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Delivery capping

Note: This article is for an old version of OpenX.

The latest OpenX documentation can be found at the following URLs:

Openads has some advanced features which will help you target banners and popups more accurate. It is possible to specify how many times a banners must be shown to a specific user and how much time there must be between two impressions. The delivery capping feature is based on cookies, so they will only work if cookies are enabled in the browser of the visitor.

If the visitor disabled cookies the delivery of the banner won't be capped at all. For example if you use this feature to show a particular pop-up banner only one time a day, the visitor may see it many times more often. Also, if the visitor deleted all of his existing cookies, the information about capping will be lost and the user will see the banner again until the new limits are reached.

Openads delivery capping:

Time based capping

By setting a time limit you can influence how often a banner is delivered to a specific user. Once the banner has been delivered once, the banner will not be considered any more for as long as the set time limit. After the limit has expired, the banner will be considered for delivery again. If you change this time limit after a visitor seen the banner the old time limit is still used. Only after the original time limit has passed, the new limit will be used.

Frequency capping

If you want to limit how many times a specific user will see a banner, you can enter the maximum number of impressions in the field Do not show this banner to the same user more than. Once the user has seen the banner as many times as specified the banner will no longer be considered for delivery.

Unlike the other type of capping, changes to the frequency capping will directly affect all visitors. For example, if a visitor has seen this banner exactly 5 times and the previous limit was 8. If you change the limit to 4 the banner won't be shown again to the visitor. If you change the limit to 6, the visitor will only see the banner one more time. If you set the limit to zero, the banner will be shown again to every visitor, even visitors who already reached the limit.