PopAds Blog http://www.popads.net/blog?feed=rss2 Latest posts from PopAds Blog Security Center Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:07:32 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/security-center As some of our members started handling bigger amounts of money in their PopAds accounts, we have decided to set up additional security systems.<br /> At this moment, we have added activity logs, where all members can check their last login actions. Apart of that, we have added support for two factor authorization using <b>YubiKey</b> hardware token. All members can go to <i>Security</i> page under <i>Account Manager</i> and add existing YubiKey or order new one(act quickly, there is 20% discount coupon for our members!). More control over ad content Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:00:44 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/more-control-over-ad-content As per many requests of our publishers, we have recently added a new opt-out options for campaigns promoting gambling or software downloads.<br /> Publishers can take the decision on accepting such advertisements in website settings in PopAds panel. New targeting option: PrimeSpot Sun, 09 Jun 2013 17:33:39 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/new-targeting-option-primespot We have added a new campaign targeting option under <i>General information</i> tab - PrimeSpot. If you choose to buy PrimeSpot only traffic, your campaign will take part in bidding only if the visitor has not seen any other popunders from PopAds within last 60 minutes. Such traffic is higher quality, however it is also more expensive and lower in volume.<br /> It is also possible to split a campaign into two, group them together in order to preserve frequency setting and set different PrimeSpot and bid. This way, you can offer premium bid for PrimeSpot traffic and regular for Non-PrimeSpot.<br /> The battle-test of our new adcode Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:22:28 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/the-battle-test-of-our-new-adcode <h3>Prologue</h3>The code that our publishers post on their websites loads our adcode that is responsible for opening PopAds popunders. In order to make it load as fast as possible, we use a Content Delivery Network.<br /> It is a kind of hosting provider that hosts static content(like our Javascript adcode) on many servers around the globe, so each visitor downloads it from the closest location.<br /> Another benefit of using a CDN is its distributed architecture, which <i>should</i> provide high reliability and stability.<br /> In case the CDN stops serving our adcode, our system is unable to open popunders and effectively goes down.<br /> <br /> <h3>Incident</h3>Just few weeks ago, when we came up with the idea of full redundant adcode utilizing more than one Content Delivery Network, we did not expect it to be "tested in battle" so soon.<br /> We thought it would be one of those many redundancy features that we have there just-in-case, but do not really expect them to be ever needed. The night between 29th and 30th May (GMT) showed that even highly distributed CDN networks with hundreds of Gbps bandwidth can stop working.<br /> In the late evening on 29th May 2013, our automated monitoring system reported increased latency on our primary CDN as well as short downtimes every few minutes. After contacting the CDN provider, it has turned out that they are under a heavy DDOS attack and trying to mitigate it.<br /> In other words, our primary CDN is not stable and there is nothing we can do, but wait for the provider to resolve the problem.<br /> <br /> <div style="text-align: center"><br /> <img src="//static.popads.net/img/blog/res/PrimaryDowntime.png" title="Primary CDN Downtime" width="100%"/><br /> Downtime chart of our primary CDN(via PingDom)<br /> </div><br /> <br /> <div style="text-align: center"><br /> <img src="//static.popads.net/img/blog/res/PrimaryLatency.png" title="Primary CDN Latency" width="100%"/><br /> Latency chart of our primary CDN(via PingDom)<br /> </div><br /> <br /> Not more than a month earlier, we somehow managed to forsee a situation like this and created a new, redundant publisher code that will download our adcode from secondary CDN if the primary is not reachable.<br /> At the time of the incident, our new publisher code automatically switched to the backup CDN and the issues of our primary CDN did not cause any drop in traffic handled by PopAds.<br /> <br /> <div style="text-align: center"><br /> <img src="//static.popads.net/img/blog/res/SecondaryTraffic.png" title="Secondary CDN Traffic" width="100%"/><br /> Traffic chart from our backup CDN<br /> </div><br /> <br /> <h3>Statistics</h3><ul><li>Our primary CDN was completely down for 28 minutes,</li><br /> <li>For more than 24 hours, the primary CDN was much slower than usually,</li><br /> <li>More than 500 000 adcode requests were automatically and instantly rerouted to our backup CDN.</li></ul> New Adcode Fri, 24 May 2013 19:31:50 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/new-adcode Recently we have update our adcode. We encourage all publishers to grab the new adcode using Code Generator and install it.<br /> The new adcode brings following changes:<br /> <ul><li>Secondary adcode script location. The old adcode used only one Content Delivery Network(CDN). In case that one network experiences technical problems on one or more nodes, our adcode would stop working. New adcode resolves this problem by utilizing two separate CDNs.</li><br /> <li>According to <a href="http://www.cedexis.com/country-reports/">Cedexis</a>, even best Content Delivery Networks drop as much as 0.5% of requests. Our new adcode resolves this problem by utilizing backup CDN.</li><br /> <li>Default Minimal Bid has been set to 0. This means that publishers give us the control of their Minimal Bid so we can maximize their revenue. The reason behind this change is that we have plenty of traffic from countries like Vietnam and at the same time we have advertisers willing to buy it, but at lower rates. We believe it is better to sell a popunder at lower value then not to sell it at all. This change will not affect rates for countries for which we already have good rates. Also, publishers can always change it. Still, we advise to use default settings in the Code Generator for optimal revenue.</li><br /> </ul> New backend system Sun, 03 Mar 2013 10:15:05 +0100 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/new-backend-system Yesterday we switched PopAds to our new backend system. The operation took approximately 3 hours, during which no major issues were faced. While at this moment, you might not see any difference except the panel is a bit faster, the new backend system gives us a lot of new options:<br /> <ul><br /> <li>All critical elements of the system are fully redundant. This means that we should be able to achieve very high uptime and system stability.</li><br /> <li>Reports and dashboards will be supercharged, getting approx 3-4 times faster.</li><br /> <li>New traffic registering engine will be able to forward popunders to advertisers landing page faster, resulting in improved conversions.</li><br /> <li>Greatly increased capacity - with the new system we are able to handle up to approx. 100M popunders a day.</li><br /> <li>Capacity can be easily and very quickly extended if needed, as the new backend is fully scalable.</li><br /> </ul>In the new backend system, billing system works in a slightly different way. While reports are still realtime, billing is not. Campaign budgets and account balances are no longer updated realtime, but every minute.<br /> <br /> In coming weeks we will be implementing many new features, including new powerful reporting engine. Stay tuned! Quick Selection for countries Sun, 03 Jul 2011 19:49:18 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/quick-selection-for-countries We have just activated a new tool for our advertiser. It is called <strong>Quick Selection</strong> and allows you to create country groups for easier country selection and management. You can find it on Country tab when creating new or editing existing campaign. Database maintenance Tue, 31 May 2011 13:43:45 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/database-maintance We are currently performing a database maintenance. PopAds might be working a bit slower during next few hours.<br /> Also, advertisers might not be able to change/submit campaigns for approx. 15 minutes.<br /> <br /> We apologize for the inconvenience. Advertisers! Cheaper traffic! Sun, 22 May 2011 19:49:34 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/advertisers-cheaper-traffic We have just changed our bidding model. Right now, it is <strong>adaptive bidding</strong> system with bid increment of 1%.  This means no more no less a lot cheaper traffic for all our advertisers. Technical Problems 2010-10-17 Thu, 12 May 2011 18:27:37 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/technical-problems-2010-10-17 We have experienced an unexpected technical problem during database server migration.  Techs are aware and are fixing the problem. There will be a compensation program announced when the database server is fully migrated(next week). More targeting options Thu, 12 May 2011 18:27:14 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/more-targeting-options We have recently added new targeting options for our advertisers:<br /> <ul><br /> <li>Language,</li><br /> <li>Browser,</li><br /> <li>Operating system</li><br /> </ul><br /> Using those new settings you can for example target spanish speaking people in USA or french speaking Mac OS X users in Canada. Better tracking for advertisers Thu, 12 May 2011 18:26:52 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/better-tracking-for-advertisers We have recently added a new feature to PopAds. As an advertiser, you can now turn on <strong>Send details</strong> in campaign settings. If you do that, PopAds will add additional tracking parameters to your Url. For example, if you are buying traffic to <em>http://www.example.com </em>and turn on the new option, our system will send traffic to <em>http://www.example.com/?PopAds_Website=<span style="text-decoration: underline;">1234</span>&amp;PopAds_keyword=<span style="text-decoration: underline;">example</span></em><br /> <br /> This way you will be able to better track where is the traffic coming from. The <em>PopAds_Website </em>parameter contains ID of website in our system, which you will be able to use to change bid on per-website basis in the future. The PopAds_Keyword parameter tells you which keyword was used for matching the campaign with visitor. This way, you can track performance of keywords you are using. PopAds is growing Thu, 12 May 2011 18:13:15 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/popads-is-growing Few days ago, we have reached the milestone of 5000 websites registered in our network! Because of this we wanted to share some statistics with you:<br /> <ul><br /> <li>We have over 5000 websites registered,</li><br /> <li>Right now, there are over 250 active local campaigns and thousands of campaigns from other networks through various partnerships,</li><br /> <li>So far we have paid out over $100 000 USD,</li><br /> <li>We are sending about 1000 payouts every month</li><br /> <li>Our advertisers deposited over $90 000 USD</li><br /> </ul><br /> Thank you for taking part in the growth of PopAds.net! Compensation bonus Thu, 12 May 2011 18:12:05 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/compensation-bonus Right now, all rates are increased by 25%. The offer will be active from 2010-10-04 3:00 PM to 2010-10-07 3:00 PM (all times in GMT). <strong>Enjoy!</strong> Compensation program Thu, 12 May 2011 18:11:50 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/compensation-program Once again, we would really like to apologize for recent server problems. To cover at least part of your losses we are launching our compensation program:<br /> <br /> <strong>Publishers</strong><br /> <br /> All publishers will get 25% bonus rate from 2010-10-04 to 2010-10-06. It means that all rates will be increased by one fourth for 3 days.<br /> <br /> <strong>Advertisers</strong><br /> <br /> If you have a campaign running and you have suffered from recent problems, we offer you an increase of campaign budget of 20%. For example, if you have a campaign with $100 budget (that was created before 2010-09-29) and you have used $10 so far, we will credit your account with ($100-$10)*20% = $18. Please, contact us to if you'd like to participate in the compensation program. Abuse System: Ready Thu, 12 May 2011 18:11:35 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/abuse-system-ready Our state-of-art abuse system is up and online. This if the very first in the industry fully automated abuse system. It receives, checks and processes abuse reports. It can automatically put campaigns to banned or suspicious lists. You will even receive an email when your abuse report is confirmed! Adcode improvements Sun, 12 Sep 2010 13:50:16 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/adcode-improvements Today our techs have improved the searching system of PopAds. Before, when a visitor has landed on a publisher website, it could take up to 10 seconds to check if there are any popunders for him. If the visitor clicked on a link before PopAds system could get results - no popunder has been opened. Now, the system has been divided into two searching mechanisms - quick one which responds below one second(it checks local advertisers only) and second one which queries our partner networks.<br /> <br /> If a visitor clicks anything on publisher website and results from partner networks have not been gathered yet, a popunder of local advertiser will be shown.<br /> <br /> <strong>What does it mean for publishers?</strong><br /> <ul><br /> <li>More popunders open</li><br /> <li>Increased revenue</li><br /> </ul><br /> <strong>What does it mean for advertisers?</strong><br /> <ul><br /> <li>More traffic</li><br /> <li>Cheaper traffic<em>(for the popunders opened before there are results from partner networks, advertisers need to bid for the popunder only with other local advertisers)</em></li><br /> </ul> Welcome to PopAds Beta Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:08:29 +0200 http://www.popads.net/blog/post/welcome-to-popads-beta The first public version of PopAds.net has been published. Currently most of things are functional, however there are some limitations/problems that will be fixed soon:<br /> <ul><br /> <li>Sometimes activation email is not sent(in such case, try logging in and it will allow you to resend the email)</li><br /> <li>Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are not published yet(you will get an email when it's ready)</li><br /> <li>Wire payouts are not available now</li><br /> <li>PayPal and AlertPay deposits are still being tested and are not working on the production site</li><br /> <li>Abuse system is not completed yet</li><br /> <li>Some texts need to be improved</li><br /> <li>Due to low amount of traffic, we cannot offer targetted traffic in reasonable amounts</li><br /> </ul><br /> However, all publisher related features should be working and all earned revenue will be paid.<br /> <br /> Thank you for testing PopAds.net! In case of any problems or suggestions, please let us know.