Adgator Blog

Hey Folks. It seems that advertisers have finally gotten over the whole soccer buzz, so things are getting back to normal. Three new campaigns have just kicked off on Adgator. There are a lot more coming up, so keep your ears to the ground (or just make sure you’re subscribed to this blog).

Standard Bank – MyCard (CPC Campaign)

Start date: 6 August 2010
End Date: 30 September 2010
Verticals: All Verticals
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: All Sizes

Standard Bank – MyCard (CPM Campaign)

Start date: 6 August 2010
End Date: 30 September 2010
Verticals: All Verticals
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: All Sizes

Weylandts (CPM Campaign)



Start date: 1 August 2010
End Date: 30 September 2010
Verticals: Lifestyle
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: 300×250 px and 120×600 px

We have been inundated with various email requests about a stats and earnings problem with Adgator. Hopefully this post will help clarify matters.

I can report that Adgator is having a problem pulling in Ad Dynamo stats into the Adgator Dashboard. The last successful import of these stats is the 6 June 2010 and we are currently working with Ad Dynamo to sort this bug out. Please don’t worry about not getting your revenue attributed to you – once this issue has been resolved you’ll be allocated all your revenue due to you. We will update you as soon as the matter is resolved once and for all.

The other core issue we’ve noticed is that a couple have questioned why they have been serving ads but earning no revenue. Just so you know, there is nothing wrong with the Adgator earnings stats and if your account is one of the ones showing no revenue earned there is a very valid reason for this.

There are no earnings reflecting due to a discrepancy with stats between Adgator and the Agency for a few of their campaigns. This means we have had to deliver the ads for a short period but you will have earned all the money due to you for these campaigns. We apologise for the inconvenience this may have caused you. We have rectified the discrepancy with the stats, so this should not happen again in the future.

Also, post World Cup there haven’t been many bookings as advertisers have exhausted a lot of their budgets, but now that the everyone is slowly recovering from world cup hangover, we have many campaigns pending approval. It’s taken a while to try and get approval from clients and agencies during the world cup as well as getting approval from creative agency to clients.

That all said, we have just loaded a bunch of new paying campaigns onto the system as all of these approvals are finally coming through so we hope that the drought has ended for you guys.

We must apologise again, but things will be back to normal very soon once we’ve resolved everything.

The following campaign kicked off this week. Also, be sure to checkout the cool competition we’re running with them over here.

Start date: 8 March 2010
End Date: 31 March 2010
Verticals: Lifestyle
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: All Sizes

This is just a friendly reminder that today is the final day to switch over to the new adgator system before the old system becomes defunct. If you haven’t updated your blog with the new ad code yet then we suggest you do it straight away. Head on over to http://new.adgator.co.za/blogger/ and get your new ad code now. For those that have already done it – well done, you’re a rockstar!

There are some things that I need to clarify about the new system so please continue reading… It’s important!

Problems with the new code

Some people have reported issues with adding the new code to their blog. We’ve identified the common problems and have a page over here that will assist you if ads aren’t displaying after you’ve added the new code.

Adtech Ads

If you’ve implemented the new code on your blog and are seeing Adtech banner ads being displayed then there is something wrong and you need to contact us in order for us to rectify the situation for you. No website should be displaying Adtech ads after the code has been added to your blog.

Stats

Both Adgator and Addynamo stats are only updated once per day. This is a change from the old Adgator where we updated stats every hour. This means that the first time you log in to the new Adgator you won’t see any stats at all. We will only have stats for your blog 24 hours after you’ve added the ad code to your blog. There’s also a page over here explaining when and how stats get updated.

WordPress.com Blogs

If you have a blog on WordPress.com then we have good news and we have bad news. I don’t want to try and explain it all here so please read this page to see what the issues are and how to potentially solve them.

Old System Earnings

During the course of Saturday 6 March, once the old system gets shut down, we will be running a final earnings from the old system. We’ve already processed the earnings for February but now we’ll do one from the 1st to 5th March and add it to the new Adgator. Any earnings that you’ve accumulated from the old system will be added on Saturday to the new one. You won’t see these earnings appear in your stats section but you will see a new line item in the Your Statement link found in the Dashboard.

A Final Thanks

I really just want to thank each and every one of you for your time and patience during this transition. I know this is probably the last thing anyone felt like but this has been an important step for us as a network. We’re growing rapidly, making bloggers more money each and every month and now we can scale this product to where we wanted it to be from day one.

The following campaigns are new to Adgator. Please see details below and where they fit in.

SARS

Start date: 3 March 2010
End Date: 31 March 2010
Verticals: All Verticals
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: 300×250, 468×60, 120×600

Standard Bank – Visa

Start date: 26 February 2010
End Date: 30 April 2010
Verticals: Business & Lifestyle
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: All Sizes

Ephraim Ngatane Exhibition

Start date: 26 February 2010
End Date: 13 March 2010
Verticals: Entertainment
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: All Sizes

Johnny Walker – Celebrating Strides

Start date: 26 February 2010
End Date: 4 April 2010
Verticals: Lifestyle & Business
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: 300×250 & 120×600

Optimal Energy – Don’t be a Passenger

Start date: 26 February 2010
End Date: 30 April 2010
Verticals: Lifestyle
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: 300×250, 728×90 & 125×125

Guys, it’s finally here. As communicated with you previously we have now completed the integration with Adtech and Addynamo and we’re ready to move Adgator into the next phase of its lifecycle.

This move now affects you directly in that you need to log in to our new platform and get new Ad codes for your blog. From now until Friday 5 March 2010 we will be serving all the Adgator campaigns on both our old and new platform but after this date your old code will no longer work so please get the new code up and running as soon as possible.

The new version of Adgator can be found at http://new.adgator.co.za and you can get your new ad code by visiting this link. Your log in details are still identical to the old system so head on over and check it all out.

Changes on the new platform

What’s important to highlight here is that no new user functionality has been added to this new version. This new version is a major revision to our backend which now allows us to serve ads on an enterprise ad serving system and we’re now perfectly positioned to add new functionality in the future.

We have lots of new functionality that will be added in the coming weeks as well as a new revenue stream for you guys but we had to get this completed first.

All blogs on this new version of Adgator will also be serving Addynamo ads so everyone on the network has double the chance of making money and all of your inventory is now monetised.

The final big change happening is that shortly after 5 March we will be re-opening Adgator for new blogs. There is a little twist to this but we’re now able to scale Adgator and allow as many blogs as needed.

Billing has been removed from the old system

If you login to the old version of Adgator you’ll notice that the “Money” section has disappeared. All earnings will now be processed on new.adgator.co.za so you’ll have to log in there to generate an invoice and to check your monthly earnings.

Consolidation of your earnings

At the end of February we will consolidate both your earnings off the old and new system into your statement page over here. Then, when we switch over to the new system after 5 March, we’ll process a final run of earnings from the old system again. This means that any money made off the old system will be added to your statement when we do the final shutdown. You won’t lose a cent – we promise!

That’s it for now. We’ll post again with more info at a later stage but for now this should get you going. If you have any problems please pop us a mail at ops@afrigator.com and we’ll try assist you along the way. Head on over now to http://new.adgator.co.za and get that new code on your blog!

In December 2009 we announced the new partnership with Ad:Dynamo (more over here) and one of the things we were working on was being able to report, in detail, the earnings from Ad:Dynamo.

The good news is that for the 20-odd blogs already added onto Ad:Dynamo you’ll now be able to get these detailed stats. On your Dashboard you will now see an overview for your current months earnings as shown below.

In the sidebar you’ll also notice a new link called Ad:Dynamo Daily Stats directly below the normal Adgator Daily Stats link.

If you click this link you’ll be able to view all the daily stats from Ad:Dynamo which include the revenue you’ve earned as well as total clicks per day. Here’s an example of what the page looks like.

If you don’t see this new functionality it means your site is not yet serving Ad:Dynamo ads. Don’t fret though because as soon as we migrate everyone over onto the new Adgator 2.0 (read yesterday’s blog post) you’ll get full access to Ad:Dynamo and your site will have double the chance of making money.

It’s been 15 months since we launched Adgator and we’ve learnt a hell of a lot along the way. There have been good times and bad times and as a result of both we’ve identified exactly where we need to be going and how we’re going to get there. This post highlights some core changes that are going to be happening at Adgator in the coming weeks so if you’re on Adgator (or want to be) please read this carefully.

Ad:Dynamo Integration

If you aren’t yet aware we have integrated with SA’s competitor to Google – Addynamo (read this for more info). As part of this we’ve been in a process of integrating stats into the Adgator dashboard as well as setting up all the blogs on Adgator with Ad:Dynamo. I’m please to inform you we’re pretty much done with this.

Over the next couple days those of you who are already serving Ad:Dynamo ads will start to see a new graph on your Adgator Dashboard for this – we’re just tying up a few loose ends. Those of you not yet serving Ad:Dynamo ads will be serving as soon as you update your ad code for your blog (more on this in the point below).

Adgator is moving to enterprise ad-serving technology

For the last 12 months we’ve been testing both Google’s Double-Click and Adtech’s Helios ad serving platforms in an effort to better serve both our advertisers and bloggers and we made a decision towards the end of last year to move Adgator onto Adtech’s platform. We have been using the open-source OpenX ad serving technology however we’ve had major scaling issues and campaign delivery problems which has forced us to move away from it.

We’re in the final stages of the implementation of Adtech and we’re hoping to have everything live by 1 March 2010. The implications for current Adgator members is that you’ll need to update your ad code on your blog when we’re ready to move over. It will be simple and easy to do and we’ll contact you guys with more information when we’re ready to.

We’re dropping around 150 blogs from the Network

As part of our move to Adtech we’re dropping all the blogs that have not served any Adgator ads over the last 2 months. This means that we’re only bringing around 220 blogs over onto Adtech as these are the blogs that are active and, we figured, want to remain Adgator members.

If you’re one of the 150-odd blogs that gets dropped in the migration and you want to still remain apart of it, you will have an opportunity to re-apply for membership.

We’ll be open to new blogs joining

One of the major criticisms we received over the last year is that we’re not allowing new blogs to join – there was method to our madness. We limited new blog registration because of two major reasons. The first being that our technology didn’t allow us to go beyond the 350 blogs we had and the second being that we wanted to be able to monetise all the blogs we did have before opening it up again to new members.

I’m happy to report that this is now coming to an end as we’ve solved these two problems. Anyone who has ever applied to be on the waiting list will be getting an email from us inviting them to join the network. New members will be added to the Adtech platform so you won’t need to update ad code on your site.

Once our migration to Adtech is complete that “join now” form will allow any blog to signup without any further waiting periods.

We apologise that it’s taken so long to get to the waiting list but we really needed to sort our stuff out first before we could let you all in.

If you have any questions or need further clarity let me know in the comment form below.

Hot off the heels from the previous three campaigns that kicked off recently, we have just made another two campaigns live on the network. Details below.

Simba

Start date: 22 January 2010
End Date: 28 February 2010
Verticals: Entertainment & Lifestyle
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: All Sizes

MWEB Friendship 2.0

Start date: 22 January 2010
End Date: 28 February 2010
Verticals: All Verticals
Geo Targeting: South Africa
Banner sizes: All Sizes

During December last year a partnership agreement was broached with the wonderful guys at Ad:Dynamo who are a new South African startup that aims to compete head on with Google Adsense. Some of you may already know about this partnership but I’d like to clarify and explain what this relationship means and how it will work for everyone.

Over the next month every single Adgator blog will be activated with Cost Per Click (CPC) ads powered by Addynamo in addition to the normal Cost Per Thousand (CPM) ads powered by Adgator.

What does this mean for you?

When your site has been activated you will start to see CPC ads being served along with our normal Adgator ads. This means that when Adgator doesn’t have a paying CPM ad to serve on your site we’ll serve up your unique Addynamo code instead which means you’ll always be serving ads that pay you. Gone are the days of the default “Advertise on this blog” banners.

How does this benefit you and why wouldn’t you just go direct to Addynamo?

Adgator is now officially a premium publisher with Addynamo and this means that in addition to normal contextual advertising advertisers are able to specifically target your website. For site-specific targeting we’ve negotiated a starting cost per click of R6.00 and this has the potential of rising depending on bids on ads for your site.

Of this R6.00 the split is rather simple:

• Addynamo gets R3.00 (in terms of their 50/50 split with publishers)
• Adgator gets R1.50
• You get R1.50

This R6.00 CPC and your subsequent R1.50 earning per click would not be possible if you went direct to Addynamo. The fact that Adgator is now a premium publisher and our blogs are now able to be site-targeted enables us to command a minimum CPC. For more clarity on this read the blog post over at the Addynamo blog where Sean explains this partnership in great detail.

What if you’re already a member of Addynamo? What if you want to join anyway?

If you’re already a member of Addynamo or would like to join yourself there is no need to worry either. You can still maintain your current Addynamo ads or alternatively join independently however you’ll notice that your cost per click will be lower because premium publishers command a higher cost per click.

Now what?

To get things rolling we chose 25 of the highest traffic blogs on Adgator and activated them in December so that they could start delivering contextual ads immediately. These 25 sites have been involved in a beta test ever since as we’ve been working the the Addynamo guys to get all the kinks sorted.

Right now we’ve been focusing on being able to report on Addynamo earnings directly within the Adgator dashboard. This has taken a little longer than expected but we’re hoping to have that integration complete by the end of next week. Once this has been done every single Adgator blog will start to display Addynamo ads immediately.

You may have also noticed that the code on your site doesn’t display an ad. This is normal as we’ve de-activated the “default” ads that said “Advertise on this blog” in preparation for this integration. This means that you’ll only be seeing paying ads on your blog until this integration is complete. Please do not change your code on your site – nothing is broken and it’s all still working as before.

Right, that’s it from me. If you have any questions please leave a comment and I’ll help you get more clarity on matters.