Ad server

Submitted by admin on 21 January 2011 - 12:23pm

ProsePoint features a native ad server for the purposes of serving advertisements.

(Note: As of writing, the ad server is almost, but not quite, feature complete. It can serve individual ads staticly as well as with rotation. However, there is no impressions or click tracking. We will add this at a later time)

Ad Creatives and Ad Groups

In the ProsePoint Express native ad server, an individual advertisement is known as an ad creative. An ad creative is a single, specific, text or image advertisement.

Ad creatives can be further organised into ad groups. An ad group corresponds to a single advertising slot or placement. An ad group is the collection of ad creatives which are to be shown for a single advertising slot.

For example, you may have an ad group for each of the following placement positions:

  • Banners (468x60) at top of page
  • Large rectangle (300x250) in right 'sidebar'
  • Rectangle (180x150) inside page content (only for story pages)

All the ad creatives in a group should use the same dimensions.

Let's consider the Banners advertising slot further.

You could create an Ad group called Banners to display 460x60 pixel banner ads at the top of your site. This ad group is to appear in the banners advertising slot (ie. in the Header zone) on every page of your site.

To add a new banner ad, you create a new ad creative and assign it to the ad group Banners. The new advertisement will then be eligible to appear in the banners advertising slot (When and how frequently it appears depends on the ad rotation algorithm).

Later on, you decide you want to separate your banners into three groups: Technology banners, Sports banners, and General banners (for ads not related to Technology nor Sports). You would rename the existing Banners ad group to General banners, and create two additional ad groups: Technology banners and Sports banners. Then you would recategorise your ad creatives into each of these three ad groups.

You can take a similar approach for any of your placements. Again, it depends on how your ad inventory is structured and what works best for your site.

Displaying ad groups with widgets

Once the ad creatives have been created and organised into ad groups, they are displayed using widgets.

To display an ad group, an Ad Group widget needs to be created and then configured to display the desired group. An ad group widget displays one ad creative, selected out of the group according to the rotation policy.

Let's continue further the banners example above:

Create an Ad Group widget and configure it to display the group Banners. Then, place the widget in the Header zone of all the layouts of the site.

Displaying ad creatives with widgets

Individual ad creatives can also be displayed by creating an Ad Creative widget and configuring it to display the desired creative. An ad creative widget displays a single ad creative. It bypasses ad groups altogether.

If you are only displaying a small number of static advertisements without needing ad rotation, it may be more convenient to place them with ad creative widgets individually instead of using ad groups.