Stats for your website advertisements are available within the same plugin we use to create the ads: AdRotate Pro.

Find AdRotate Pro on your Dashboard. You’ll find that there is a Statistics link listed as a sub-menu item, but this page is more of a site overview. To find statistics for a specific advertisement, you’ll want to navigate to the Manage Adverts page.

Here, you’ll see all of your current advertisements listed, as well as some recently expired and inactive advertisements further down the page. Each ad that has stat tracking enabled will display some all-time stats in the far right columns, but will also display a “Stats” link after the title of advertisement. See the image below:

If your advertisement does not have a “Stats” link listed, that means that stat tracking was not enabled when this ad was created. To enable stat tracking, edit the advertisement and mark the Statistics checkbox that reads, “Enable click and impression tracking for this advert.”

Click Stats next to any ad to view stats for that specific ad. Once on the stats page for an advertisement, you can enter a custom date range to view stats for a specific time period. Furthermore, you can Export these stats as a .CSV download or have them e-mailed directly to an advertiser using the Export Options box.

Click here for more info on e-mailing CSV Ad Reports

The post Locating Advertisement Stats first appeared on Our-Hometown.

First, navigate to your “Active Ads” under AdRotate Pro -> Adverts.

Next to the ad’s Name, you’ll see a link titled “Stats” if stat-tracking has been enabled for this ad. Click this link to view the stats for the ad.

Once on the stat page, look to the bottom of the page under the section titled Export Options.

Here, you’ll see options to set a date range to export stats from, and a box to enter a few e-mail addresses to automatically e-mail this report. You can enter up to three e-mail addresses, separated by commas, to receive the CSVreport. If you leave the e-mail box empty, the page will refresh with an option to Download the CSV stats instead.

The post AdRotate – Email CSV Stat Reports first appeared on Our-Hometown.

To create this type of ad, first down this template.  

Follow the instructions in the template to create your ad – there are guidelines in there.

Once you’ve created your ad, upload it in AdRotate.

Then place the ad in the “Takeover Ad” Widget area at the very bottom of the widget areas.  If you followed the template, it will wrap around the site content.

The post Page Takeover Ads first appeared on Our-Hometown.

First, create your ad as you normally would.

Copy the code you see in the “AdCode” box & paste it into a text document so you can make some adjustments to it for use in the newsletter.

Replace %asset% part of the AdCode with the full image link – can usually below in the “Banner Asset” link box, or you can select it from the image information in the media libary.

<a href=”http://newspaperdomain.com/adrotate/click/[adid]/[groupid or 0 if this add is not part of a group]”><img src=”actual full url to img”></a>

Using the newspaper’s domain plus this code will redirect the ad to the correct URL for the ad as setup under AdRotate.

On the URL that the image links to (found where href=” “) between the 2 quotes, add “/adrotate/click/(replace with Image ID)/(replace w/ group ID or 0)”

The image ad ID is the number found next to it on the left on the full list of ads.

The group ID is the number on the left of the list of groups.

Take your updated copy and copy into the newsletter to display your ad.  Your stats will be tracked in AdRotate.

The post AdRotate Tracking For Newsletter Ads first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Setting up your adverts

Setup is easy, but takes a bit of planning. The feature is built to mix in with ‘regular’ adverts so you don’t have weird gaps on any platforms if you don’t want to.

When creating the advert select the appropriate platforms where the advert should show.

To make these checkboxes effective you need to activate mobile support in each group the advert is in where you want to make this distinction. This is again a checkbox in the advanced section, for the group settings.

Of course you should have at least one advert for each platform in the same group, too. Otherwise, gaps may show for users on the other platforms.

Mobile icons

Adverts have little icons in the Manage Adverts menu that indicate if an Advert is meant for Desktop, Phones or Tablets. If the group doesn’t have the mobile filter activated, the advert will show on all devices regardless of your adverts settings.

Geo-Targeting

You can also use Geo-Targeting for your mobile adverts. Keep in mind that the more features you stack onto the advert the chance of the advert not showing for certain visitors increases and you have to plan for those occurrences more.

The post AdRotate – Mobile Ads first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Note: Setting all adverts in a group to a higher or lower weight will defeat the system as all have an equal chance of being shown.

Weight overrides

Note that the weight override is a minimum weight. If you set it to 4 no ads with a lower weight will show for that location.
You can overrule set weights using shortcodes and PHP. This allows you to set all kinds of weights for each ad but set a random minimum level of weight for a certain location.

Using Shortcode

Shortcodes can be used in Posts, Pages and certain widgets.

Examples:

Groups:

Error, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 2)

The post AdRotate – Weighted Ads first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Enable Geolocation

Geo Targeting is not enabled by default. You’ll find a section called Geo Targeting in the AdRotate Pro Settings.

If you also enable advertisers to specify where their adverts will show up. They too can use the City/State and Country fields in their own dashboards.

Supported Geo Lookup services

AdRotate Pro currently supports MaxMind City, MaxMind Country, AdRotateGeo, CloudFlare & FreegeoIP.

MaxMind is a paid service, you’ll buy lookups from them directly. Links for that are in the AdRotate settings. MaxMind is very accurate and lists most IPs in the world.

AdRotate Geo is my own lookup service. This service is included with AdRotate Pro for free and requires a valid license activated on your site to use. AdRotate Geo uses MaxMinds GeoLITE database, which is slightly less accurate and not as complete as their paid offering.

AdRotate Geo – 30000 free lookups every day, uses GeoLite2 databases from MaxMind!
Supports: ipv4/ipv6, Countries, Cities, DMA codes, States and State ISO (3166-2) codes.
Scalability: Suitable for small to medium sized websites.

MaxMind GeoIP2 – The most accurate geo targeting available.
Supports: ipv4/ipv6, Countries, States, State ISO (3166-2) codes, Cities and DMA codes.
Scalability: Suitable for any size website as long as you have lookups.

CloudFlare IP Geolocation – Basic geolocation included in every CloudFlare account.
Supports: ipv4/ipv6, Countries.
Scalability: Suitable for any size website.

FreegeoIP – 15000 free lookups per hour, uses GeoLite2 databases from MaxMind!
Supports: ipv4, Countries, Cities, DMA codes, States and State ISO (3166-2) codes.
Scalability: Suitable for medium sized websites.

Groups

GeoLocation only works for groups. And each applicable group needs geo-targeting enabled.

You’ll see this checkbox in the advanced section of the group settings.  Make sure to check this box & save to enable geo-targeting in any group that you want to contain geo-targeted ads.

Configure Geo-Targeting on Individual Ads

GeoLocation only works for groups. But, the geo-targeting is set at the ad level. Once geo-targeting is turned on in your account, if you want to apply to an ad, go to AdRotate > Adverts, select the ad you want to update. Each ad now has a “Geo Targeting” options box.  In here, you’ll select the country, city, etc, that you want to target.  Set this up for the ads that you want geo-targeting to apply to. Then make those ads part of a group, and place that group wherever you want it to display on your site.

When creating adverts you’ll see a section with the geo targeting options.
In there you can either specify one or many cities or states. For cities you can use the name or Metro ID and for states you can use the state name or it’s ISO code. All names must be in english using the appropriate english version of the name.

Metro IDs are primarily used in the United States. In other countries they may not work or yield different results.

You can also select countries. The cities and states take priority. So your selection of countries is ignored if a city or state is matched first.

Recommended: Always have one fallback ad that does not have any geo-targeting per group, to make sure you are always showing an ad, in case a site visitors is located outside your target area.

Visitors from outside your target area

As a simple backup you can include one advert in your group that has no geo targeting enabled. When all ads are targeted at a specific location and one is not, that one will show as a sort of fallback. This prevents gaps and awkward emptiness on your site.

The post AdRotate – Geo-Targeting first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Group modes

Groups serve multiple purposes and can operate in different modes depending on your needs.

Currently a group can be 1 of 2 modes:

A group can operate in one mode at a time and can have as many ads as you need. Depending on your settings these will rotate and be picked at random. This is a semi-random process. You can influence the randomness with Advert settings such as weight, geo-location and schedules.

Block mode

Block size

This option is for block mode and determines the grid you’re making. Think of it as a spreadsheet.
Rows go horizontal, columns vertical.

Advert size

This option is used for Block mode and sets some rules for the adverts. The size in pixels for the advert is determined this way and directly influences a grid of adverts in Block mode.

Advanced

Advert Margin

Set a margin around your adverts to create some space between them.

Group Align

In most themes you can align the group with this function.
Keep in mind that this does not always work. Some themes think they should control those things. In that event you need a custom solution with CSS.

Geo Location

If you have adverts with Geo Location enabled in the group and you want that to work for those ads enable this setting. This enables the Geo Targeting filter.

Mobile Adverts

If you have mobile adverts enabled and you want the group to follow the device limitations you set for the adverts you have to enable this option too. This enables the mobile filter.

Fallback group

Set a fallback group. This fallback group generally has some generic adverts that do not expire. This can be a backup AdSense advert or your own advert selling the space it shows up in.
Note: Do not select the current group as the fallback group and the fallback group can not have it’s parent group as a 2nd fallback. This may create an infinite loop.

Post Injection

This includes the group in categories posts and or pages of your choosing without touching code, widgets or shortcodes.

With Post Injection you can easily add adverts to your posts or pages without using shortcodes or editing theme files. You don’t even need to use widgets if you don’t want to.
Post Injection is fully controlled from your group settings and AdRotate (Pro) takes care of adding your advert in or near your content.

Select pages and or posts

Select how you want to show the advert, for example before the content of your posts.
Directly below this you select which categories you want to apply this to.

It works the same for pages. Simply select if the adverts should show up before, behind or inside the content and select the applicable pages.

AdRotate will then automatically add the advert as you set it up to the content of your selected posts and/or pages.

Wrapper code

This is an advanced feature where you can add special code, specific to the group, around each advert. You’ll need HTML and/or CSS knowledge to effectively use this option.

Block mode

This is a special option for groups and shows multiple adverts at the same time in a grid-like fashion.
Using the options in the group you can make advanced setups like for example; a single file column of 10 adverts in your sidebar or a 2×2 square of button adverts.

For example: If you want a 2×2 block of 125×125 ads but each ad has a margin of 10px. In your theme that translates to 125px + 10px = 135px by 135px. In the 2×2 grid the total block size will be 270x270px.
AdRotate calculates all that by itself based on your settings but your theme is ignorant for these numbers and won’t budge. So make sure things fit in the area you want the group to show up in.

Customize the look

Each group has distinct CSS classes in the shape of g-(int), b-(int) and a-(int). The (int) is the group or advert ID.

Example for group 1 with advert 1:

.g-1 { border: 1px #8983d8 solid; }
.a-1 { background-color: #f00; }

Example for group 1 (in block mode) and advert 1:

.b-1 { margin: 2px; }
.a-1 { border: 1px dotted #fefefe; }

Note: The .g-1 class is for the group with ID 1. Group ID 2 will have a class .g-2 and so on. This allows for very specific customization. The names are obfuscated a bit to try and fool Ad Blockers into thinking it’s regular code instead of adverts.
Note: AdRotate has a few adblocker avoiding features. Using the Adblock Disguise feature will change the class names to further obfuscate the outputted code.

The post AdRotate – Groups first appeared on Our-Hometown.

For example ads that run bi-monthly for 1 year would have 6 schedules, one for each active period.

If the end date passes and there is no future schedule currently assigned to the advert, it stops showing and you’ll be notified of the advert expiring.

Create a schedule

Schedules can be created when you edit/create an advert. So if you forget to create one beforehand, no worries.

You can enter the basic scheduling options when creating the advert and the schedule will be created when you save the advert. If you do not want to create a new schedule just leave the dates empty.

If you do create a schedule it will be named after the advert; “Schedule for ad 23” for example.

Creating schedules separately

You can also create schedules from the Manage Schedules menu. This gives you a few more options to finetune your campaigns a bit more. This is also useful if you create generic schedules that will be used for many adverts.

Start dates, end dates and time

These determine when the advert will show. The end date indicates the start of that day. So if you want your advert to show through May 5th you select May 6th as the end date. Alternatively you can set May 5th but set the ending time to 23:59 (right before midnight). The time lets you start or end an advert on a specific hour on the start and ending day.

Advanced

Show only on

Using this feature you can show adverts on certain days only. For example an advert that runs for 6 months but only will show on Tuesdays.

Daily start/stop at

If you’re advertising something that only should be shown at certain hours of the day you can specify between which hours the advert should run on the days you select in the above option.

Maximum clicks and impressions

If you have your advert running for a period of time but you also sold a maximum of clicks and/or impressions for that period you can set a limit on those as well. Whichever condition is met first will disable the advert. This limit is per advert currently active in the group.

Spread Impressions

If you have sold a number of impressions for the duration of the schedule but do not want to risk using them all up in the first few days you can spread the impressions over the entire schedule duration. AdRotate will calculate a sensible maximum per day. If the daily limit is reached the advert will stop showing until midnight. When the new day starts the daily limit is reset. This limit is per advert that is currently active in the group.
Note: This may cause adverts to intermittently not show which in turn may cause gaps in your advert coverage. So make sure that you have enough adverts in the group or a sufficiently high limit.

Select adverts

To not have you navigate around the dashboard too much you can simply tick all the adverts that will use this schedule right from editing the schedule. Naming your adverts appropriately will make this much easier to manage if you have many adverts.

The post AdRotate – Schedules first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Adverts are the core function in AdRotate. Creating adverts is relatively simple. Every advert has a bunch options available to make the most of your advertising campaign. In many cases you’ll get a ready-to-go advert from your advertiser. But you can make your own adverts from scratch, too.

Adcode

Every advert will have a bit of HTML and sometimes CSS/Javascript. This represents the actual advertisement.
You’ll need some basic HTML knowledge (read; understanding how to make a link) for adverts. AdRotate has a few working examples you can use next to the AdCode field.

Click one of the examples will copy the code in your AdCode box.

Clicking the first example is all you need for a basic banner ad.

Replace the www.adrotate.com with your advertiser’s web URL (where you want the ad to go when you click it) and then select your banner.

Enable click & impression tracking, make sure the “status” is set to enabled if you want to go live immediately, and click “Save Advert”.

Banner Asset

If you use a standardized way of making adverts or simply manage your banner assets locally with the AdRotate Media Manager or WordPress media manager you can use the Banner Asset option to easily add images to your ads. In the Adcode you then replace the image url with the %asset% tag and select the asset (usually an image or HTML file) in either the media field or the banner folder menu. This image MUST be an image format – either jpg, gif or png. Please do not use PDFs as they will not work. PDFs are acceptable for Our Hometown print ad uploads, but not for banner ads.

Statistics

To count clicks and impressions on an advert you enable the statistics checkbox. You can use this on most adverts you make yourself but not on ads you get from an ad server such as Google AdSense or DFP. Adverts like that have their own tracking.

Using AdRotate Pro you can also track statistics via Piwik or Google Analytics.
For more information on stats and how you can use them, check out the statistics manual.

Advanced

Mobile adverts

You can make advertisements compatible with Mobile devices and have AdRotate show the appropriate one for different devices. You can select the device type, such as Desktop or phone and the mobile OS.
More information on the Mobile Adverts guide.

Weight

To give adverts more or less impressions you can raise or lower the weight. This works as a sort of selection filter for AdRotate. Advert weight is one part of the selection criteria for AdRotate’s randomising process.
Keep in mind that if you set all ads in the group to the same weight they all have the same chance of being shown.
More on how advert weight works can be read on the weight system manual.

Geo Location

With Geo Location you can target specific areas in the world with specific ads. Adverts using Geo Targeting must be in a group or the geo feature doesn’t work. It’s always useful to have at least one advert in the group that does not use geo location. Just so people outside the targeted area have something to look at. Perhaps an affiliate banner or adsense advert or something similar.

Geo Location can be as accurate as targeting a city but also supports states and countries (in some areas).

Details on how to use Geo Targeting can be read on the Geo Targeting manual page.

Schedules

Every advert needs atleast one schedule. This is a pre-defined start and end time between which the ad will show. You can make as many schedules as you need.

In AdRotate Pro, you have some advanced controls on when and how your advert shows up.
Check out the creating schedules manual to see how this works.

Advertiser

If enabled (in settings) there is a section where you can assign the advert to an advertiser. If done so, the advertiser can see how the advert is doing in their own dashboard. Or if allowed, edit the advert.
Other options include setting a budget (amount of money the advertiser paid) and a CPM and CPI value for the advert to use and expire on. This is useful for paid campaigns that are not time limited.

Group

The preferred and most efficient way is to put adverts in groups so you can easily manage where the advert will show up. You can select one or many groups for the advert to be in. If you name your groups appropriately this will be easy to oversee which group does what.
More on groups in the Creating groups manual.

The post AdRotate – Quickstart Guide first appeared on Our-Hometown.