawItIn.com keeps its customers up to date on the latest finds and happenings and updates their site with information on the movie clothes they have researched. Visitors have a chance to browse their collection, ask questions and reach out to the ISawItIn.com community to find the star styles they’re looking for.

To browse or contribute to the site’s extensive list of Hollywood fashions, visit www.ISawItIn.com.

Note: This Advertiser Spotlight was provided by David from www.ISawItIn.com.

Upcoming: CPM Run of Network Campaigns

Dan — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:06:56 +0000

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.

Video Ads now available on all banner Ad Groups

Dan — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:13:59 +0000

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!

Changes to site minimum requirements

admin — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:33:40 +0000

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.

SSL protected ad serving now active on AdToll

Dan — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 02:28:12 +0000

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:

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