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.

We would like to clarify with advertisers what type of advertising is specifically not permitted on the Ad Chap network.  We have recently started working with facebook and participating in talks that strive to define and maintain standards for ads on the facebook and Ad Chap platforms.  The goal is to maintain and improve the user experience on facebook applications and on facebook in general.

The types of ads that are expressly not permitted on Ad Chap are as follows (as taken from the facebook Platform Application Guidelines):

1. Adult content, including nudity, sexual terms and/or images of people in positions or activities that are excessively suggestive or sexual;

2. Obscene, defamatory, libelous, slanderous and/or unlawful content;

3. Content that infringes upon the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or other personal or proprietary right, or that is deceptive or fraudulent;

4. Sale of liquor, beer, wine, tobacco products, ammunition and/or firearms;

5. Gambling, including without limitation, any online casino, sports books, bingo or poker;

6. Inflammatory religious content;

7. Politically religious agendas and/or any known associations with hate, criminal and/or terrorist activities;

8. Political content that exploits political agendas or uses “hot button” political issues for commercial use regardless of whether the Developer has a political agenda;

9. Hate speech, whether directed at an individual or a group, and whether based upon the race, sex, creed, national origin, religious affiliation, marital status, sexual orientation or language of such individual or group;

10. Illegal activity and/or illegal contests, pyramid schemes or chain letters;

11. Content from uncertified pharmacies;

12. Sale or use of web cams or surveillance equipment for non-legitimate use; or

13. “Spam” or other advertising or marketing content that violates applicable laws, regulations or industry standards.

If you see ads on the Ad Chap network that disregards these guidelines, we would like to know about them.  Please send us a screenshot of the ad and / or a copy of the ad text (send to support@adchap.com)  We will assess them and if they are in fact infringing on the guidelines, we will remove them from the network.

These guidelines are applicable across the entire Ad Chap network whether on facebook, bebo, myspace or any other social network.

Thanks for your attention to this, keeping standards on ad content will help to ensure a positive user experience for everybody.

Some advertisers and publishers have been asking what the user demographics of the Ad Chap network looks like. To give you an idea we have compiled the stats for January 2008 as an example. As expected, USA, UK and Canada were top of the list with a total of 54% of the traffic. If we add in Singapore (6%), Australia (6%) and New Zealand (1%) then we get 67% of the traffic coming from primarily English speaking “1st World” countries. One could also argue that Norway, Finland and Sweden could be added to that list as those countries all pretty much can speak English as a second language. That would bring the total up to 70% for the “1st world” plus English speaking audience.

We were actually surprised by the lack of presence by Spanish speaking countries to date. Facebook has just launched the Spanish language version though so maybe Spanish speakers will take to using facebook more with a localized interface.

We are currently working on and testing geographic targeting for Ad Chap. Soon, advertisers will be able to target their campaigns to certain countries and groups of countries.

As we add more social networks to Ad Chap, it will be interesting to see how the user demographics change. With geographic targeting you will be able to target your demographic across the whole Ad Chap network and all of the social networks that we work with. We will keep you posted on progress.