Web Log of Greg Mathews

I received an email from adbrite yesterday informing me that click fraud has been identified on our site and as such the site can has been disabled.

I am sure this is the same problem as with Bidvertiser a  few days ago but when replying to the Adbrite email address ( support@adbrite.com) it bounced, I tried from numerous email accounts and they all had the same problem. In the end I had to use the online form in the hope that they will be able to resolve the issue just as bidvertiser have.

OK its been over a week now since we implemented Bidvertiser and adsdaq, and adbrite since, and out of the three Adsdaq is performing the worse, in fact we’re lucky if it hits $1/day so we are dropping the Adsdaq network advertising from the site.

We have also moved away from OpenX to serve our direct advertising because of the lack of ’self registration’ for advertisers which was, in our opinion a major flaw. Instead we are using ‘AdManager Pro’ from phpwebscripts.com, it’s not a free but it does have the ’self registration’ feature which is needed. Read the rest of this entry »

As a followup to my post a few days ago Google doing click fraud themselves I looked into it a bit more and it appears the IP addresses in question may be from  Google services such as Google Translate etc so I contacted Bidvertiser as many of the site users use the translate service provided by Google so I do not want these users banned from seeing the bidvertiser ads.

I was pleasentley surprised when I got a response from Bidvertiser within 24 hours confirming that they would lift the ban on the Google IP addresses within the next 24 hours.  This is far better support/service then you would ever get from Google.  Well done Bidvertiser.

We have decided to offer advertising direct to advertisers after the recent decision by Google.

The ads are not context so any ad will appear on any page but ads can be geotargetted enabling advertisers to target ads towards specific regions if necessary.

Take a look at http://adserver.yzoo.co.uk and if you place an ad before the 7th May 2008, drop us a line  mentioning this post and we will double your impressions.

OK so we removed adsense from Yzoo as requested by Google and bidvertiser ads are being displayed.

When I logged into my Bidvertiser account today I was presented with the following message:

We have recently detected invalid clicks generated on your BidVertiser ads. The invalid clicks were generated from the following IP(s):
218.111.59.157 , 66.249.85.69 , 74.125.16.39 , 72.14.193.4 , 72.14.195.225 , 66.249.84.14

The listed IP(s) are now blocked in our system, however, we ask that you take any necessary actions to avoid generating any further invalid clicks this way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bidvertiser and adsdaq have both been implemented now in place of Adsense and I have found that the Cost Per Click is higher with Bidvertiser than it is with Adsense but the Click Through Rate is far lower which overall means less is being earned from advertising.

I am in the process of installed my own Ad Server using the OpenX script but it has one major flaw in that it does not allow advertisers  to register and set up their own advertising without the involvement of the administrator.  This is something I need to look into as I think this is a major requirement.

Even without direct advertising, OpenX does allow you to add other network ads so for example you can rotate between Adsense, Bidvertiser, Adbrite and Adsdaq and have different ad network ads displayed on your site which also makes it easier if you decide to change ad networks at a later date, no need to change the code in each and every page of your site, just ad the new network to OpenX server and if required remove the old network. It’s great.

After 18 months of Yzoo.co.uk having adsense ads being shown on the site Google has today decided that it is breaking the Adsense policies.

As normal, Google give no information about which policies are being broken but sent a ’standard’ email. Over the past 12 months Yzoo has earned over Quarter of a Million US dollars via Adsense and I dread to think how much Google has earned from it so I would have thought a bit more detail could have been provided.

Yzoo has now removed adsense from all new searches and replacing them with other advertising networks such as Adsdaq and BidVertiser which, it is hoped, will at least earn Yzoo enough for it to pay for itself.

In the past I have reported, on here, that Google have dropped the site Yzoo.co.uk from their Serps, this has been happening on a regular basis about every 6 to 8 weeks and the site has been relisted again within a few days after I have tweaked it.

February 2008 was the busiest month yet for the site, seeing more than 700,000 page impressions a day on a number of days, but then during the last few days of the month the innevitible happened, the site disappeared from the Serps. I tweaked again and the site reappeared, but this time only for a week or so when it vanished again.

Read the rest of this entry »

OK although Google have paid a lot later than normal to many publishers they have now paid, EFT payments of those affected are appearing in bank accounts this morning.

The thing we must all remember is that Google do state that the payments will be in your account by the 5th of the month, and true to form this has been the case so on paper they did not pay publishers late. It is just felt that it is because normally payments are a lot earlier than this.

I think what is getting up publishers noses is the fact that Google did not announce any delays nor did they update forum threads about the delays until after the event, and then they came out with a lame excuse about easter falling at the wrong time.

I think there a 2 things that should be noted :

1. Google should learn to communicate with their publishers in a better manner

2. Publishers should remember that officially Google’s pay date is 5th if paid via EFT so they should ensure their money lasts until this date if it is their main income, if they are paid before than then its a bonus.

Just a quick not to say that YzooBlog is going live tomorrow, the 2nd April 2008, I have decided to now move this blog over to the Yzooblog service.