Banners

Banner management provides content managers control over ad content in the website. Banner campaigns can be rotated into any banner zone created on the web site using this interface. Banner management is implemented via a 4 tier system:

• Advertisers: logical grouping of banners by owner
• Banners: The actual image, text ad and it’s behaviors
• Campaigns: groups of banners that will be presented (rotated) together
• Zones: The actual real estate on the page that can contain banner campaigns

Banner management begins in the banner search tool where all of the above items can be created, or searched for to modify or delete.

Setting up a banner strategy

Creating a banner strategy is about striking a balance between having the flexibility to target ads where necessary, and having the least amount of separate zones and campaigns possible to make management less time consuming.

1. Decide the pages (page templates) that will contain zones and all the possible places banner zones will appear within those pages.
2. Decide which of these zones will be ‘shared’. Shared zones will always contain the same ad campaigns even though they are in multiple locations. This limits flexibility but allows you to manage multiple zone locations from a single zone – making your job easier. Note that shared zones can be split to separate zones later, so error on the side of having less zones.
3. Create each of the necessary zones in banner management by using the ‘new zone’ button. When naming these zones try to develop a naming convention so you can easily identify the location of the zone from the name – for instance “category.left.3” could represent the zone on all category pages, left column, 3rd position down.
4. After creating the zones, fill them with campaigns and banners. If you do not have the actual banners available that will occupy the zones, use anything that is the same pixel size. Filling the zones with temporary banners will make verification of zone placement (the next step) much easier to perform.
5. Place each of the zones in it’s appropriate page template location. This task should be performed by experienced integrators using functions:pageZoneGet.
6. Verify the zones are in place by viewing sample pages utilizing the templates containing the zones. If the zones are not showing, check the following:

• The page being viewed is using a template containing the zone(s) you are verifying.
• Ensure the template does not have any code in place that could prohibit displaying the zone.
• Check to make sure the zone is active and contains campaign(s).
• Check to make sure at least one of the campaigns in the zone is active and contains banner(s).
• Check to make sure at least one of the contained banner(s) is active and is set to include the page (or not exclude the page, whatever the case may be) you are using to verify zone placement.