Nic Haralambous is now officially part of the Zoopy team and is spending this week with us in Cape Town, discussing and fleshing out our strategy, rollout plan, company structure and operations.

Nic is excited about the road ahead and we can’t wait for him to take Joburg by storm as GM of Zoopy Gauteng. His team will be joining him next month and together they’ll be adding their own kind of magic to our business, our brand and our user experience as a whole.

Welcome to the team Nic - we’re delighted to have you with us.

Until the end of last week, we had been using the open source ad serving solution de jeur, phpAdsNew (which became OpenAds, and which has now become OpenX).

To give it its due, OpenX is somewhat competent in its duties. It allows decent control over ad management and is capable of serving multiple ad formats, including rich media (like Eyeblaster), flash and full html ads. The reporting isn’t bad and the system is stable, if you install the regular updates. All in all, if you’re running a small web business and want to run your ads on a semi-professional basis with tags and control over what goes live when, OpenX is an ideal choice.

But as you start to grow, the cracks start to show. And for us, they revealed themselves quite quickly. We wanted more control over each individual ad unit (dates/targetting) than we could achieve with OpenX. We needed the ads to deliver as scheduled, every single time (instead of delivering the odd blank ad when OpenX didn’t like campaign configuration). We wanted reporting that was undeniably accurate and recognised by the industry as being credible. And finally, we wanted a system that would allow us to serve advertising in many more formats and areas beyond on-page banners, to take full advantage of the range of media on Zoopy in a number of ways.

DoubleClick, the world’s leading ad management solutions provider, offers a product called DFP (Dart for Publishers) that does all of this and more. It’s a hosted solution (meaning that the software doesn’t sit on our servers) but this only adds to the credibility of the statistics produced, in the same way that Google Analytics is considered a trustworthy source when comparing site A with site B because it’s a third party product not hosted or owned by A or B. Adding to the worldwide appeal of DoubleClick was Google’s outright purchase of the service in April 2007. And there’s no concern over ad delivery speed because DoubleClick has servers distributed globally, including South Africa.

What makes the whole system even easier is that the majority of advertisers use agencies to plan and buy their media. The majority of these agencies use DoubleClick’s DFA (Dart for Advertisers) product to serve their ads. This means that DFA talks to DFP in the same language, with no discrepancies and very little work to book on our side.

Though it was a painful transition from the relative simplicity of OpenX, the move has been worth the effort beyond measure. We now have much more granular control over every area of our site, while at the same time being able to choose multiple placements with greater ease. Reporting is solid, we have more ways to deliver more ads in more types of media and our advertisers now have the peace of mind that comes with an industry-approved ad management solution.

As part of Zoopy’s growth and development into one of the world’s leading social media communities, we’re excited to announce that Zoopy Joburg will be opening its doors on 1 September 2008.

Johannesburg will be an important extension of Zoopy HQ in Cape Town. It will focus on three areas of responsibility: sales (to extend our revenue opportunities), business development (to extend our reach) and content (to extend our platform). The ability for us to have direct discussions with agencies, clients and partners in Gauteng will boost business across the board and give us the ability to have tangible points of contact in two major regions in South Africa.

An important factor in planning our new office has been finding someone who would head things up with the same kind of passion and excitement that’s driven the business in Cape Town. We’ve appointed Nic Haralambous as GM of Zoopy Joburg and couldn’t be happier with our choice. Nic brings a respected set of skills, insight and enthusiasm for the new media industry and will be an excellent contributor to the future of Zoopy. Welcome to the team Nic

We’re still scouting for two content producers to join the Joburg team. Those applying should have a background in journalism and ideally have experience in multimedia production i.e. video, audio and photo. Please send your CV to jason@zoopy.com, or recommend a friend and earn R5k if they’re hired.

Watch this space for Joburg office details once the team is in and settled. Contact details will be published on 1 September.

We’re very excited to announce the arrival of Zoopy’s new content team.

John Bursey, our Content Producer, comes with an array of talents in photography, videography and filming. He will be bringing a fresh feel to our Zoopy content with his inimitable style and professionalism.

Kerri Fernandes, our Content Reporter, comes to us with a fresh set of journalism, publishing, broadcasting and communication skills. She’ll be bringing her own bubbly style to the Zoopy experience.

Welcome guys! Get settled, get busy and make a difference!