Global settings - banners

In the My Account > Global settings tab, an administrator can manage the following banner settings:

See also: Account preferences in the OpenX 2.6 User Guide for information about delivery preferences you can apply at account level.

Banner delivery settings

The global banner delivery settings are:

  • Allowed invocation types: If you disable any invocation tag type it will no longer be available as an option when users create zones. See also: Zone tags in the OpenX 2.6 User Guide.
  • Banner delivery cache settings: You can change the amount of time (in seconds) that OpenX allows before updating the banner delivery cache. The default value is 1200 seconds (20 minutes).
  • Banner delivery settings: You can control the following:
    • Evaluate banner delivery limitations during delivery: This setting is enabled by default. If you disable this option you might experience some increase in speed.
    • Obfuscate channel when delivering ads:  This setting obscures channel information when delivering banners.
    • Allow PHP code in ads to be executed: While it is possible to allow execution of PHP code in ads it should be noted that this represents a security risk.
    • 3rd Party Click Tracking Delimiter: This value is the default delimiter OpenX uses for tracking 3rd party clicks. See also: Third Party Click Tracking with OpenX
  • Invocation defaults: To Enable 3rd party click tracking, select which type from the drop-down menu. Available options are:
    • None
    • Generic
    • Rich media doubleclick
    • Rich media OpenX
  • P3P privacy policies: P3P privacy policies were introduced in Internet Explorer 6 to guard against unwanted cookies. P3P is enabled by default in OpenX and delivers a compact policy statement that the browser recognises. You can specify a file location for a separate P3P privacy policy if desired.
  • OpenX server access paths: Manage the pathnames to the OpenX administrator interface, delivery directories and image directories.
  • Delivery file names: Lists the filenames used for banner delivery.

If you change any settings in the Banner delivery settings remember to click Save Changes.

Banner Logging Settings

This section of the screen allows the OpenX administrator to control the different types of raw data that will be logged by OpenX. There are nine different options:

Request, Impression and Click Logging Settings

  • Log a request every time a banner is requested
  • Log an impression every time a banner is viewed
  • Log a click every time a viewer clicks on a banner

These three settings control whether OpenX should log raw requests, impressions, and/or clicks.

Note
The logging of impressions is almost always required for OpenX to operate correctly. In particular, the Maintenance Statistics Engine (MSE) will not run for the first time if no impressions have been logged. Do not disable impressions logging unless you are very familiar with the OpenX architecture, and have a specific reason to do so.

Information Lookup Logging Settings

  • Reverse lookup the hostnames of viewers when not supplied

This setting performs a reverse DNS lookup of the user's IP address when delivering banners, if the hostname is not already set, so that it can be logged to the raw data tables.

  • Try to determine the real IP address of viewers behind a proxy server

This setting causes OpenX to examine the HTTP headers and check if the viewer is coming through a proxy server. If so, the viewer's real IP address is determined and used for logging, if possible.

  • Extract the viewer's operating system and web browser information using phpSniff

"Additional Data" Logging Settings

This setting examines the User-Agent string and extracts the information using the phpSniff application, which allows for the targeting of creatives by broad browser descriptions (e.g. using "Internet Explorer" instead of having to match every possible IE User-Agent string).

  • Store 'User-agent' data when logging
  • Store 'Page Info' data when logging
  • Store 'Referer' data when logging

These three settings control if OpenX should store the viewer's browser user-agent string, information about the page the creative was requested/delivered/clicked on, and/or the referring page to the raw data tables when logging creative requests, impressions and clicks (if the logging of these types is enabled).

The "Page Info" includes the logging of whether the page to which the creative was delivered was using SSL or not, the domain, the page itself, and any query strings passed into the page.

The "Referer" is the page that the viewer was on before they viewed the page the creative was requested/delivered/clicked on.

None of the above data are used by OpenX in any way, so for performance reasons you may want to leave all of these values disabled. However, the data can be useful when debugging OpenX, or if you want to perform your own processing of raw data. In this case, you are welcome to enable the logging.

Block Banner Logging Settings

This section of the screen allows the OpenX administrator to control which hosts/clients will or will not result in raw data being logged to the database.

  • Don't log any statistics for viewers using any of the following IP addresses or hostnames

If the request comes from one of the IP addresses entered, this setting will prevent raw data (requests/impressions/clicks) being logged to the database.

IP addresses can be entered in any of the following formats:

  • One IP address per line; and/or
  • Comma separated; and/or
  • Semi-colon separated.
  • Don't log statistics from clients with any of the following strings in their user-agent

This setting will prevent raw data from being logged to the database if the User-Agent contains any of the string values entered.

The string values that are entered are treated in a case-insensitive fashion, and should be entered as one string per line.

  • Only log statistics from clients with any of the following strings in their user-agent

If the User-Agent does not contain any of the string values entered, this setting will prevent raw data from being logged to the database.

The string values that are entered are treated in a case-insensitive fashion, and should be entered as one string per line.

Note
These three options essentially mean that logging of raw data is performed using the following process:

  1. A raw data item is created, ready to be logged;
  2. If the raw data item IS in the list of IP addresses, then it is NOT logged; otherwise
  3. If the raw data item IS in the list of "User-Agents that should not be excluded", then it IS logged; otherwise
  4. If the raw data item IS in the list of "User-Agents that should be excluded", then it is NOT logged; otherwise
  5. It is logged.
Tip
The IAB produce a list of known spiders and bots that is available to members which is suitable for use in the above settings. However, if you are not an IAB member you can find a database of different User-Agent strings at User-Agents.org.

OpenX recommend that you use at least the following User-Agent strings in the "Don't log statistics from clients with any of the following strings in their user-agent" setting:

  • slurp
  • googlebot
  • msnbot

However, it is recommended that you regularly review the User-Agents that visit your site. This is to ensure that you are not excluding valid User-Agents, and/or allowing invalid User-Agents to log raw data.

Banner storage settings

The banner storage settings are:

  • Allowed banner types: All banner types are enabled by default. If you disable a banner type it will no longer be available for selection when users add banners to the system. See also: Banner types in the OpenX 2.6 User Guide.
  • Webserver local banner storage: You can store banners in a local directory or on an external FTP server. If you change from local storage to FTP storage you must enter host name, directory, login name and password.