Sorry for the light posting of late, I’m on my third trip in the last 2 weeks (with 2 more upcoming).   I’m at ad:tech NYC with 10,000+ of my closest internet marketing friends.  I’ll give a recap soon.  In the meantime, here’s what we’ve been up to at SureHits,  (adapted from our recent newsletter):

The SureHits Quality Engine (a/k/a Project Costa Rica)
It’s been just over a month since we made the most significant upgrade ever to our ad network. The goal of this exciting upgrade was to more deeply integrate quality into every aspect of our ad system. So what changed for Advertisers, Publishers and Consumers?

1. For the first time on our network, advertisers may pay less than the amount bid for each click. Advertiser may receive a traffic quality discount from their bid CPC, based on the quality of the traffic received. We determine publishers’ traffic quality based on statistical data we receive from our advertisers. Our goal is to reduce variance in CPA for advertisers at any given bid level as we add new publishers on the network.
2. Advertisers now receive an automatic 3% discount for installing our AdProve™ tracking code.
3. The ranking of ads in our list now includes an ad quality factor, similar to the major search engines. Ad rank will be determined by bid CPC and ad quality, as determined by an ad’s click-through-rate (CTR). Our goal is to reward advertisers who present quality offers to consumers, creating a better consumer experience.
4. Also in line with major search engines, other advertisers’ bids will no longer be displayed on the system. Our goal is to ensure the confidentiality of advertiser data given that ad quality is now a factor in the ranking system. Tools have been provided on our system to help advertisers determine what bid will achieve a top position.
5. For publishers, we’ve developed a system to maximize earning per results page. We do this by looking at both the cost per click for each advertiser and the click-through-rate (CTR) of each ad. By bringing popular ads to the top of the listings, publishers earn more revenue per page and also provide a better consumer experience. A true win-win
6. We’ve also developed a dynamic system that shows a different number of ads per page depending on the bids and ad quality. This helps to maximize the output of each page for publishers.

Referral Bonus
I want to remind everyone about the SureHits referral bonus. This program rewards our current customers for referrals of both new advertisers and new publishers. For more information please contact Toni, Keith, Shawn, Scott.

SureHits 524th on the Inc. 5000 List
Inc. announced in August the nation’s 5000 fastest growing private companies and I’m excited to announce that SureHits is officially 524th. They considered revenue growth from 2003 through 2006 to determine the ranking. During that time we grew an astonishing 587.7%.

I want to congratulate all of our partners and everyone in the company for making that happen and thank all of our customers who made it possible. We couldn’t be prouder of this achievement.

Introducing Mike Johnson and Scott Shedeck
SureHits would like to welcome Mike Johnson as part of the SureHits technology team. Previously Mike served as Senior Software Developer for LSG Solutions. Scott Shedeck is our new addition to the sales department where he will serve as a Business Dev. Manager handling Advertising accounts. Prior to joining SureHits Scott worked 9 years with AT&T where he served as a Sr. Account Representative for the Advertising & Publishing department.

Upcoming Conferences
Next up for us is the Interactive Local Media (ILM:07) conference in LA from November 28th - 30th. I’ll be speaking on “Best Practices for Using PPC for Local Targeting” on Tuesday the 29th. Please let me know if you will be in attendance so we can meet up.

Our final stop this year will be on 12/4-12/7 at Las Vegas Convention Center for PubCon 2007. This exciting conference will include topics on search engine marketing, website publishing, and ecommerce management among many others. More information about the conference can be found at http://www.pubcon.com/vegas-pubcon-2007.htm. As an exhibitor we have been allotted ten coupons for 25% off the registration price, code: sh-23125. Please let me know if you’ll be there.

By the way, if you are not receiving the SureHits newsletter, please drop me a note to get included!