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:

Media	File formats
Image	.jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .png
Flash movie	.swf
Quicktime movie	.mov
Real Media movie	.rpm

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.