AdToll

Launched on June 18th, 2007, AdToll is a brand new ad network on the scene that attempts to help webmasters market and sell ads on their websites to prospective advertisers.

Similar to other ad networks such as AdBrite and AdEngage, AdToll acts as the middleman between publishers and advertisers. What makes these types of networks differ from the majority is that publishers can set their own prices, and advertisers can purchase ads on specific sites.

Features

With AdToll, publishers have the ability to set their own prices (or use their Autopricing feature which uses a special formula that takes a number of key factors and calculates an appropriate price). This is beneficial for sites with very targeted niches or specialty demographics, as advertisers are always willing to pay a premium for targeted traffic.


Publishers have complete control over the content and relevancy of the ads that appear on their sites. When first setting up their account, publishers are asked to provide an allowable ad rating and select the industries they wish to restrict (if any). There are currently three ad ratings: ‘Safe’, ‘Safe & Teen’, and ‘Adult’.

In addition to the ad ratings, publishers can deny an advertiser for any reason, but most do so within 24 hours.


One small and simple, yet useful feature is the ability for publishers to optionally remove the ‘Powered by’ and ‘Advertise Here’ text shown at the bottom of AdToll banners. Publishers can even customize the ‘Advertise Here’ anchor text (but not the URL). Both the ‘Powered by’ and ‘Advertise Here’ texts contain the publisher’s referral link.

AdToll provides all of its publishers with rate cards, which provide advertising information such as prices and traffic. This is a nice little feature that publishers can link to from their website to help encourage prospective advertisers.

Signing Up

One of the major perks with AdToll is that it is extremely fast and easy for a publisher to sign-up and get started. There are no site prerequisites such as minimum traffic, and all sign-ups are instantly approved, with no waiting period.

In fact, a publisher from start to finish can sign-up, add their site, throw up AdToll ads, and start earning income within 5-minutes.

While sites that are added in a publishers account do need to be approved, publishers are still credited for the traffic they receive during this time and are shown RON (Run of Network) ads. Note, however, that if not approved, they will not receive payment.

However, sites generally get accepted fairly easily and promptly.

Control Panel

AdToll’s control panel is very simple and user-friendly, but at the same time provides pretty much everything a publisher needs.

Publishers have the ability to rotate multiple ads in one slot, up to a maximum of 30.

One great aspect of AdToll’s control panel is that their statistics are all in real-time. Within seconds of adding an ad to their site, a publisher can start seeing their impressions immediately within their control panel. Many other networks claim to update in real-time but actually update hourly or every 10-15 minutes.

AdToll also combines their control system to handle both publisher and advertisers; users who use both can administer either through the same control panel.

Payment


AdToll likes to boast their 75% payout, which is indeed more than the majority of ad networks pay.

They send out payments on the 15th of every month for the previous month's earnings, and provide the following methods of receiving payments: Cheque, PayPal, Bank Wire, or account credit.

Cheque and PayPal payments require a minimum of $20 in earnings, Wire Transfers require a minimum of $1,000 in earnings and account credit payments have no minimum. There is a $12 fee on cheques and a $30 fee on Wire/Bank Transfers.

Publishers who are also advertisers at AdToll have the option of using AdToll's account credit, where funds can be held and used at a later date to book ads; they can choose to have their publisher payments paid directly to their account credit instead of PayPal, for example, and then use that credit when paying as an advertiser.

Miscellaneous

In the situation where publishers ads are not filled with sponsored ads, Run of Network (RON) ads will be displayed. Publishers can also create default ads for their banner slots and set weighting to them as well.

Referral Program

AdToll has a referral program, to which they have recently improved greatly as of November 14th, 2007.

Their new and improved referral program now allows referrers to refer both advertisers and publishers. Previously, they only paid for referred advertisers and not publishers. They added publishers partly due to our original review.

Their new payout structure gives:
20% commission on profit made from Advertisers for 90 days
10% commission on profit made from Publishers for 365 days


This is a fantastic improvement; previously they only paid out 5% to referred advertisers for the first 30 days of their membership.

If the ‘Powered by’ and ‘Advertise Here’ links are displayed within AdToll banners, publishers automatically earn commissions as an affiliate through these links.

They have banner creative available in various sizes, as well as basic text links.

AdToll's affiliate system is far better than most ad networks, with details of each referral including their country, referring URL, and if they came an AdToll banner.

The affiliate earnings reporting displays the date, average payment, total sales, and total payment.

Customer Support

Currently, AdToll’s customer support is only available through their contact form. However, they have fast response times and are both friendly and helpful.

Summary

While AdToll is still brand new on the market, with their high 75% payout, AdToll only needs to prove that they can amass a decent advertiser base for their publishers.

One of their greatest strengths is the fast pace they've set for themselves on growing and improving their system by listening to their users. Within two months after the original posting of this review, AdToll has already added flash ads for advertisers, 300x250 video ads, and improved their affiliate program.

Also due to their high payout, AdToll should also be considered by anyone using a similar network such as AdBrite and AdEngage.