An introduction into Online Advertising. – How it all began pptx

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An introduction into Online
Advertising. – How it all began.

If you ever wondered when it all started, the answer is
October 1994 on HotWired, the predecessor to
today’s Wired News. The ads were for Zima, Club
Med, and AT&T and measured 468 pixels by 60
pixels. This seemingly awkward size effectively filled
the horizontal length of a maximized web browser
using a monitor resolution of 640x480 pixels (the
standard at the time). This banner size became the
de facto standard is still widely used today.
Banners were triumphed as being the first form of
advertising to provide an accurate means of success
measurement. After all, a user saw the ad, clicked
and visited the advertiser’s website: Voila, a success!
The Click-Through Rate (CTR) was born. CTRs
soared at first – proving, of course, that banners were
an astonishingly lucrative form of advertising… until
the novelty wore off, banner ads became
commonplace and click-through rates dwindled
correspondingly.

The decrease in clicks is not the only worry in the
world of online advertising. In the last few years, a
backlash towards it has arisen from the surfing public.
Unfortunately, the advertisers and publishers
themselves are largely to blame, principally through
overexposure and use of obtrusive ad technologies.

The pop-up ad window seemed like a great idea until
the rallying cry of website users lead to publishers
banning it from their sites.
To this day, in the quest to “get seen” advertisers still
resort to tactics that rankle end-users: a giant jug
descending from above to fill the web page with
orange juice or an SUV trundling a path across an
article are examples of ads that have irritated many
web surfers. Who can blame them for being
annoyed? After all, visitors are there to read articles,
find a new love interest, or see what movies are
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playing and pity the ad that gets in their way… or
more accurately, pity the user who was just trying to
accomplish a task.
A Word on Pop-Up and Pop-Under Ads
The pop-up is probably the most widely despised of
all internet advertising. The pop-up came into vogue
because they were successful. How could something
that provokes such a hostile response from the web-
viewing public garner such high click-through rates?
Viewed as an effective way of grabbing a user’s
attention, pop-ups quickly became horribly overused
resulting in a backlash from users.
Several publishers like iVillage ceased to offer them
due to customer complaints. In April 2003 26% of
people reported using pop-up blocking software,
whereas in September 2004 the number increased to
69%.* The number is most likely much higher now

that pop-up blocking is an easy to use feature in all of
the four major web browsers (Microsoft Internet
Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Opera and Firefox).
This dislike of pop-ups extends beyond the ad format
itself and directly transfers to the advertisers and the
publishers. In a survey of 18,808 users, more than
50% reported that a pop-up ad affected their opinion
of the advertiser very negatively and nearly 40%
reported that it affected their opinion of the publisher
very negatively.
A pop-under window behaves in much the same way
as a pop-up, except that it is placed beneath the
user’s web browser. Pop-unders are prevented from
appearing as well when a user has selected to block
pop-ups. The consensus is that pop-unders are no
better than pop-ups.
If you need one more reason to avoid pop-ups (and
pop-unders), it is the widespread use of them by the
unscrupulous internet advertisers: cheap Viagra
dealers, products like X-Cam (spy on your
neighbours!) and pornography sites all make wide
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use of this format. They deploy their ads through
spyware (which installs itself computers without the
knowledge or permission of users) which spawns
several pop-ups as users surf the web. It has become
such a nuisance that many people now routinely use
anti-spyware software and the major virus protection
packages even provide spyware elimination.

Imagine your legitimate pop-up ad on a publisher’s
website amongst several unsavoury ads spawned by
spyware. Would you want to be associated with that
crowd?
• “The Most Hated Advertising Techniques”. Jakob
Nielsen's Alertbox, Useit.com. December 6, 2004


So does Online Advertising really work?
Even if your ad has a low click-through rate it does
not necessarily mean that people are not paying
attention to your message. Think of it this way: if
someone sees an online ad for Tasty Beverage, get
ups and goes to the fridge to get one, is that not a
success? The person did not need to visit the site of
Tasty Beverage Company – although perhaps the
banner also prompted a visit to the online grocer
website to order another case.
At the end of the day, the number of users who
clicked a given ad can be a misleading as a
measurement of success or failure. A lack of click-
throughs does not necessarily mean that your
message was ineffective.



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Chapter 2

What choices do people have when
they want to advertise online?


When most people think of online advertising, the
classic ad banner comes to mind. However, online
display advertising only makes up 20% of all money
spent – search advertising accounts for 40% and
classifieds account for 17%.* Here is a breakdown of
the different internet advertising methods:
*“The Decade in Online Advertising, 1994 – 2004”.
DoubleClick. Page 12.

Online Display Advertising

Online Display Advertising
These are graphical ads, which typically occupy a
fixed position on a web page, often in the same place
from page to page: for instance, most publishers
feature a banner position at the very top of every
page in their site.
Rich Media
The term rich media applies to online display ads that
feature advanced functionality including interactivity,
animation, and streaming audio and video. Creation
of these ads utilises advanced web technologies such
as Macromedia Flash, Java applets and DHTML.
Search Advertising
Advertisers purchase keywords that they wish to
associate their ad with on the publisher’s search

engine. When a user enters a search on the site ads
relating to the search terms appear alongside their
search results.
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Contextual Advertising
Ads grouped by keyword appear alongside the
content of a webpage using keywords contained in
the text to match ads to the topic. These ads are
dynamic and employ sophisticated techniques to
match ads to the page topics.
Classifieds
Classified ads are usually entirely or predominantly
text-based and placed into categories. Online
versions of paper-based classifieds often appear on
the sites of various newspapers and other
publications. Additionally sites specifically geared
towards online classified ad delivery are also
available.
RSS
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a method of
easily distributing content to a subscriber base
allowing offline access on a PC or on a mobile
device. It is becoming increasingly widespread in use
and RSS advertising is expected it to become the
“next big thing” as an advertising medium as the
technology hits the mainstream (RSS will be included
in Windows Visa, the XP successor).
Contests
An online advertising option where the advertiser

offers a prize (or prizes) to winners based on specific
criteria: random draw, most creative mini-essay, etc.
Running contests online allows for branding
opportunities, collection of demographic data, email
opt-ins and a variety of other customer interactions.
Sponsorships
Methods of online advertising which seek to align the
advertiser more closely with the publisher’s website in
order to establish a deeper association with the user.
When applied to display ads it typically refers to every
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ad placement on a given page featuring ads from a
single advertiser. It can apply to a single page, an
entire section or minisite. Other common practices
include sponsoring a column, an e-newsletters or
website functionality (for instance, a customizable
events calendar). Sponsors may even “pick up the
cheque” for users, giving them free access to an area
of the site that is fee-based such as an online course
or the premium content portion of an online
magazine.
Advertorial
Advertorial resembles other content on a publisher’s
website, and is often in the format of an article or
review. Rather than applying an objective viewpoint,
its focus is to present and promote the opinions,
products or services of the advertiser. Publications
who accept advertorial usually employ guidelines for
its use, outlining ways to distinguish it from their own

editorial.
Text Links
When employed effectively, text links can be very
useful and have good results. Text links are often
short descriptions of a limited number of words or
characters accompanied by a site link.
Email
Email and e-newsletters can be very effective ways of
advertising to an audience directly. Privacy
legalisation has many requirements about opt-in
policies and there are many best practices guidelines.
Advertising Microsites
A small website of advertising nature contained in a
separate area of the publisher’s main site.



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Online Advertising File Formats

JPG
The compression format designed for photographic
images, the JPEG format is used for ads that are
photography-based. Typically, text and illustrated
non-photo graphics tend to look visually poor in this
format.
GIF
Format created by CompuServe compress file sizes
for delivery on their online service; typically works

best with non-photographic and text heavy ads.
Unlike JPGs, the GIF format supports animation,
which quickly made it the most common graphics
format for online ads.
Macromedia Flash
Flash has become commonplace but is still more
complicated than simple GIFs and JPGs and has
special requirements when used in online
advertisements. Macromedia’s vector animation
based program allows for more complex animations
within file size constraints, but requires a browser
plug-in. Macromedia claims that 97.6% of internet
users possess the ability to display Flash*, but best
practices dictate that all Flash ads are accompanied
with a substitute GIF or JPG version that will display
for browsers which don’t. Flash is capable of
delivering of animation, streaming video and audio
and provides for programming of complex
interactivity.
* NPD Online survey, conducted June 2005. See
more info at



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Rich Media
Rich media is an umbrella term used to describe the
use of web technologies such as Macromedia Flash,
Java applets and DHTML to create online display ads

that feature advanced functionality including
interactivity, animation, and streaming audio and
video. An estimated 97% of all Rich media is Flash
based. Flash alone can create online ads or may
paired with technologies such as Eyeblaster,
PointRoll and DoubleClick Motif for additional
advertising functionality (mainly tracking based).
Nielsen//NetRatings reported that rich media
accounted for 35% of all ad impressions in December
2004.* These ads may utilize standard advertising
spots or take a “beyond the banner” approach, such
as a leader board that expands when clicked to
display more information.
* “The Decade in Online Advertising, 1994 – 2004”.
DoubleClick. Page 10.
Eyeblaster, PointRoll, Motif and TangoZebra
Eyeblaster, PointRoll and Motif are all proprietary
platforms for use with Flash that provide additional
advertising functionality. Features include ads
appearing layered over web content and reporting on
how users interact with the ad. Proprietary ad servers
are required for delivery of some of these formats.
This in turn will restrict the number of publishers who
offer them.
Proprietary Rich Media Ad Serving
Some rich media requires that publisher’s subscribe
to additional format-specific ad serving solutions in
order to enable these ads to run on their sites. This
list includes DoubleClick Motif, AtlasDMT, Falk
AdSolutions|fx, Eyeblaster's AdVision, and

EyeWonder's AdWonder. As these services can be
quite costly, the number supported by a publisher
may be restricted and will not be cost-effective for
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smaller publishers who do not have the demand from
their advertising client base.
Online Display Advertising
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), created in
1996, established standards in internet advertising. In
the early days, sites would frequently use unique ad
sizes of their own invention. This posed obvious
problems: Especially for advertisers who would need
to create a different ad for every site on which they
advertised. With the introduction of the standard units
(designated IMUs – Interactive Marketing Units
although usually referred to simply as “ad units”) the
chaos has mostly subsided and almost all sites
adhere to IAB standard sizes. Here is a list of the
sizes that appear most frequently on websites:
•
Banner: 468 x 60
•
Half-Banner: 234 x 60
•
Square Button: 125 x 125
•
Leader Board: 760 x 90
•
Wide Skyscraper: 160 x 600

•
Skyscraper: 120 x 600
•
Rectangle: 180 x 150
•
Medium Rectangle: 300 x 250
•
Large Rectangle: 336 x 280
•
Half-Page Ad: 300 x 600
Many smaller ad sizes (such as the 88 x 31 "button"
and the 234 x 60 "half-banner") used to be very
common and several sites do still use them. The IAB
features the complete list of standardized sizes at

"I'll Take 2 Super Banners and a Big Box." Say
What?
While the IAB has been very successful at
standardizing ad sizes, its success has been less-so
regarding the names that applied to them. You will
hear several variations. Here are the most common:
Leader board (728 x 90): super banner
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Skyscraper (160 x 600 or 120 x 600): tower ad
Rectangle (180 x 150): small box, box
Medium rectangle (300 x 250): big box, large box
It seems that even sites that employ the standard
units have insisted on "branding" them with their own
names. The easiest way to know what size you are

discussing is to use the pixel dimensions.
Universal Advertising Package
In 2003, the IAB chose the leader board, medium
rectangle, wide skyscraper and rectangle and termed
this combination the “Universal Ad Package” (UAP).
The goal of the package is for all publishers to adopt
it as the standard in ad unit offerings. The advantages
include giving advertisers a way to choose sizes that
will be supported on every site, giving publishers a
way to design their sites with these ad sizes in mind,
and designers will know the most appropriate
solutions for each type. Users also benefit because
adoption of these larger formats has resulted in less
page-clutter by several small-sized ads replaced by
one or two larger ones.

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CHAPTER 3
How Online Advertising Works
The ad server delivers online advertising campaigns
successfully by distributing ad impressions across the
publisher's website. The ad server must keep track of
multiple campaigns and their prescribed delivery
requirements. How can it know how many people are
going to be visiting the site in the future? It is actually
an assumption based on data recorded over previous
months. An ad server must accurately calculate traffic
patterns to ensure that allotted ad impressions meet
delivery requirements by the campaign end.
When it is delivering the campaign, the ad server
must track a lot of information. Variables include how
many days are left in the campaign, the number of
remaining impressions, the maximum number of
times an ad can be served to a user and much more.
Who Is Involved In Ad Serving?
Ad serving operations do not occur in a vacuum and
they can affect many different people throughout the
publisher's company. Whom exactly they affect will
depend on the organization and will vary from
publisher to publisher. It will also vary largely on the
functionality provided by the ad serving solution. For
instance, the ad server may provide billing
functionality that your Accounts Payable department
will be using.

Ad Serving Choices
Ad servers come and go, although there are a few
who have been around for the long haul: both
DoubleClick's DART and 24/7 RealMedia's
OpenAdStream are currently the industry standard
heavyweights. However, both carry significant
expense and may not be an option for smaller
publishers.
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Other long-term ad serving solutions do cater to
smaller publishers such as Thruport's AdJuggler, but
be aware of limitations on functionality. For instance,
Ad Juggler divides your booked inventory so that it
knows how many ads will require serving on a given
day. From there it assigns a quota of paying ads to
each hour. The problem occurs when AdJuggler
serves all of your paying impressions beginning at the
top of each hour, rather than distributing inventory
evenly. If your inventory is only partially booked your
site will display all of your paying advertisements for
the first part of the hour, and once the quota runs out
you'll be stuck serving public service announcements
and house ads until the turn of the hour. If this
problem is now fixed please let me know.
Furthermore, there is the option of running your own
ad server in-house. Options and costs vary;
generally, the higher priced options will provide you
with more functionality. If all you require is bare-
bones ad serving there are even free scripts

available. However, if you wish to court larger
advertisers you may find that using a third party
service gives advertisers a level of confidence that an
impartial company handles the ad serving.
Ad serving is an evolving industry and your options
will always be changing. A good place to begin is to
look at the websites of your competition and
compatriots and identify which ad serving solutions
they are using. You can usually recognize the ad
server used by a site by mousing-over one of their
ads and noting the path in the status bar of your web
browser.





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Chapter 4
How to choose and Adsever.

Making a Choice
In order to effectively choose an ad serving solution
that will work for everyone involved, it's a good idea to
form a committee and involve everyone in the
decision making process.
The overall objectives of this team are:

To choose which ad server to use


Divide the site into advertising sections

Choose which ad sizes to offer

Decide on optimal ad placement within site
page templates
The OAC will have different members at different
points in the process, depending on requirements.
The size of the committee will be largely dependent
on how many people are in your company. However,
general roles should remain the same whether your
committee contains one or ten members – smaller
committees just mean that members will be "wearing
more hats".
The OAC breaks down into the following core roles:
The Project Manager: the committee head who is
ultimately responsible for the successful select and
implementation of an ad serving solution.
The Sales Lead: this person is the sales expert and
fully informed on the needs of the advertising clients –
as well as what the sales team will need to effectively
sell.
The Technical Lead: this person should be intimately
familiar with the workings of the website and is most
likely the Webmaster.
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The Design Lead: this person is accountable for
maintaining the standards of the website's design.

The Usability Lead: the person who ensures that the
site is usable and useful and that the keeping the
needs of site visitors in mind during online ad
integration.
The Ad Trafficker: this person will be responsible for
booking and management of the online campaigns.
Your team may involve more people, depending on
the structure of the company, the nature of your site
and the functionality provided by the ad server.
For instance, if you want to ensure that you can tap
into your database of user registrations with your ad
software to serve targeted advertising, you may want
to include your Systems Administrator during the
process of evaluating ad servers. Alternatively, your
committee's Sales Lead may be your Advertising
Director, but you want should also involve the
appointed dedicated Online Advertising Rep.
In other words, the composition of your committee will
be largely dependent on the specifics of your
operations.
Project Manager's Initial Steps
The project manager is the person whose ultimate
responsibility is choosing and implementing an ad
server solution. Someone dedicated to the project
who has the responsibility to become as informed as
possible regarding the myriad considerations
involved. This perspective allows the project manager
to best identify other people from the organization
who should be involved in decision-making process.
The project manager's key objective is to keep things

on track from start to finish.


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Researching Your Ad Serving Options
In your search for an ad server, your first task will be
to identify the choices. Take some time to research
vendor websites, noting desired functionality. Create
a list of pros and cons and then create a list of ad
servers that look like potential options. Identify and
contact a few of the sites that are using the
technology and ask for their honest opinions about its
benefits and shortcomings. Note how quickly ads
deliver to the site and if there appear to be any
problems with lag times or if the ad serving is
influencing the site load.
Call up a sales rep from each company on your list to
obtain additional information such as pricing. Pricing
is often determined by site traffic levels and subject to
negotiation; as many factors affect pricing it is often
not available on the vendor website and you will have
to call to get a quote. You will need to know your site
traffic levels, including page impressions and unique
visitors and your projected number of ad impressions
would also be beneficial (even if you're only
estimating based on your page impressions and the
average number of ads you will feature per page). If a
solution is still within your budget, schedule a walk-
through. Keep your list of pros and cons handy,

making any changes where necessary.
If you do not know the number of ad impressions that
you have, then it is suggested that you do the
following.
a) Take the number of page impressions and reduce
by 30%.
b) Multiply the number of remaining page
impressions by the number of ads that will be
appearing on each page. If in doubt here, simply
multilply by 3.5.
This process should allow you to narrow down your
choices to two or three top options: your shortlist.

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Choosing an Ad Server
At this point, you will want to include the other project
stakeholders: those who will be involved or impacted
by the online advertising operations - especially those
who will be relying on the software, directly or
indirectly.
OAC Members and Contributions
Identify members and assign roles within the
committee. The project manager may wish to meet
with members individually or communicate via email.
Outline why that person's participation is required and
what commitments and contributions are going to be
necessary.
Sales Lead
The person in this role must identify the needs of

advertisers with regards to the ad serving solution to
ensure that the chosen product meets these
requirements. If the sales team will be using the ad
serving solution, the Sales Lead will also be required
to examine interfaces for suitability from this
perspective.
Technical Lead
The person acting as technical lead is an authority on
the website's technology and processes. This person
provides required technical expertise during the
evaluation process and ensures that the chosen
solution will be compatible with existing systems.
Ad Trafficker
The Ad Trafficker will be the person using the
software most frequently and intimately. His/her
objective will be to assist in choosing a solution that
will promote efficient and effective ad trafficking.
In addition to the roles outlined above (including the
Project Manager), your organization may have other
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roles that require representation at the meeting. Think
carefully about the structure of your organization and
the relationship that different departments have to the
website operations. Consult with other members of
your company to arrive at a consensus of which
interests require representation, who to enlist, and at
when particular people should be involved in the
process.
Project Manager: Preparing For the Committee

Meeting
Assist those members who may be unfamiliar with the
basics of online advertising and terminology by
providing reference materials. By understanding the
fundamental concepts of online advertising,
committee members will be much more effective in
their roles at the meeting.
A few days before the meeting, send all invitees an
email with a brief description of each of the solutions
on the shortlist and links to the corresponding
websites. This will allow members to prepare in
advance.
Arranging Walk-Through Presentations
The focus of the meeting will be walk-through
presentations of each of the ad serving solutions on
your shortlist, followed Q&A with the vendor
representative and internal discussion of each
product.
When scheduling the product walk-through portions
with each vendor inform the representative of the
nature of the meeting: who will be attending, the
length of time allotted for the presentation and specify
particular functionality that you would like the rep to
highlight (or skip if it does not apply to your
company).
Most likely, these presentations will be conference
calls but may be in-person visit from the vendor
representatives. Ensure that everything is set-up
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ahead of time, preferably half an hour in advance. If
you are using a projector, make sure that it is
operating properly (and tweak the settings so that the
sites on the screen will be clearly visible). Obtain
demo site logins and make certain that they are
active so that you can iron out any bugs with the
vendor reps before the rest of the attendees arrive.

The Meeting Agenda
Your meeting agenda will most likely look something
like this:
Review Advertising 101: 15 minutes (if necessary)
Ad serving solution A
Walk-through presentation by rep from Company A:
25 minutes
Question and Answer period: 10 minutes
Repeat step 2 for solutions B & C
General discussion of A vs. B vs. C
Pros and cons for sales
Pros and cons for tech
Pros and cons for trafficking
Pros and cons for project manager Etc.
Compile a list of questions for follow-up with
Company A, B and C.
Depending on the complexity of your ad serving
needs and the number of vendors on your shortlist,
you may require one or more meetings before making
a choice.
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Once you have selected an ad server that fulfils the
requirements of your organization, everyone on your
team should be well versed in all of its capabilities,
functionality and limitations. You should already have
ideas about how you can put it to use. It is time to
begin preparing your site to utilize the new ad serving
solution.

Inventory Categories
Your site most likely features various sections: About
Us, News, Reviews, etc, but these divisions of
content may not be directly translatable to advertising
sales. A completely different approach for assigning
pages to advertising categories will be required than
the method originally used to establish the site
breakdown for content.
You will need to factor in your potential advertising
clientele's requirements, your site traffic patterns and
the topics of your content. These factors will largely
dictate how to create ad inventory categories. Ideally,
the result should be maximum flexibility for
deployment of advertising campaigns.
This is a critical stage in making the most of your
chosen ad serving solution. It is time for another
committee meeting. This meeting should include
representatives of the web and sales department to
represent the both the technical and sales
perspectives. Crucial attendees include the Project
Manager, the Sales Lead and Tech Lead.
To get the best results from this meeting it will help to

be prepared with information from the participating
departments.



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Sales
Benchmark what inventory categories competitor
sites are using (if you have no competition, look at
sites similar to your own). Obtain media kits and rate
cards.
Research and anticipate potential advertisers'
requirements: advertiser target audience, industry
type, specific site content that is especially sellable,
etc.
Demographic information about site visitors and the
pages or areas frequented by specific demographic
groups, especially if there are large differences. To
obtain this information from your audience use
surveys focus groups. You may wish to do this in
house or to outsource it to a company who can
provide audited results.
If created internally the survey will be a joint effort
between the sales and web departments. Sales can
design the survey questions with feedback from the
web team who will in-turn deploy it on the site. Short
surveys are more likely to receive responses, so if
you have too many questions you may want to divide
them into several surveys. Leave ample time to

gather responses prior to the meeting: the more
surveys you collect, the more meaningful the
information will be.

Web
In-depth site statistics of traffic patterns from server
log reports.
The committee should address questions similar to
the following:
Do particular areas of your site interest a specific
audience or relate to a particular topic? In online
advertising terms, your goal is to break the site down
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into inventory categories targeted towards distinct
groups of people who advertisers are trying to reach
based on demographics, psychographics and
behaviours. Examples include professional women
(demographic targeting), technophiles (psychographic
targeting) and prospective buyers of a new car
(behavioural targeting). Some inventory categories
are more sought after by advertisers than others. The
premium inventory categories are auto, technology
and business. Other big ones are travel and health.
Keep this in mind when creating your category list.
Do any areas see significantly different traffic patterns
than others? For example, you may have several
pages that do not fit into a specific content category
but together they account for a significant inventory:
you may wish to define these pages as an inventory

category and offer them at a reduced CPM to make
the inventory more desirable to advertisers. Another
example is to create an inventory category made up
of the leading pages (first pages) of your site
sections. Likewise, you may wish to group your
highest traffic pages.
Are there any areas of our site that should be
completely separate site pools? For instance, an
adult area should be a completely separate
advertising site (from the ad server's perspective) so
that adult ads do not accidentally display in
inappropriate places.
Do you have content that only runs for a limited time
during the year? It may be a popular poll, film festival,
holiday issue, etc. Special sections or minisites may
merit higher CPMs or unique advertising
opportunities. Keep in mind that you can create new
inventory categories as required and insert them into
new templates.



22

Choosing Ad Sizes and Placements
Once you have decided on sections, the next step for
the web and advertising committee will be to choose
ad sizes to feature. At this point, the committee's
focus will broaden. Inserting new ad placements into
existing site templates requires maintaining design

standards and addressing of usability issues.
Consistently using suitable numbers of ad
placements in appropriate spaces in a given template
will avoid disrupting site design and the user
experience. If there are people in the organization
responsible for site Usability and Design standards,
those individuals should be involved in these
decisions. If not, create the role and appoint a
qualified individual.














23

Chapter 5:
Ad Trafficking and Management:
Process and Procedures

Organization is of key importance for the ad trafficker,

who will be working with several campaigns
simultaneously, as well as keeping an eye out for
future campaigns. He/she may be working with
several different sales reps. The Ad Trafficker may
also have to work directly with clients as a technical
contact, answering any questions regarding the
specifics of the ad.
The Insertion Order
The best way to stay organized and avoid
miscommunication between Ad Reps and Ad
Traffickers is to use the Insertion Order. This is the
purchase order form provided to the advertiser client
and contains all
information
necessary for
booking an ad
campaign into the ad
server. See Figure 1:
Sample Insertion
Order.


Figure 1: Sample
Insertion Order

Added Value
"Added value"
is a sales incentive,
usually based on the
total value of the ad

spend. Keeping this
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amount as a dollar figure allows the Ad Trafficker flexibility in
determining which campaign ads units and placements to
use. For instance: if a campaign has booked both
skyscrapers and rectangles and there are several other
advertisers running skyscrapers the Ad Trafficker may
choose to allocate the added value impressions all towards
rectangles. By keeping the figure in dollar form, the Ad
Trafficker can easily allocate these impressions, even if
skyscrapers and rectangles are priced at different CPMs.
Added value ads are typically trafficked with the same
parameters (inventory categories, frequency caps, geo-
targeting, etc) and requirements as their paid counterparts.

Booking ads into the server
The procedure for trafficking an ad is fairly straight-forward:
upload the ads to the ad server. Each campaign will have
myriad settings that can be adjusted and all details should be
specified on the insertion order. Most campaigns function in
this manner. Occasionally, in cases where an ad agency is
involved, that firm may desire to run the creative through a
third party ad server.
Ad Testing
All rich media advertising creative requires advance
submission to the Ad Trafficker to allow ample time for
testing on the publisher's site. Usually the time specified is a
week in advance of campaign launch. This provides time for
placement of the ad into test pages to verify that everything

is in working order.
When testing check in all four of the major browsers: Firefox,
Internet Explorer, Netscape and Opera on PC, check
Netscape and Safari on Mac and check Konqueror on Linux.
Check the ad with multiple versions of those browsers.
Checking multiple versions of the browsers can also be
beneficial. Your server logs will provide "user agent" data
informing you of exactly which browsers your site visitors are
using. Use this information to ensure that you are testing with
the browsers that your audience use.
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Obvious things to look for include page content appearing
incorrectly but also look for not-as-obvious signs of problems
such as lag. Your office may not be the best place to test for
this: test at home, if you have high-speed also see what it's
like on dial-up (most packages include a number of free dial-
up hours anyway - might as well take advantage of it!).
Flash ads must also contain clickTAGs: code that allows the
ad tracking of click throughs. Macromedia's Ad Serving
Guide contains more information. See:
/>serving_guide/