Advertising Module

The Advertising Module allows you to configure your sites' banner ads, set time limits on the ads, and run pay-per-impression and pay-per-click advertising campaigns on your sites. It supports graphical and text ads, and has detailed logging capabilities, to track the times and IPs of every ad click-through.

Managing Ads

To launch the advertising tool, click on the Advertising plug-in icon:

If you do not see the advertising tool, either it is not installed, or none of your sites are licensed to use it. To add a license to use the plug-in, use this procedure:

1. go into the Security Manager
2. open a site you want to run ads on
3. select "Add a new website service"
4. select "BannerAd" from the drop-down list of available services. You do not need to set a service page.
5. submit your changes.
6. repeat this procedure for each website that needs ads.
7. refresh your webtop, if necessary.

Ad Formats

If there are no ad formats defined, you should first define some appropriate formats. A format is just a standard shape/size for an ad. It is used to control which ads can appear in specific locations, since some locations only allow for ads of a certain shape or size.

Click "Add Format" to create a new format. You must provide:

• a name for the format (eg. "wide banner", "skyscraper", "square logo", etc.)
• the expected width of ads in this format (in pixels)
• the expected height of ads in this format (in pixels)

It is not necessary to define any ad formats, but certain features will not be available to you if you don't. Also note that the Banner Ad module does not police/enforce the ad sizes; they are simply used to group your ads so they can be easily select for placement in a position that allows for a specific format. If you upload an ad that is wildly different in size from the format you set for it, the system will still attempt to use the ad. This could have undesirable consequences for your layout if you are not careful.

The Advertising plug-in allows for graphic or text ads. A graphic ad is expected to be of the correct size for the format it uses. A text ad will automatically be placed in a box of the correct size.

If you are not sure what formats to allow, you can read about standard web ad formats here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_ads#Standard_sizes

Creating Ads

To create an ad, click "Add banner" under the "Ads for all sites" group, or the ads for a specific site. Ads for all sites can appear on any site that is using advertising. Ads for a specific site will only appear on that one site.

When defining an ad, you can provide the following information:

• Section - this is just the website your ad is appearing under. Normally you don't need to set this when creating ads, but you can move ads around to different sites later, by changing this field.
• Status - only "active" ads are used. You can disable an ad by setting it to "inactive".
• Type - This sets your advertising/revenue model. There are four options:
  • normal - the ad runs indefinitely
  • timed - the ad runs for a limited time
  • pay-per-view - the advertiser pays every time the ad is shown
  • pay-per-click - the advertiser pays every time the ad is clicked on
  Ads are automatically disabled when they run out of time or funds; normal ads never run out.
• Format - the shape of the ad (see above).
• Advertiser URL - the viewer is directed to this link if they click on the ad.
• Ad Image - upload the ad graphic here. It should be an image in GIF, JPEG, or PNG format.
• Link Anchor Text - for text ads, supply the link text here. This is the "clickable" text in the ad.
• Description Text - for text ads, you can supply more text details or information here. This text is not "clickable".
• End Date - for timed ads, the ad will stop displaying on this date.
• Cost per view/click - for pay-per-view and pay-per-click ads, this is the cost for every view/click.
• Total Remaining Value - this is the advertiser's balance for this ad. As long as it is greater than $0.00, the ad will continue to be shown. On every view/click, the balance will be reduced by the amount in the previous field. If the advertiser pays more money, simply add that amount to the balance in this field.
• Priority - This is a number from 1 to 10, indicating the priority of this Ad. Values of 10 or more mean this ad is always shown. Other values are a weight; ie. an ad with a priority of 4 will be shown 4 times as often as an ad with a priority of 1 (assuming they are the same format). If you leave this blank, a priority of 1 is assumed.
• Logging - if logging is turned on, then every click on the ad will be logged with its time and IP address. This information is exportable to Excel so that it can be further analyzed.

Click "Submit" when you are finished entering the ad information.

Editing Ads

To modify an existing ad, click the edit icon () for that ad. Then modify the fields, as noted above.

Deleting and Disabling Ads

Ads can be deleted from the system by clicking the delete icon ().

If you simply want to disable an ad so that it is not displayed, but wish to keep it archived in the system, then you should edit it (see above), and set the Status to "inactive".

Timed ads are automatically disabled after their expiry date.

Pay-per-view and pay-per-click ads are automatically disabled after they have used up their available funds.

Re-enabling Ads

If an ad was manually disabled (status set to "inactive"), you can enable it by editing it, and setting the status back to "active".

If an ad was automatically disabled on its expiry date, you can re-enable it by editing the ad, and setting a new expiry date in the future. Alternatively, you can change the ad type to something other than "timed" so that it will not be disabled on the expiry date.

If a pay-per-click or pay-per-view ad was automatically disabled because it ran out of funds, you can re-enable it by editing the ad, and adding more funds to the "Total Remaining Value". Alternatively, you can change the ad type to something else, so that it will not be disabled due to a lack of funds.

Site-specific and General-purpose Ads

The Section field in the ad determines which sites the ad can be served to. If the Section is set, the ad will only be shown on that one section (site). Note that the site must be allowed to run ads (ie. it must have license to run the BannerAd module).

If the Section is not set, the ad can be shown on any site that supports advertising on the system. This allows you to run your ads on numerous different sections of a multipart site. It also allows you to serve a common group of ads to numerous independent websites that are running under the same CMS.

Logs

Ad clicks will be tracked if you have turned on logging for the ad.

The following information is tracked on each click

• the date and time the ad was clicked on
• the referrer (the page the ad was on)
• the viewer's IP address

To view the log for a specific ad, click on the inspect button () for that ad. The click log is displayed below the ad details. This log can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis by clicking on the Excel button at the bottom.

Placing Ads in Web Sites

Using the WYSIWYG editor, you can easily place ads into your pages, as follows:

1. place your cursor where you would like the ad to appear
2. click the Dynamic Web Application tool in the toolbar
3. select "BannerAd" from the list of applications available
4. select the format of the ad you want at this position. If any format is acceptable, then select "default".
5. click "Insert"

The ad that will be placed into this spot will be randomly selected from those that are available in that format (weighted by the ad priority, if any).

If the page is published statically, then the ad will also be static. That means it will not change from page view to page view. A different ad may be selected when you republish, however. To have your ads change on each page view of a static page, see the Advanced Techniques, below.

Advanced Ad Placement Techniques

Ads are often best placed into the templates of websites so that they are automatically served on appropriate pages. To do this, you may end up working with raw CMS tags to insert the ads.

To place a single ad of any format:

<!--&BannerAd()-->

To place a single ad of a specific format (eg. "wide banner"):

<!--&BannerAd(format=wide banner)-->

To place multiple (eg. 3) ads of any format:

<!--&BannerAd(count=3)-->

To place multiple (eg. 3) ads of a specific format:

<!--&BannerAd(count=3;format=wide banner)-->

Note: if you request multiple ads, but there are not sufficient ads available, a lower number will be displayed.

Dynamic Ads on Static Pages

To show a random (dynamically selected) ad on a static page, you need to run the BannerAd plug-in in "AJAX" mode. To do this, simply add an additional ampersand (&) to the above tags. For example:

<!--&&BannerAd()-->

You must do this for pay-per-view ads on static pages. Otherwise, the view only gets logged once, when the static ad is published.

Styling Your Ads

Ads are output with some basic CSS wrappers that you can make use of in your style sheets if you want to alter their appearance.

The HTML for a typical graphic ad looks like this:

<div class="BannerAd" style="width:225; height:60">
  <a href="..." target="bannerad">
    <img SRC="...">
  </a>
</div>

The width and height of the wrapping DIV are determined by the format for the ad.

/* do not show image borders on clickable ads */
div.BannerAd img { border:0px; }

The HTML for a typical text ad looks like this:

<div class="BannerAd" style="width:225; height:60">
  <div class="BannerAdText">
    <a href="..." target="bannerad">Link Text</a><br>Description
  </div>
</div>

The width and height of the wrapping DIV are determined by the format for the ad. The additional DIV (class "BannerAdText") exists so that you can apply styles to text ads, but not have them apply to graphic ads.

/* put text ads in a colored box */
div.BannerAdText { border:1px solid blue; background-color:#ccf; }