Adding an advertiser

In the Advertisers & Campaigns page click the Add new advertiser  link.

In the Basic information section, the following information is required:

• The advertiser Name must be unique. You cannot create two advertisers with the same name.
• The Contact is the name used in emails to the advertiser.
• An Email address for the advertiser.

In the Advertiser report section, select when (or if) to send emails to the advertiser:

• OpenX automatically sends an email alert to the advertiser when a campaign is activated or deactivated. You can untick this checkbox if you do not want to send alerts.
• Tick the Email campaign delivery reports checkbox if you want to send these reports regularly to the advertiser. The pre-set value is to email a report every seven days. Change the value in this field if you want to email more or less often. It is unlikely that you will want to send email reports if you give the advertiser access to this information in your system.

See also: About users for information about linking a user to an advertiser account. 

When you click the Next button, the Add new campaign page opens.

Note: You can change details for an advertiser at any time in the Advertiser properties page.

Adding a campaign

When you create an advertiser, the Add new campaign page opens. Alternatively, when adding a campaign to an existing advertiser, click the Add new campaign link in the Advertiser Properties > Campaign overview tab. All settings for a campaign are optional and can be changed at any time.

Basic information

If you do not enter a Name for the campaign, the campaign is given the name of the advertiser followed by "- Default".

Inventory details

In Inventory details, you can enter the number of ads to run, based on:

• Impressions: The number of times an ad is displayed.
• Clicks: The number of clicks on an ad.
• Conversions: The number of times an ad impression or a click on an ad leads to a conversion, for example making a sale or a request for literature.
  

  To track when an ad view is converted, the administrator must enable conversion tracking in the My Account > Global Preferences tab. See also: the OpenX 2.6 Adminstrator Guide for information about global preferences.

Contract details

Under Contract details you can set start and end dates for the campaign and enter revenue information:

• Select a (future) Activation date or tick the Activate this campaign immediately option.
• Select an Expiration date (later than the start date) or tick the Don't expire this campaign on a specific date option.
• Revenue information can be any of:
  • CPM is cost per thousand impressions
  • CPC is cost per click
  • CPA is the cost per acquisition (conversion)
  • Monthly tenancy is an agreed monthly fee

Priority information

Priority information influences the delivery of banners for a campaign. The options available depend on other settings for the campaign.

Priority levels can be:

• Exclusive: these campaigns have delivery priority over all other campaigns. The only distribution option this allows is campaign weight. The greater the weight, the more likely that an impression will be delivered.
• High priority: this is suitable for paid campaigns with set dates. OpenX attempts to deliver these impressions before delivering low priority campaigns. The priority level can be from 1 to 10. A campaign with Impressions booked and an Expiration date set can only be a high priority campaign with automatic distribution.
• Low prioritycampaigns are for remnant inventory, and appliies only when there are no exclusive or high priority campaigns available. The only distribution option is to set the campaign weight. The greater the weight, the more likely it is that an impression will be delivered.

Distribution options are:

• Automatic distribution delivers ads evenly over the remaining days in a campaign and is available only for campaigns with an end date and a set number of impressions, clicks or conversions.
• You can set the number of impressions, clicks or conversions per day for high priority campaigns with no expiry date or with an unlimited number of impressions.Important: If the target number of impressions is zero, or the field is empty, the campaign is deactivated.
• Campaign weight is the only way to influence distribution for exclusive and low priority campaigns. Weighting runs from 1 (lowest priority) to 10 (highest priority). Therefore, a campaign with a weight of 3 is three times more likely to be delivered than a campaign with a weight of 1.

The following table lists the options available for different combinations of settings.

The Hide advertiser and websites option is useful, for example, when a publisher runs an ad at a 'blind' discount. Otherwise, the advertiser will never pay full price to advertise on that site again.

If you use iFrame tags with this setting, the advertiser cannot discover the site name from the referrer domain. See also: iFrame tags.

Tick the Companion positioning option to display only banners from the same campaign (simultaneously) on a page with multiple zones.

Delivery capping

You can place a cap (or limit) on the number of times a visitor sees a campaign. You can cap campaigns in two ways:

• To cap the total number of times a visitor sees banners for this campaign, enter the number in the Limit zone views to: total field.
• To cap the number of times a visitor sees banners for this campaign in a single session, enter the number in the Limit zone views to: per session field.

OpenX records the number of views with cookies, and you can reset the cookie after a specified period by setting it in the Reset view counters after: field. If a visitor has disabled cookies, banners in capped campaigns will not be delivered to that viewer. If a visitor deletes existing cookies, the cookie count is reset to zero, and the visitor will see banners in this campaign until the limits are again reached.

See also: Zone delivery capping and Banner delivery capping.

Click the Save changes button when you add or change campaign settings.

Linking campaigns to zones

You must link a campaign to zones on your website before you can deliver banners for the campaign.

See also: About websites and About zones.

You can either:

• Link campaigns to zones
• Link zones to campaigns

Linking campaigns to zones

To link a campaign to a zone, select the zone in the Websites & Zones page. In the Zone properties > Linked banners tab, you can link the selected zone to a campaign or to an individual banner.

To link to a campaign:

1. Select Link banners by parent campaign from the menu and click the arrow.
2. Select the campaign from the second menu.

OpenX lists all banners in the campaign that match the zone size and type. Each of these banners is linked to the zone through the parent campaign.

Important: If a banner you expect to see is absent from the list, check that its dimensions are compatible with the zone size. When an existing ad is updated, check the dimensions have not changed. If the banner is a different size, the link to the zone will break.

Linking zones to campaigns

To link zones to a campaign, click the campaign on the Advertisers & Campaigns page. In the Campaign properties > Linked zones tab, select the zones you want to link to this campaign. When you click Save changes, the Banner overview page lists all the banners for this campaign. Zones that are compatible with the banner size and type are automatically linked through the parent campaign.

To check which banners are linked to a zone, select the zone in the Campaign properties > Linked zones tab. The Zone properties > Linked banners tab displays a list of the banners linked to the zone.

Managing campaigns

You can copy campaigns and move campaigns from one advertiser to another. Copying campaigns is an easy way to create multiple campaigns with similar properties.

Copying a campaign

In the Advertisers & Campaigns page, click the campaign you want to copy. In the Campaign properties page, click the Duplicate link in the left-hand navigation bar. After a brief pause, OpenX displays the new campaign with the name "Copy of campaign name". You can rename it and change the campaign properties. Click Save Changes when you are done.

You can copy a campaign for one advertiser and move it to another advertiser.

Moving a campaign

In the Advertisers & Campaigns page, click the campaign you want to move. In the Campaign properties page, select the destination advertiser from the Move to menu in the left-hand navigation bar. Click the arrow to start the move. After a brief pause, the page refreshes and lists the campaign under the destination advertiser.

Banner types

OpenX delivers three types of banner:

• Image banners (stored locally or externally)
• HTML banners
• Text banners

Image banners

Image refers to a variety of file types. The following table lists the formats that OpenX supports:

You can serve these ads:

• directly from the OpenX database using the Local banner (SQL) option
• with a web server stored on the same machine as OpenX using the Local banner (webserver) option
• with a web server stored on a separate machine using the External banner option

Select the appropriate server option when you add a banner to the system.

HTML banners

You can enter HTML code for banners such as plain text ads, forms, or banners with multiple images. You can also use HTML code from external ad networks such as Google AdSense.

Text ads

Text ads are similar in style to Google Sponsored Links.

Adding a banner

To add a banner to a campaign, click the Add new banner link on the Campaign properties > Banner overview tab.

See also: Adding Flash banners for additional requirements for adding Flash banners.

Required information

• Select banner type: when you select the banner type, the page refreshes with a form specific for that type
• Add banner
• Add destination URL

Select banner type

In the banner type drop-down menu, the first three options are different serving arrangements for image banners. See also: Banner types

Select one of the following options:

• Local banner (SQL) for image banners in a local SQL database, served by OpenX
• Local banner (Webserver) for image banners stored locally or on an FTP site and served by a web server
• External banner for image banners stored on a remote server, for example served by an advertiser
  
  Important: You cannot use click-tracking with Flash banners stored on an external server. See also: Adding a Flash banner.
• HTML banner
• Text banner

If the menu does not contain all options, it is possible that the system administrator deactivated the missing types.

More information: Contact your system administrator or refer to the Banner settings section of the OpenX Administrator Guide.

When you select an option, the page refreshes to display the form for this banner type.

Add a banner

To add a banner:

• Local SQL and Webserver banners: click the Browse button, navigate to the banner file and select the file to upload to the server.
• External banners: enter a full URL in the Image URL field, including the http:// prefix.
• HTML banners: you can enter HTML directly into the text box, or use HTML from an external ad server by selecting it from the list in the HTML banner drop-down menu. When you enter HTML code, use the 'Return' or 'Enter' key to start a new line of code. Do not enter HTML or BODY tags because these are provided by the target HTML page. Tick the Alter HTML to enable tracking of Clicks checkbox to add click tracking code to the banner.
  
  Important: OpenX inserts the HTML into the page that hosts the ad tag. If you omit a character, such as a closing bracket, it can adversely affect the display of the web page.
• Text banners: Enter text in the Text ad box. Use the 'Return' or 'Enter' key to start a new line of text if required.

Enter destination URL

Enter the Destination URL to visit when a user clicks a banner, including the http:// prefix.

Optional information

• Define the target
• Add HTML attributes
• Set additional options
• Add personal notes

Define the target

For all banner types, you can set the frame for the destination URL in the Target field. The default target, is _blank, opens the URL in a new window.

Add HTML attributes

You can enter the following HTML attributes:

• For image banners only, Alt text appears as a 'tooltip' when the mouse passes over the banner, and also forms the title bar text for a popup window. The tip provides the location of the image if the image file has not yet downloaded. If you leave this field blank, no text is displayed.
• For image and text banners only, Status textappears in the brower status bar when the mouse passes over a banner. In JavaScript-enabled browsers, the default status is the destination URL but can be any text you enter.
  
  Note: Some browsers and browser plugins disable the status message. If you do not see a status message, this can be the cause.
• For image banners only, Text below image appears below the banner and links to the destination URL. You can format this text using basic HTML tags. If you leave the field blank, no text appears below the banner.
• For external and HTML banners only, you must enter Width and Height size attributes, because OpenX cannot determine the dimensions for these banners.

Additional options

You can set the following additional options:

• In the Keywords field you can enter keywords for a banner, using a space to separate multiple keywords. OpenX uses the keywords to determine which banner to display when using direct selection. See also: Delivering banners using Direct Selection.
• In the Description field, you can enter text to help identify the banner in lists.
• The value in the Weight field influences the likelihood that a banner will be displayed. Within the same campaign, a banner with a weight of 3 is likely to be displayed three times as often as a banner with a weight of 1.

Add notes

In the Comment field, you can enter comments and notes about the banner.

When you click Save Changes, the Delivery Options page is displayed.

Managing banners

You can copy banners and move banners from one campaign to another. Copying a banner is a quick way to create new banners with common properties.

Copying a banner

In the Banner properties page, click the Duplicate link in the left-hand pane. After a brief pause, OpenX displays the new banner with the name "Copy of banner name". You can change the name in the Description field of the Banner properties page, and also change any other banner properties.

Once you have done this, click Save Changes.

Moving a banner

In the Banner properties page, select the destination campaign from the Move to menu in the left-hand pane. Click the arrow to start the move. After a brief pause, the page refreshes and the banner is now listed in the Campaign overview page of the destination campaign.

Banner delivery options

OpenX provides two mechanisms to control the delivery of banners to target ads to make the most of your inventory. You can set delivery limitations to ensure that banners are only delivered if certain conditions are met, and you can use delivery capping to limit the number of times a banner is shown to a visitor.

Use delivery limitations, for example, to display banners only to visitors from a certain country and only at certain times of day. Or you could target an entertainment venue ad to visitors who were referred by an events listing page, showing different versions on different days of the week. The range of limitations is extensive, and you can combine limitations for even more effective targeting. You can also divide your website into channels, such as 'sport' and 'news', and set delivery limitations for these channels.

Visitors tend to become "blind" to ads the more often they see, and become increasingly less likely to respond as a result. You can cap the number of times you show the same ad to a visitor, and instead show alternatives that might have more impact. You can also cap the number of times a visitor is shown any ad from the same campaign.

This page describes the following delivery options:

See also: Delivery limitations example for an example of using various limitations to target your advertising.

Delivery limitations

To set delivery limitations, in the Banner Properties > Delivery Options tab, select the limitation you want from the drop-down menu. You can limit banner delivery based on:

• Site
• Geography
• Time
• Client

You can combine delivery limitations to target your ads even more effectively.

Targeting by site

You can target ads based on the visitor website in a number of ways:

• Target by Page URL to show the ad to visitors to one specific page.
• Target by Referrer URL to show an ad to all visitors who came from the same referring page (for example, because the page has a hyperlink to the ad request page).
• Target by Channel (or section) of a website. You must set up at least one channel to be able to use this targeting option.
  
  Refer to Channels for more information.
• Target by Variable to deliver an ad to any page request that contains a specified variable. These variables can be any value passed in the HTTP request, for example to limit by gender=male or by a numeric variable, such as age must be 21 or greater.

See also: About channels

Geotargeting

With geotargeting, you can target ads to visitors from a specific location. Geotargeting uses a GeoIP database from MaxMind. OpenX can check the IP address of a visitor against this database to determine the visitor's location. MaxMind provides a free database that targets by country or continent, and you can buy additional databases to target more specifically (for example by city or ISP).

Geotargeting is not enabled by default in OpenX, and must be enabled by the administrator before it appears in the Delivery limitations menu. To enable free geotargeting, in the My Account > Global settings tab select the Geotargeting Settings option from the drop-down menu and click the arrow. Select MaxMind GeoIP as the Geotargeting Module Type. This option automatically enables the free version of the MaxMind GeoIP database, and the Geo - Continent and Geo - Country options will appear in the menu of delivery limitations.

Important: You must be Working as an administrator to view the Global preferences page which includes the Geotargetting Settings. If you do not have administrator access, contact your administrator for assistance. 

Targeting by time

Traffic patterns to your website probably vary a lot depending on the hour of the day and day of the week. You can use delivery limitations to:

• Target an ad to appear on a specific day or days, for example for a special promotion.
• Target an ad to appear at particular hours in a day when your visitors are more likely to respond to an ad, for example to advertise a breakfast cereal early in the morning.
• Target an ad to appear on a specific day, or days of the week, for example to advertise an entertainment venue on the days of regular events.

Targeting by client

When a visitor requests an ad, information about the visitor's client is passed with the request. You can use this information to:

• Target an ad to visitors in their own language, making it possible to serve different language versions of an ad for localised websites.
• Target an ad to a specific domain (for example, one ad for visitors from the New York Times and another ad for visitors from the Washington Post).
• Target an ad based on the IP address of the visitor. Blocks of IP addresses are assigned to ISPs, and you can specify a range of IP addresses to target an ad to customers of a specific ISP.
• Target by user agent, for example to show different versions of an ad for different browsers or operating systems.

Banner delivery capping

You can place a cap (or limit) on the number of times a visitor sees a banner, campaign or zone. This is an effective way to increase click-through rates as visitors are most likely to click on an ad the first few times they see it.

There are two ways to cap banners:

• To cap the total number of times a visitor see a banner, enter the number in the Limit banner views to: total field.
• To cap the number of times a visitor sees a banner in a single session, enter the number in the Limit banner views to: per session field.

OpenX records the number of views in cookies. You can reset the views total after a specified period by entering a value in the Reset view counters after: field. If a visitor has disabled cookies, capped banners will not be delivered to that viewer. If a visitor deletes existing cookies, capping information is reset to zero and the visitor will continue to see the banner until the limits are again reached.

See also: Adding a campaign for information about delivery capping at the campaign level.

Delivery limitations example

You can use delivery limitations to constrain delivery of ads in a large number of ways. These examples show how you can combine limitations to target ads more effectively:

• Limit delivery to visitors to a specific page.
• Add another limit to display to visitors on Friday only.
• Use geotargeting to limit delivery to visitors from Germany

To set delivery limitations for a banner, either:

• In the Advertisers & Campaigns page, expand the campaign and banner information for the advertiser, select the banner and click the Delivery link.
• In the Banner properties page, select the Delivery options tab.

Limit by page

This example limits delivery to visitors on a certain page, for example to advertise tickets to visitors on an events listing page. The tickets are only on sale on the day of the event which happens every Friday night. You can add a second limitation to restrict the ad to deliver on Friday only.

To limit delivery to the events listing page:

• In the Delivery options page, select Site - Page URL in the drop-down menu at the bottom right of the Delivery limitations section and click the arrow.
• The page refreshes and displays the form for the Page URL limitation.
• Select is equal to from the drop-down menu and enter the Page URL, for example http://www.example.com/events.
• Click Save changes to save the limitation.

The banner will be displayed only to visitors to the events page and will not appear on other pages on your website. Alternatively, if you selected the is different from option, the banner would never display on the events page again.

Limit by day

To restrict delivery to Fridays only:

• Select the Time - Day of the week option from the drop-down menu of delivery limitations and click the arrow.
• The page refreshes and the form for the Day of week limitation appears below the Page URL limitation.
• Select is any of from the drop-down menu, and tick the checkbox for Friday.
• To the left of the form is a drop-down menu with AND/OR options available. Select AND  to combine this limitation with the preceding limitation. Use the OR option if you want to make limitations exclusive, for example to show an ad to visitors on the events page or to visitors on any page on Fridays only.
• Click Save changes to save the combined limitation.

If you wanted to be even more precise, you could set a third limitation and use the Time - Hour of day option to stop showing the ad an hour before the event starts.

Limit by country

To use geotargeting, you must have enabled geoIP targeting. Refer to the Geotargeting section of banner delivery limitations. After you enable geotargeting, these options appear in the delivery limitations drop-down menu. To limit by country:

• Select the Geo - Country option from the drop-down menu of delivery limitations and click the arrow.
• The page refreshes and the form for the Country limitation appears below the Day of week limitation.
• Select Germany from the list of countries.
• Select AND to combine the limitations and only show ads to visitors to the events page on Fridays who are from Germany. Alternatively, select the OR option to show ads to either visitors to the events page on Friday, or to any visitor from Germany at any time.

Linking banners to zones

After you create a zone, you can link banners to it. Only linked banners are displayed in a zone. You can link banners and zones in two ways:

• Link banners to zones
• Link zones to banners

Linking banners to zones

You can link individual banners to zones, or link them as part of a campaign. See also: Linking campaigns to zones.

In the Zone properties > Linked banners tab, you can link a selected zone to a campaign or to an individual banner.

To link a zone to a banner:

1. Select the Link individual banners option from the drop-down menu and click the arrow.
2. The Advertiser menu lists advertisers with banners this zone can link to. Select an advertiser and press the arrow. The form refreshes to show the Campaign menu.
3. In the Campaign menu, select a campaign containing the banner and press the arrow. The form refreshes to show the Banner menu.
4. In the Banner menu, select the banner to link to this zone and click the arrow.

The page refreshes and the banner is listed in the Banners linked to this zone section.

Important: If a banner you expect to see does not appear, check that the banner and zone dimensions are compatible. When updating an existing ad, do not change the dimensions; a change in dimensions can break the link to the zone.

Linking zones to banners

The Banner properties > Linked zones tab lists all the zones that are compatible in size and type with the selected banner. Select the zone or zones you want to link to this banner and click Save changes.

Adding a website

To add a website to the system, click through to the Websites & Zones page, click the Add new website link. In the Add new website page:

• In the Website field, enter your website’s URL.
• In the Name field, enter a name for the website. This name will appear in overview lists and each website name in the system must be unique.
• Select a Category for the website from the drop-down menu.
• Select the Country and Language of the website from the drop-down menus.
• In the Contact field, enter the name of the contact for the website.
• In the Email field, enter an email address for the website manager.

When you have completed these steps, click Save Changes. OpenX then displays the Zone overview page where you can set up zones for the website(s) you have added.

You can give the website manager access to view and manage various aspects of the website on the system in the Website properties > User Access tab. 
See also: About users

Single page call

Single page call is a simple, JavaScript invocation method that uses a single HTTP request to deliver multiple banners to a web page. Instead of making several calls to the adserver for pages with multiple ads, a single call loads the page much faster, without the delays associated with rendering each zone individually.

Setting single page call options

You generate invocation code for a single page call at the "website" level, rather than at the "zone" level. In the Websites & Zones -> Website properties -> Invocation Code tab, begin by setting various options for the invocation code.

The following table describes the ad delivery options you can set for single page call.

The following table describes the code generation options you can set for single page call:

When you have set all the options you require, click Generate to create code blocks for you to insert into your web pages.

Standard usage

Single page call generates two types of code block:

• Place the <script> call in the <head> section of your web pages.
• Place the JS function "OA_show(zoneid)" in the HTML at the point where you want to show the specified zone.

Script call

The script call must be included on every page which contains ads and must appear before any code blocks are called. For this reason, OpenX recommends that you place the <script> call in the HTML <head> tag. You use the same script call for every page with ads on your site.

Example <script> tag:

Ad code

As well as generating the script call, the invocation code page creates a code block for every zone on this website. Place these code blocks in the site HTML at the point where you want the banner for each zone to display.

Example ad code block:

This standard usage limits you to placing each zone once only in the HTML for a web page because, with no additional requests necessary to reuse a code block, any repeats of the code block will deliver the exact same banner, again and again.

Advanced usage

To overcome the limitation of being unable to reuse code blocks in a web page, single page call includes an advanced feature called "named zones". To use named zones, define a list of name and zoneid pairs in a JavaScript array before the <script> call, and use these identifiers in the code blocks.

Using the named zones mechanism, you can define different names which request the same zoneid. You can also optimise the named zones array to fractionally improve performance by only requesting the zones that are present on the page.

The format of the named zone array is:

Note that both Banner - top and Banner - bottom set the same zone ID, but this mechanism will re-select an ad for the Banner - bottom position.

To use the named zones feature, you must use the "names" in the OA_show(zone) function in the ad code block for each zone.

Zone types

OpenX supports a wide range of zone types. When you create a zone, you first select which type you want. This selection influences the types of zone invocation tags you can create to place in your web pages. This page describes the zone types and the tags they support.

A zone can be one of the following types:

• Banner, button or rectangle zones display banners as part of the content of the website and are the most standard zone type. With banner zones, you can choose any of the zone tag options.
• Interstitial or Floating DHTML zones are for ads such as splash pages, or ads that overlay on top of a web page which appear to 'float'. JavaScript is the only type of tag these zones support. Four options are available for this type of zone:
  • The Simple option creates a zone for a splash page that appears on top of a web page, and is typically set to disappear after a set period of time.
  • The Floater option creates a zone for an ad that moves across a web page to disappear at the far side, or which loops across either regularly or continually.
  • The Cursor option creates a zone for an ad that appears by the user's mouse cursor, and follows the cursor as it moves.
  • The Geocities option creates a zone for an ad that is similar to those which appear on Geocities pages. These banners appear at the top of a web page, and the user can collapse and close them.
• Popup zones show banners in a separate window that can appear either above or below (a 'pop-under') the browser window. JavaScript is the only tag type available for these zones.
• Text ad zones display text ads and can use JavaScript, Local Mode or XML-RPC tags.
• Email/Newsletter zones display banners in HTML emails. The No Cookie Image tag is the only ad tag you can use for these zones.

Each zone type is explained in more details in the relevant zone type page in this guide.

Adding a zone

To add a zone, in the Website properties > Zone overview tab, click the Add new zone link. In the Add new zone page, follow these steps:

• The zone must have a unique name. If you do not enter a value in the Name field, OpenX names it as the name of the website and adds the suffix "-Default".
• In the Description field you can enter information to make it easier to see what the zone is used for, for example Full banner (468 x 60).
• Select a zone type.
• Except for text ad zones, you must specify the zone size. Only banners that fit within those dimensions are displayed in the zone. The Size menu includes all standard dimensions, defined by the IAB.
  
  More information: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) provides detailed standards and guidelines for online advertising.
• To display a banner which is not a standard size, select the Custom size option at the bottom of the Size menu, and enter values in the Width and Heightfields underneath. You can enter specific values or you can use a wildcard ('*'). For example, a 120x* zone indicates that all banners with a width of 120, and of any height, can link to this zone.

When you finish defining the zone, click the Save Changes button. OpenX opens the Advanced page, where you can specify additional properties for the zone.

Zone tags

After setting up a zone, select the Zone properties > Invocation code tab in order to generate an ad tag. You will then paste the tags into HTML pages which invoke (call) OpenX to deliver ads. The types of tags available depend on the type of zone you set. The tag types (listed in the order of popularity) are:

• The JavaScript Tag; the most popular and versatile tag type (includes a noscript option for the very small number of users that are not JavaScript-enabled).
• The Local Mode Tag; enables server-side processing for banners that are stored locally, for example to change the site template when a user clicks on an ad. This tag works only when OpenX and your banners are stored on the same machine with the same top level domain. The website must be written in PHP, or be able to parse PHP.
• The XML-RPC Tag; similar to a local-mode tag, but can be used for ads stored on a remote server.
• The iFrame Tag; use the HTML iFrame tag to embed an advert in an iFrame on a web page.
• The Image Tag; useful if you want to display banners to an audience that is not JavaScript-enabled. Width and height attributes are not defined in this tag. If you want to allocate space for an ad before it is displayed, you must add this information directly into the tag.
• The No Cookie Image Tag; an image tag which does not use cookies. This is used by email zone types, because most email servers do not support the use of cookies.

When you select the tag type, you can set various optional parameters which change the Bannercode for your zone. These parameters vary depending on the type of zone and the type of zone tag you use. The following table describes these parameters and which tags use them. Popup and Insterstitial  zones have a number of additional parameters which are desribed on the Popup zones and Interstitial or Floating DHMTL zones pages. If a tag is not available in the drop-down menu, it is possible that the system administrator has disabled this tag type for the server. Contact your administrator for more information.

Advanced zone properties

In the Advanced tab of the Zone properties page, you can set the following properties:

• Zone chaining
• Delivery capping
• Append and prepend settings

Zone chaining

Sometimes a zone cannot display an ad because it is not linked to any active banners, or because delivery limitations prevent it from doing so. To stop this happening, you can create a chain of zones. In a chain of zones, if it is not possible to display a banner for the zone then a banner from another zone can be used.

If you select Stop delivery and don't show a banner, an empty space appears on the website if no banners can be displayed for this zone.

If you select Display the selected zone instead and select a zone from the drop-down menu, OpenX will display a banner from that zone if no banners can be displayed for this zone.

Note: Only zones from the same publisher are available in the menu, unless you made zones for another publisher public.

Delivery capping of zones

You can place a cap (or limit) on the number of times a visitor sees a zone. You can cap zones in two ways:

• To cap the total number of times a visitor sees the banners linked to this zone, enter the number in the Limit zone views to: total field.
• To cap the number of times a visitor sees banners in this zone in a single session, enter the number in the Limit zone views to: per session field.

OpenX records the number of views with cookies. You can order the cookie count to reset after a specified period by setting it in the Reset view counters after: field. If a visitor has disabled cookies, banners in capped zones will not be delivered to that viewer. If a visitor deletes existing cookies, the cookie count is reset to zero and the visitor will see banners in this zone until the set limit is again reached.

Zone append

You can generate additional HTML when a banner is delivered for a zone, for example to show another form of banner (e.g. a popup). This code is executed each time a banner from this zone is delivered. You can enter your own HTML code, or paste code from a supported ad network.

For text ad zones, you can prepend and append HTML to the text ad to determine the layout of the ad.

If you set the Append even if no banner is delivered option to 'Yes', the additional code is delivered even when no banner is delivered.

Zone probabilities

The Zone properties > Probability tab lists all banners currently considered for delivery in a zone. To change the likelihood of delivering a banner, change the 'priority level' of the campaign or change the 'weight' of the banner.

Important: These changes not only affect this zone but all zones linked to the banner or campaign.

If no banners are currently considered for delivery, the list will be empty unless the zone is chained with another. If a chain is set, the list can contain banners that are not linked to this zone, but which are likely to be shown.

My account

The My Account tab provides access to various preferences associated with a user. The options in the My Account tab vary, depending on the current user role.

See also:  About users and refer to the Adminstrator Guide for information about Global settings and Maintenance settings

Account preferences

The My Account > Account Preferences tab is visible to all administrator and agency users, and can be visible to advertiser and website users depending on the permissions assigned to them. In the Account Preferences tab, select a preference type from the drop down menu to view and change its settings. The preferences you can manage are:

Note: The options available to advertiser and website users are limited to those that are relevant to these roles, and to the permissions set for specific users.

Banner preferences

You can manage the following banner preferences: 

• You can enter a Default image URL and Default destination URL for OpenX to use if no other banners are available to display to a viewer. Setting these default URLs ensures that viewers do not see a blank space on a web page.
• OpenX automatically alters HTML banners in order to force click tracking. You can disable or enable this setting.
• You can change the Default Campaign Weight and Default Banner Weight from the pre-set value of 1.

Campaign email reports preferences

You can control when email alerts about campaigns are sent to administrators, agencies and advertisers warning when a campaign is about to end. The preset values are to send alerts when 100 impressions remain in the campaign, and when the campaign is due to expire in one day. Settings that are not relevant to the user role are disabled.

Tracker preferences

Tracker preferences are visible to administrator and agency users only, and include the following settings to manage conversion tracking:

• The Default tracker status can be Ignore (pre-set), Pending, On Hold, Approved, Disapproved or Duplicate.
• The Default tracker type can be Sale (preset), Lead or Signup .

You can also apply conversion tracking for all by campaigns by ticking the Link newly created campaigns by default checkbox.

Timezone

To change the timezone for a user, select an alternative timezone from the drop down menu.

User interface preferences

With the user interface preferences you can control the display of various types of information in OpenX, including: 

• enabling or disabling the display of items in the inventory, such as displaying banner previews or hiding inactive items from overview pages.
• disabling the warning that automatically appears before a delete action is executed.
• Adding additional items to be shown in your activity statistics. However, if you add a lot of extra columns they can become difficult to read.

Statistics - advertisers and campaigns

When you click the Statistics tab, OpenX displays today's statistics for all of your current advertisers. Change the date period to view statistics for another period, such as last week or month.

Expand information for an advertiser to view their campaigns. To view statistics for a specific campaign, click on the campaign. You can now view the following campaign statistics for the selected period:

• The Campaign history tab shows general statistics for the campaign, and includes links to Create a Graph of Statistics and Export Statistics to Excel.
• The Banner overview tab shows statistics for each banner in the campaign.
• The Website distribution tab shows which websites delivered the banners for this campaign.
• The Targeting statistics tab shows the zone forecasting and impressions delivered for this campaign.

Similarly, in the Advertisers & Campaigns tab the following tabs are displayed by expanding information for an advertiser and clicking on a specific banner:

• The Banner history tab shows statistics for the banner and includes links to Create a Graph of Statistics and Export Statistics to Excel.
• The Website distribution tab shows which websites delivered impressions for this banner.

In the View by menu you can select to aggregate statistics by:

• Day
• Week
• Month
• Day of the month
• Hour

Note: If you view statistics by hour, the database will take longer to return the information and the more advertisers you have, the longer it will take to process the information.

A total of statistics for the selected view is displayed at the end of the page.

Statistics - global history

When you click the Statistics > Global history tab, OpenX displays an overview of statistics without specifying associated advertisers or websites. The tab includes links to Create a Graph of Statistics and Export Statistics to Excel.

In the View by menu you can select to aggregate statistics by:

• Day
• Week
• Month
• Day of the month
• Hour

A total of statistics for the selected view is displayed at the bottom of the page.

Statistics - websites and zones

When you click the Statistics > Websites & Zones tab, OpenX displays the statistics for all of your current websites, for the time period already set in this menu. Change the date period to view statistics for another period, such as last week or month.

Expand details of a website to view campaign statistics for a zone. You can view the following statistics for the campaign for the selected period:

• The Zone history tab shows general statistics for the zone and includes links to Create a Graph of Statistics and Export Statistics to Excel.
• The Campaign distribution tab shows what campaigns and banners were delivered in this zone.

In the View by menu you can select to aggregate statistics by:

• Day
• Week
• Month
• Day of the month
• Hour

Note: If you view statistics by hour, the database will take longer to return the information and the more websites you have, the longer it will take to process the information.

A total of statistics for the selected view is displayed at the end of the page.