OpenX Blog

Erik Geurts is one of the most prolific of the OpenX consultants, and has written the first in a series of posts: How to sell advertising in an economic downturn.

I look forward to the other segments!

A common question brought up on the OpenX forum is how to properly track clicks for a Flash banner. We have a tutorial called Using Flash with OpenX which does cover this, but I thought it would be useful to share a quick overview here.

Here are the key points:

• There is a standard for creating Flash banners which can be click tracked. Your Flash banner should use a variable called ‘clickTAG’ described by Adobe in their Flash help document — send this to anyone who creates Flash banners for you.
• The clickTAG variable is case sensitive in new versions of Flash. OpenX does try to rewrite any banners it detects using a variable with different case, but the proper case should be used whenever possible. Remember: clickTAG is good; cLiCkTaG just looks funny.
• If you have a banner which has what we call a ‘hard coded URL’ - then do not fear! A ‘hard coded URL’ means that the banner was coded to go directly to a URL like http://www.openx.org, instead of using the clickTAG variable. OpenX will attempt to rewrite the SWF file so that it instead uses clickTAG. However, keep in mind that having OpenX open your Flash banner and rewrite the code is not a preferable method. It will be a while before machines replace us in the workplace, so for now it is best to use the human method of replacing the URL with clickTAG whenever possible (human method being: use a computer to load a software which loads the Flash banner and lets you type a few characters in order to replace the URL with clickTAG… at least you get to move your fingers a little!).

If you have a Flash banner which isn’t tracking clicks, the first thing to do would be to determine which method (clickTAG or hard-coded) it is using. If you’re not able to communicate with the creator, there are programmes which will let you view the SWF file’s code (explained in tutorial above).

See the full tutorial here: Using Flash with OpenX

I can’t resist… the impulse is too strong… I click on banners which advertise movies featuring caped crusaders and fast cars. I know this because it’s in my nature, but how do you, the publisher, decide that you should show me ads about action movies rather than financial services?

You could try channelling the essence of Arlen but it’s not easy. Firstly you’ll have to buy a slick fannie pack. Then get some sweet Canadian rock tunes playing repeatedly in your head. And third… well actually that’s pretty much it, I don’t lead a complicated life.

But if you are without Canadian rock or fannie packs have no fear, banner targeting is here!

Luckily for you I am a registered member of your website and have provided you with a steady stream of useful information: age, gender, location, interests, address, marital status, # of children, favorite brand of maple syrup, and the like.

We have covered in other areas of documentation and tutorials different methods of targeting banners. Right now I’d like to go over the site variable method which is new in version 2.6. It is very similar to the source targeting option however it is much more versatile as you are able to define your own variable names and use as many as you like.

As the source targeting guide is very well written by community consultant Erik Geurts, I would highly suggest reading it first. The difference here is that on the delivery limitations page of a banner you will want to use the site->variable option rather than site->source.

Once you have chosen this option, you will want to provide a variable name and a value for this variable. Let’s use ‘gender’ as the variable name and ‘male’ as the value, and leave the equation option as ‘is equal to’.

Now the banner (or channel) which you assigned this limitation to will only display when the invocation tag tells OpenX that the ‘gender’ variable equals ‘male’. After you have placed an invocation tag on your website you will need to add some coding which adds a name of a variable to the tag and the value of said variable. This will require some coding knowledge and will change depending on how your site is built. I will give an example using basic PHP using a JavaScript invocation tag from OpenX.

I won’t post the whole JavaScript tag, but in the middle you will see lines similar to:
document.write ("<scr"+"ipt type='text/javascript' src='"+m3_u);
document.write ("?zoneid=5");
document.write ('&amp;cb=' + m3_r);
What you want is a line after the zoneid which adds a variable and value, like:
document.write ("<scr"+"ipt type='text/javascript' src='"+m3_u);
document.write ("?zoneid=5");
document.write (’&amp;gender=<?php echo $user['gender']; ?>’);
document.write (’&amp;cb=’ + m3_r);

What this will look like when rendered by the website would be ‘ajs.php?zoneid=5&gender=male’. The actual code will of course change depending on your website and how you store user data.

This is just the tip of the melting iceberg, but hopefully it helps many of you get started with this new feature. We will be adding an advanced tutorial which shows in more depth how to use the feature and how to append variables and values to different invocation tags. Basically - you want to add the variable after the main delivery file name. So for iframe it would be ‘afr.php?zoneid=5&gender=male’. Single page call would have ’spcjs.php?id=1&gender=male’.

So now that you know the user is male, you can focus on banners with subjects males most likely are interested in (like football and football - by the way geotargeting is also useful). Sure I once clicked on a banner for High School the Musical but that is an exception, not the rule (but it does exceptionally rule!).

As an example of how far this targeting can go, let’s say you add ‘favoriteFood’, ‘favoriteBand’, and ‘favoriteActionHero’ to the invocation tag - when I view a page, I might see a banner something like this. Definite click!

It’d be great if you can provide examples of how to code such basic additions to the invocation tag using your favorite programming language, CMS or templating system. Five stars and a smiley emoticon go to whomever points out a way to automatically grab page meta keywords, page title, and other such keywords and auto-add them to an invocation tag for a method of content-relative targeting.

Search advertising is very mature - there is a well structured data model for advertisers to use. Interestingly, display advertising still does not have a structured model for using the data exposed from websites - it is still a largely fragmented market. This needs to change in order for websites - especially small and medium sized websites - to make more money from online advertising.

When an advertiser buys ads based on no data (e.g. ‘blind’), this means that the advertiser has no clue of the following things:

• What time of day (or how evenly distributed) the impressions will occur
• Which websites will display the ads
• What types of users will be viewing the ads

If data is provided to the advertiser, (e.g. the ads will display during the day on Digg for tech focused males), the price advertisers pay can increase up to 10x or more for the same ads.

That is a big price difference!

The more data transparency that advertisers have about the site, users, and timeframe, the less risk they associate with the purchase, and therefore the price advertisers are willing to pay increases. In addition, organizing data into simple straightforward structures that advertisers understand will again increase revenues.

The process of exposing and organizing website data is called ‘expression’. There are a number of types of expression that can be done by website publishers:

Content Expression
There are a number of parameters that can be exposed about website content. For example, letting advertisers know the URL of the page gives amazing insight into the type of user and their frame of mind when viewing advertising. Furthermore, packaging a website in terms of category, keyword, expertise level, etc., will give advertisers a strong sense of what types of users they are reaching.

Demographic Expression
Demographic expression refers to attributes about the user viewing the website. The easiest data to gather is the country, city, time zone, etc., where the user is located (OpenX uses geo plugins to provide this information). If a website stores other demographic information about users, such as age and income bracket, gender, etc., this is also extremely useful to advertisers.

Behavior Expression
By ‘remembering’ the way users behaved in the past, valuable insight can be provided to advertisers. For example, if a user looked at a VW Jetta the last time she was at an automobile site, this information can be valuably shared with an auto advertiser on the next visit - even when the viewer is browsing other, less lucrative pages on the site. In addition, a user’s behavior on multiple sites can be stored - providing even more value to advertisers.

Beyond the expression of site data, there are a few things that a website must also consider:

Privacy
It is very important to be completely straightforward with website users about how their information is used. This includes providing a simple, easy to read privacy policy that details what information is provided to advertisers, and in what form (non-personally identifiable information, aggregate information, etc.)

Organization
One of the most important considerations before undergoing site expression is how expression is organized. Some large websites (like the Comscore 100) can get away with expressing their site however they wish - because there is so much inventory, advertisers will take the time to understand unique attributes of the site. Small or medium sized websites do not have that luxury.

How Can OpenX Help?

• Introduce Standards - making similar ways of expressing inventory for all websites will make it easier for agencies to buy inventory at higher CPM’s.
• Data Services - by allowing publishers to pass user data to advertisers (if they wish), advertisers will know more about the people viewing the website, thus making the website more attractive to advertisers.
• CMS Integration - OpenX is working on integrating inside content management systems and blogs in a seamless way, so that inventory and data can be expressed by default.

These services will be a first step in our mission of increasing transparency and getting an increased, fair market value for advertising in the OpenX publisher community.