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.
