Scheduled Maintenance This Sunday & Pending Cashouts
We will be performing scheduled maintenance and backups tomorrow (this Sunday, 11th May 2008. at 10PM-11:30PM). During this time, you may not be able to log into Advertlets.com and ads may not be displayed all the time throughout this period. After that time period, normal service should resume, and it might even be slightly faster too 
We note that also, some of you may not have received your cheques yet, please read more if you have a pending cashout that has not reached you yet. Thanks.
Advertlets: Your Questions On Click Fraud Answered
Q: What is click fraud?
A: Click fraud is an internet crime that occurs in per per click advertising. It consists of clicks which are not genuine, which are unfair to the advertiser. This consists of clicks which happen for reasons other than an valid user having an genuine interest to visit a website to be informed or check out products and services offered. It also consists of invalid clicks that are generated by automated scripts or computer programs.
Q: Recently, there has been a publisher in the network who has accused Advertlets of unfairly withholding earnings. Is that person innocent or guilty of click fraud?
September Cashout Requests / Click Fraud & New Tricks
Firstly, let us say that we have been listening, and this is our response. In some cases, we have responded personally on certain blogs, however we feel that a more public explanation would be beneficial, and justified to our valued bloggers.
In Short: The Resolution
- September 2007 Cash outs will arrive to both Malaysian & Singaporean publishers within 1-2 weeks. Yes, we are aware that this is longer than usual, and we apologize. A detailed explanation is after the jump.
- Ad load time could be improved. A recent increase in the number of members and more visitors from countries other than Malaysia and Singapore has put a considerable strain on our servers. Although we are now already running on three dedicated servers, we will be upgrading our resources further to serve your better. An upgrade will be in effect within this week, with approximately 15-30 minutes of downtime required. This scheduled maintenance window will be announced shortly.
Ad Display System Upgrade In Progress – So Everyone Can Advertise!
We are currently upgrading our ad display system to implement new features, and cope with increased load, especially from international traffic. As of such, some of you might face error messages or certain ads not displaying properly.
Here’s what’s interesting: The main point of this upgrade is the new “daily limits” system, that will enable advertisers to distribute their budget across a period of time. So, even if you’re an advertiser with a small budget of RM500 / USD149, you can run a cost per click campaign that distributes your budget across a month, for instance. Your ad will be run rotated with other ads, targeted by geolocation and demographics.
Just like how we aim to enable all bloggers to make some money through blogging, now we aim to let advertisers of all budgets advertise on Advertlets. This is a very important step in our development as a blog advertising network, and we will appreciate your help to squash bugs while we are still in beta. Very soon, you will see a lot more advertisers as more people take advantage of this new feature for our valued advertisers…and ultimately, more advertisers means more money+happy for more bloggers.
We need your help though, to make this happen: If you find any bugs or error messages, do e-mail us with a screenshot to info@advertlets.com. Your valuable assistance is much appreciated while we upgrade our system to serve you better.
Assume we know, because we do: The ISP Database
We got the following anonymous comment on the Advertlets blog from someone calling himself “eeeha”….
“Adverlets have no right to stop or disable the account cause they don’t even have the skill to do it, by IP that is impossible, cause Malaysian user use STREAMX, which Dynamic IP and for 3g/3.5 use fix IP but that is only 2 IP but sharing with other THOUSAND user in Malaysia.
My Advice for Adverlets, if adverlets can’t afford to pay, PLEASE pull your self out from this GROUND, you not qualify. “
Actually, its not quite impossible, and we do have the skill. And we can afford to pay, are firmly rooted here, and “we are qualify”. And its spelled Advertlets, with a T.
The comment above shows firstly, a lack of understanding of the how the internet works (and maybe proper grammar as well), and also underestimates our capabilities. Some of you though, might be interested to know what kind of technology we are using and how we fight click fraud, so we will explain:
Since March 23rd 2007, we have been able to detect which ads are served via which ISPs. Through our partnership with broadband research and reform initiative RedesignMalaysia.com, we can tell the difference between which IPs are from: TM Net, DiGi Internet Exchange, NasionCom, MaxisNet, Airzed, Time Telekom, NTT MSC / Arc Net, Jaring / MIMOS (MIX), CNX Solutions, EB Technologies, Bizsurf, and more.
We are very well aware of what ISP is used, and we can tell the difference between shared IPs and individuals, and of course, we can definitely determine which ISP a suspected click frauder is using. Hence, we will continue to prosecute click fraud when we find it, through our advanced ISP database.
On a brighter note though, the usage of the ISP database is not just for click fraud detection, but also so we can determine which IPs to serve ads to. This makes sure we can “catch” all relevant visitor IPs and serve them appropiate ads (resulting in better earnings for bloggers), rather than use an off the shelf geolocation system bought from overseas suppliers, or worse still, no geolocation at all. Naturally, this also allows advertisers to maximize their budget and not show their ads to an irrelevant audience.
In short, the ISP database allows us to: if its a local ad, a Malaysian product/service meant for Malaysians, we make sure it is displayed to only Malaysians: and that advertisers pay for that value, and bloggers reap the rewards as well.
We can say with confidence that this is not something that our competitors have, so if you find that your blog has mainly visitors from the same country you are (eg Malaysia) and you have been earning well through Advertlets, the ISP database is to thank for that. And, through our partners:RedesignMalaysia/Josh Lim & Associates, we also work together with ISPs of Malaysia on special projects whether it is web design or broadband related consultancy – hence our ISP database is upgraded regularly.
On a side note: The click fraud case of late was not the first case that we prosecuted, however, it was probably the most prominent one, especially due to the “Ngok Yan Sin Gou Jong” mentality. (Which kind of translates into: you know you are in the wrong yet you scold people first).
If you do come across any people conducting unethical behaviour, or prompting visitors to click on ads, you can let us know too, for the good of the whole community. Thanks, stay honest and we wish all of you successful, ethical earning and more money + happy with Advertlets.
A note on click fraud, and being honest.
Recently, a few bloggers have expressed their displeasure at having their cash out disabled or their account temporarily suspended. However, we would like to reassure the majority of our users that we will not disable an account or freeze earnings unless one or more of these conditions are met:
- The blogger has been clicking on his/her own ads (click fraud)
- The blogger has been asking visitors to click on his/her own ads. (invalid clicks)
After an account has been frozen, we will then manually conduct an investigation to determine the extent of the fraud, and then decide whether to terminate or suspend the account. Accounts are never terminated without physical human intervention. In better news, a few honest bloggers have e-mailed to tell us that they clicked on their own ads by accident. Your honesty is appreciated, and we would like to thank you for that.
You may have noticed that recently we went from beta 1.5 to beta 1.75. This is largely in part due to an advanced click fraud detection system, now in its 6th iteration with over 34 detection algorithms. Personally, the team at Advertlets does not like to terminate or freeze accounts, especially blogs that we enjoy reading or even people we have personally invited to join the network. However, for the good of the network, we have to and we will if needed.
We would like to say: Play nice, don’t be evil, and assume we know what you’re doing, because we do.
Its generally accepted that blogging is one of the most free, honest forms of expression available today. Apply the same philosophy to earning through your blog, and you can’t go wrong. Thank you.
Update: The blogosphere responds (relevant points highlighted) –
Lilian: Click Fraud Case In Local Malaysian Ads “…to track click frauds and give advertisers the confidence that they are paying for value clicks. This way, it will ensure the growth of the local ads industry and benefits us bloggers.
Sometimes, it is good to look at the big picture and play our parts in encouraging online advertisements. How bright the future is, depends on us bloggers.”
Wayne : Don’t Click On Your Own Ads“I personally think that clicking our own ads is an act of selfishness and stupidity because you cannot underestimate the technology that advertising platforms use nowadays to prevent click fraud. Apart from that, the expansion of blog advertising network will get throttled as advertisers will end up paying more than the results that they get. With this happening, they will rank online blog advertisements as their last resort to gain exposure and we bloggers will end up earning “wind ”You may get the ego of earning real fast money with fraudulent clickings which after that, you can boast to your friends about the stats but I can tell you, the notification of you getting banned will be a stunning one.”
Freethinker: Click Fraud & and Unexpected Ally“Before CPC, some were strong supporters that honestly is in the hearts of everyone, some claim beyond the extend that it was insulting their integrity on thinking such low class acts could be reproduced…Both needed the bloggers and bloggers want the money through them ( and gatherings ). One can’t exactly achieve the mentioned items without the other.”
On Uptime, Speed, Payouts, Invalid Clicks
Most of these things here would warrant their own posts, and there are a few more things I have to announce, but ohwell, here’s another summary post due to the lack of time. In reference to the weird post time: no, I don’t wake up this early, I just haven’t slept yet. Anyway : –
1. Advertlets is now on our THIRD dedicated server. You guys are generating ridiculous amounts of traffic, and the network has grown significantly, congratulations! This should solve most, if not all downtime and slow loading issues for now. We would like to thank you for your patience & enthusiasm, and your faith in us so far. If you do notice your blog taking longer to load, do refer to this post on how you can test your blog for what may be causing the slowdown. Do contact us and let us know if you notice any errors or slowdown, if you have narrowed down the cause to our side, thanks!
2. Malaysians: Your cheques for July should arrive to you within the next 7 days, barring unforseen postal delays. Sorry for the delay this month, there has been approximately a 300% increase in bloggers cashing out. We have also been doing a comprehensive human auditing of accounts for click fraud to prevent “false positives”, after the system has automatically flagged certain accounts.
3. Singaporeans: Certain Singaporean blog publishers whose banks have had issues with Malaysian cheques will be reissued with compatible methods of payment, and should also receive it within 7-14 days.
4. The Rumpun Gathering was a great success and it definitely did berjaya! Look out for not one, but two upcoming sponsored gatherings over the next two months!
5. We have something very the interesting one, planned for Merdeka, coming very soon. No prizes for guessing the launch date…
6. We haven’t forgotten about the Advertlets sticker and button badge contest, don’t fret. Results will be announced within the next 7 days.
7. The RoomsDB opportunity for Malaysians & Singaporeans has been made even more lucrative, and the deadline set to 15th September.
And now for some important stuff, please read:
1. Unfortunately, we have banned a few more blog publishers for click fraud, and all invalid earnings have been disqualified, and returned to the network. We have recently upgraded our click fraud detection system even further, in addition to doing manual checks to make sure we don’t penalize anyone by mistake. We aim to encourage an honest, productive blog ad network, and would like to remind our publishers not to engage in fraudulent behaviour.
2. We will be starting to contact ALL individual blog publishers who have been requesting visitors to “click on their ads”. Our system has automatically flagged a few that have been doing so, and we are giving grace period of 1 week from this date to remove all references that encourage visitors to click ads. Please see the KnowledgeBase for further information.
