Application and widget developers are always looking for more reach for usage of their apps.  We are finding that many app companies first on facebook due to its first mover advantage and (relative) maturity of the platform.  As we know, facebook is growing and expanding to many markets but there are other social networks in those markets that are more esablished.

hi5 has a broader international user base and is growing quickly.  According to Comscore, hi5 now has 45 million monthly visitors (April 2008).  The initial reviews of its 3rd party application platform are very good and hi5 is becoming an increasingly important social network for application owners.

Ad Chap can now monetize applications on the hi5 platform as of today.   Developers / publishers can set Ad Chap ads to run on your hi5 app immediately through the existing Ad Chap interface.

To enhance reach for both publishers and advertisers, we will continue to add more social network platforms to Ad Chap in the near future.

Application, widget developers and publishers are always looking to expand their reach to new markets, new users and customers.  One way to do this is to move to a new platform that has access to millions of users that are socially connected.  A very large network of socially connected ‘friends’ that are communicating, playing, listening, watching, posting, sharing and recommending worthwhile experiences to other ‘friends’.  In other words interacting.

100 million users interacting together in one place might be a good place for publishers to get their content in front of new users and grow their customer / viewer base.

A market like this is also a good opportunity for advertisers to deliver their message to potential customers in a targeted manor.

We now have the myspace platform live on the Ad Chap network.  Both publishers and advertisers can benefit from the addition.

Currently, access to the Ad Chap interface is available from facebook.  Advertisers and publishers can now access facebook, bebo and myspace from the Ad Chap facebook application.

Advertiser’s ads will automatically go out to all networks.

Publishers can manage their monetization for all of their apps across the facebook, bebo and myspace platforms.

Many advertisers have been asking lately if they can get more traffic on countries of their liking.  We want to let you know that targeted ads are delivered on Ad Chap according to each ad’s performance.  There are several factors that are taken into consideration but generally, if an ad is not popular and users have low interest in an ad, that ad will be alloted a lower priority and be shown less.  Conversely, if an ad is performing well and there is greater interest in an ad, that ad will be given a higher priority and be shown more. This happens for every country and region.  So an ad targeted to USA will not compete with ads in Canada for example.  The ads for the USA will only compete against other ads in the USA.  Non-targeted ads and regional ads will also get traffic to the USA in this scenario but generally these ads will generally get less USA impressions than an ad targeted directly to the USA in this example.  Unless of course the targeted USA ad is performing very poorly.  The best way to help your ad get better performance is to test.  Try changing the wording in your ad title and description.  Try some A/B testing to compare performance of similar ads.  In this way you can see what is working and not working and make changes accordingly to create efficient well performing ads with better ROI.

We realize how important targeting is for both advertisers and publishers.  For advertisers, it is critical to get their ads in front of their target market.

Today we went live with our first targeting features, geographic targeting to social networks.  We have set it up so you can now target to either a pre-set group of countries (or regions) or to individual countries.  You can also target to both a region and countries.

The pricing for CPC targeting is currently fixed based and based on amount of traffic that we get to each country and also advertiser demand.   You can see the pricing as you set up or edit your ad in the Ad Chap facebook interface and currently ranges from $0.09 to $0.17 per click.

The packaged priced regions that are available, are as follows:

- Western English Speaking Countries
- Asia
- Middle East
- Scandinavia
- Western Europe
- South America
- All other countries

For individual countries we have over 200 countries to choose from.

And for those who don’t need targeting, we still have “run of the network” pricing that will deliver ads to all countries and regions.

As stated above this is the first of our targeting features to come.  We are currently working on several initiatives to add more factors, features and demographics to our targeting capabilities.

For publishers, this is also a step in the right direction for us to be able to effectively manage the full range of your inventory and maximize revenue based on the makeup of your traffic.  All traffic is not equal and you should be paid according to the quality and value of that traffic.  No changes are needed on the part of publishers to take advantage of our targeting features.  We will automatically deliver targeted ads to your traffic.

Geographic targeting is available right now on the Ad Chap facebook application.   For more information, you can see our FAQ on Targeting.

In order to be able to offer several new products and features on Ad Chap, we are changing from a clicks based balance to a money based balance.

Advertisers
Your existing click balance will be converted to money at the price you paid for the clicks.  Going forward, instead of buying clicks, you will just ‘add funds’ and the funds will be added directly to a cash balance (instead of clicks).

Publishers
Shouldn’t notice any changes.  All revenues earned will continue to be added to your account history on a daily basis as usual.  You will continue to be able to see real time intra-day stats from within the Ad Chap interface.

One of the new features that is coming is geographic ad targeting.  This will allow advertisers to better focus their campaigns and also will allow us to better monetize all of the traffic for our publishers.  We are currently building and testing geo-targeting and will have more news about the release date and its benefits for you soon.

The change from click balance to a cash balance will take place before the end of this week.