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Targeting ads using the source parameter by Erik Geurts |
I’m pleased to introduce long time community member Erik Geurts and his first contribution to the OpenX (previously Openads) blog. Erik has prepared a detailed how-to about implementing targeting using source parameters in OpenX. This follows on nicely from another guest blog article, Effective ad management using OpenX by Tobias Schwarz.
The more you know about your readers the more likely you’ll be able to choose an ad that will pique their interest and trigger their clicking finger. If you can do this you can increase your online advertising revenue. The challenge is working out how to identify which reader is which in a way that’s reliable and easy to manage – OpenX is designed to help web publishers do this.
If you are able to effectively segment and target your audience you will benefit in two ways. Firstly, users are more likely to click on ads so click-through-rates will go up. Secondly, you’ll be able to command higher advertising rates for your targeted ad space.
One common and effective way to do this in OpenX is using source parameter targeting. Using source parameter targeting you can segment and target ads based on user data or the section of the website that a viewer is browsing.
Two common examples are:
- Websites, like Amazon, that are divided into sections which attract different readers.
- Websites, like Flickr and Facebook, where user profile data can be used for targeting ads.
In this detailed tutorial, Erik Geurts presents a way to use OpenX to implement source parameter targeting in a way which makes managing targeting easy and reliable.
Erik is a key forum moderator and active OpenX consultant. We are delighted to have his contribution on the OpenX blog. Thanks Erik, keep them coming!
To everyone else in the OpenX Community, we’d love your contributions too. Please get in touch and send us your contributions, ideas or suggestions.
[...] Openads Blog » How to implement easy and effective ad targeting using Openads Erik has prepared a detailed how-to about implementing targeting using source parameters in Openads. (tags: openads targeting users advertising best-practices howto) [...]
Pingback by Federico Feroldi’s blog » Blog Archive » links for 2007-11-14 — November 14, 2007 @ 8:25 pm
Will Open Source AD Networks Have Clout?…
If you want to get familiar with the project, their blog is a good place to start. Once familiar with the concept, may be this tutorial, “targeting Ads using source parameter” announced on this blog post; How to implement easy and effective ad target…
Trackback by MyAdlets — November 15, 2007 @ 4:42 am
Very useful, thank you.
I’m currently running hundreds of zones, representing different sections and the different banner sizes/positions within. This will save no end of work.
Comment by Tim — November 15, 2007 @ 11:19 pm
A follow up question on this paper, plus my reply to it, was posted on the forum recently.
http://forum.openads.org/index.php?showtopic=503417516&hl=
Comment by Erik Geurts — February 6, 2008 @ 7:26 am
Hello,
Erik, thank you for the paper it is very useful.
I have a question concerning this:
“”Websites, like Flickr and Facebook, where user profile data can be used for targeting ads.”"”"”
Why you can do this in Openads? I’ve been reading the paper but for me it’s not clear at all, sorry…
I would like to display banners basing on the user’s profile that is visiting my site. Obviusly, the user has been logged before.
Another question is if in a site where you can have at the same time users logged and not logged, you can display different things to them.
Thank you in advance.
Comment by Carlos — February 7, 2008 @ 9:16 am
no comment
Comment by sangam — March 29, 2008 @ 2:11 pm
I find the source parameter a very inefective way for profile/demografic targeting, like facebook for example.
I would need to create a source for every single combination that could posible exist.
some examples
– male-married
– male-single_age:20-30
– male-single_age:20-30_city:Toronto
– male-single_age:20-30_city:Toronto_studies:university
etc…
I found banmanpro
http://www.banmanpro.com/support2/Demographic_profile_targeting.asp
but the problem with that is that is for windows, not linux.
Comment by Marcelo — April 3, 2008 @ 1:43 pm
Hi Marcelo
We’ve added a new variable targeting feature to the 2.5 beta release.
I think you’ll find this useful:
http://www.openx.org/beta
cheers, Oliver
Comment by Oliver George — April 5, 2008 @ 10:03 am
the link to the pdf is broken
Comment by joe — May 27, 2008 @ 11:34 pm
link worked ok for me if i right click and save as, not try to view in browser with plugin
Comment by Kieran — June 3, 2008 @ 8:05 am
Thanks Kieran, that was a temporary glitch due to an upgrade.
Comment by Oliver George — June 3, 2008 @ 8:22 am
I’m so glad I found this solution for my social network. Once I figure out the geo-gender ad targeting via source parameter, its on like Donkey Kong! lol
Like facebook, I want advertisers to create advertiser accounts via the RevMax plugin for OpenAds. That will be perfect..: )
Comment by caribbean social network — August 10, 2008 @ 6:41 am
Is it possible to list multiple sources in the Single Page Call Header Block as an OR statement:
<!–// –>
I’ve tried:
family OR insurance
family,insurance
family|insurance
and none of them work.
Comment by Steve Bruner — November 20, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
Hi Steve,
This would be setup in the targeting rule you set up on the ad, your rule would say only show this ad when: “Site:Source contains family” OR “Site:Source contains insurance”
When you add a second (or more) targeting rule you can choose to either “AND” or “OR” the rules together.
Comment by Chris Nutting — November 21, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
suppose we have two channels like sports and family. I have associated a banner with these two channels. from xmlrpc api I have to make a call to this ad. how would I go about it?
making call for one channel variable is not a problem but for multiple it is not working.
sample call I have used is:
$ad = $oaXmlRpc->view(”, 0, ”,’$source = \’lifestyle\’ AND $source = \’cricket\”, 0, $OA_context, ‘UTF-8′)
even tried other combinations too.
Comment by vinod — December 16, 2008 @ 8:51 am
Hi Vinod,
First, don’t confuse channels and source – they are different. You don’t need to call the channel name. For example, a Channel may only have the targeting rule ‘display when pageURL contains the word sports’ – therefor nothing needs to be added to the invocation tag for that channel to be used.
For your example, though, what you would want is for both channels to use “display when site->source CONTAINS cricket” and another one for “when source CONTAINS lifestyle”. Don’t use ‘is equal to’.
Then, you would use:
$ad = $oaXmlRpc->view(”, 0, ”, ‘lifestyle cricket’, 0, $OA_context, ‘UTF-8′);
Hope this helps,
Arlen Coupland
Comment by Arlen Coupland — December 16, 2008 @ 9:18 am
Newby to OpenX… Does this program offer geo-targeting to Country / City / zipcodes..?
Comment by jim phillips — March 10, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
Jim: Thanks for the message. Geotargeting is supported out of the box.
Comment by Scott Switzer — March 10, 2009 @ 6:18 pm
I read your blog for quite a long time and must tell that your posts are always valuable to readers.
Comment by Ted Burrett — April 24, 2009 @ 11:07 am
[...] and 10,000 120×60 skyscraper impressions per month. [↩]In this case, you might use source parameter targeting to ensure that the campaign’s banners are shown in the “shoe” section of your [...]
Pingback by Tip #9: Understand campaign types « OpenX Tips — April 27, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
How would I target ads for advertisers located in a given region of the US for pages of my site that have content referring to topics located in those regions. For instance, displaying ads for restaurants located in Michigan on a page with an article about Michigan (being viewed by someone in Georgia)?
Thanks,
bbtouring
Comment by bbtouring — May 20, 2009 @ 3:19 am
[...] OpenX Blog » How to implement easy and effective ad targeting using OpenX (tags: ads advertising marketing openx feed) [...]
Pingback by links for 2009-05-20 « On New Media — May 20, 2009 @ 8:07 am
Does anyone know how OR and AND parameters are grouped? I to set up a targeting channel that works like this, which would be easy if I coded it but I can’t seem to get the targeting via OpenX:
show an ad…
… on all pages that have A or B or C or D in the URL — this is to assure the ad is on pages where it is required.
… and on all other pages — where the ad is acceptable but not required.
….unless a page has Z in the URL — because there are a few pages that should NEVER have the ad
All of this is easy to accomplish by OpenX scanning the URL text, so I’m specifying each as “contains” or “does not contain”.
BUT, the the “unless” requirement to not show on some pages doesn’t work. I’ve tried to put this parameter as the first or last, and tried with AND and OR, but I can not find a way to exclude the ad from certain pages based on the URL (the only level of control I have). It’s like I need to put all the OR parameters together in parentheses, AND the exclude parameter, so it is handled at the same level as the entire group of ORs, but I don’t see how to do this.
Comment by John — June 1, 2009 @ 2:46 am
Hello, I’ve modified Openads, a popular Drupal module for OpenX, so that a taxonomy vocabulary can be used for channel targeting via source parameter:
http://www.megadix.it/node/133
Comment by Dimitri De Franciscis — June 17, 2009 @ 4:44 pm
drop by. nice blog.
Comment by Kate — July 23, 2009 @ 6:40 am
Thanks, this article and the attached PDF have been quite helpful.
In my humble opinion, this should be mentioned in the OpenAds quickstart method. All that information about adding Campaigns, Targeting Channels etc is a little too abstract for the people who are just getting started.
Comment by fsckr — September 20, 2009 @ 6:02 pm
Hello,
I face one problem with openx-2.8.4.while i am creating new Advertiser in default manager by using useracces -> Action->adduser here the adduser is not working.
And one more i am working with ubuntu…..
please help any one
Comment by shafijohn — February 5, 2010 @ 1:12 pm
Hello,
I face one problem with openx-2.8.4.while i am creating new Advertiser in default manager by using useracces -> Action->adduser here the adduser is not working.
And one more i am working with ubuntu…..
please help any one………
Comment by vijay — February 6, 2010 @ 5:16 am
Hello,
We send every week a newsletter with ten email zones included without any problem.
Then, we wanted to make an archive of those newsletters, but the problem that we found was that every time that we assign a new banner in an specific zone for a new email, we lost the last one used in that zone.
We tried to set the campaing starting the same day that we send the newsletter and set the finishing date to 2050. Then we use the source parameter for banner delivery targeting, defining that source parameter from our database installed in the same server where we host the openx.
But it hasn´t worked, so we cannot make an archive of our past newsletters.
¿Can you give us an idea about how can we make this?
Thanks
regards
Comment by Facundo — March 8, 2010 @ 2:02 pm
I am trying to put up an ad banner adding a limitation of automotive/boat. When I put this in the ad does not show for automotive/boat. Do I need to replace the / character with something else?
Thank you
Comment by Helen Brunk — April 24, 2010 @ 3:31 am