Openx 2.4 Guide

Openads 2.
4 User Guide
Copyright © 2007 Openads Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Openads 2.4 User Guide
1. Openads 2.4 Overview

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This guide describes Openads version 2.4 and is intended to help you understand
the application and to get you managing your inventory as quickly as possible.
The content of this guide covers new installations, upgrades, the management
of your banner inventory, the delivery of advertising to your website, Openads
configuration settings and how to gather and display statistics. A Quick Start chapter
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aims to get you up and running rapidly, with links to relevant detailed information in
the remainder of the guide.
You are strongly recommended to read this guide thoroughly before you start using
Openads 2.4, as many questions you may have about using an adserver are
answered in the following chapters. If, after reading this guide, you still have queries,
you can join the Openads support forum via the Openads website to search for
solutions and advice, as well as participate in discussions about Openads 2.4.
Copyright 2007 Openads Ltd. No part of this reference guide shall be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express permission of Openads.
Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of these materials, no
responsibility is assumed for errors or omissions, neither is any liability assumed for
damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
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This guide includes:

1. Openads 2.4 Overview ............................................................................................2
2. Openads Concepts .................................................................................................5
2.1 What is Openads 2.4? .......................................................................................5
2.2 Adserving concepts ...........................................................................................5
3. Quick Start Guide ....................................................................................................7
3.1 Installing Openads ............................................................................................8
3.2 Load banners ....................................................................................................9
3.3 Linking banners to zones ................................................................................11
3.4 Publish zones on your website ........................................................................12
3.5 Quick start worked example ............................................................................13
3.6 Monetizing your inventory ...............................................................................18
4. Installation guide ...................................................................................................19
4.1 Requirements ..................................................................................................22
4.2 Downloading Openads ....................................................................................24
4.3 Copying Openads to your server ....................................................................25
4.4 The Install wizard ............................................................................................26
4.5 Configuring Maintenance ................................................................................34
5. Upgrading ..............................................................................................................41
5.1 Requirements for upgrades .............................................................................43
5.2 Download Openads upgrade ..........................................................................45
5.3 Copying Openads upgrade .............................................................................46
5.4 The Upgrade Wizard .......................................................................................48
5.5 Configuring Maintenance upgrade ..................................................................54
6. Openads 2.4 Inventory ..........................................................................................61
6.1 Advertisers ......................................................................................................62
6.2 Campaigns .......................................................................................................68
6.3 Banners ...........................................................................................................78
6.4 Publishers .......................................................................................................98
6.5 Zones ............................................................................................................102
6.6 Channels .......................................................................................................122
6.7 Displaying banners using direct selection .....................................................124
7. Statistics ..............................................................................................................128
7.1 Overview ........................................................................................................128
7.2 Advertisers & Campaigns ..............................................................................129
7.3 Publishers & Zones .......................................................................................132
7.4 Global history ................................................................................................134
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8. Reports ................................................................................................................135
9. Settings ...............................................................................................................137
9.1 Overview ........................................................................................................137
9.2 Main settings .................................................................................................138
9.3 Maintenance management ............................................................................158
9.4 Product Updates ...........................................................................................160
9.5 User log .........................................................................................................161
9.6 Agency Management ....................................................................................163
9.7 Channel Management ...................................................................................166
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2. Openads Concepts
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This chapter gives you a brief description to Openads 2.4 and introduces you to
some basic concepts that you'll need to know in order to make the most of the
application.
2.1 What is Openads 2.4?

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Openads 2.4 is an advanced ad server that allows you to place banners on your
website and lets you manage, deliver and track your ad inventory. The user-friendly
administrative interface gives you full control over the advertising published on your
website.
With Openads you can run Google Adsense, Valueclick, Tribal Fusion, and other
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advertising programs. In addition, you can turn on or off ad campaigns with the click
of a button, and even display your own in-house advertisements.
Openads is open-source which means you have access to the source code, licensed
under the General Public License.
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2.2 Adserving concepts

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Openads is designed to help you maximise your website's advertising potential by

offering an easy to understand, structured environment. This structure is based upon
a number of straightforward concepts that will help you manage your inventory
quickly and reliably:
Publishers (Websites)
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The vast majority of Openads users are website owners. Publishers represent HTU UTH
website owners who use Openads to include advertising on their web pages. As a
publisher you define areas on your website - called zones - that are reserved for
displaying advertising.
Zones
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Zones are defined spaces on your website used for displaying advertisements. A
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zone can be a single space on a specific page, or a space which is used on multiple
pages, but showing the same collection of banners.
Zones are owned by publishers and cannot be created without a publisher first being
defined.
Advertisers
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Advertisers represent the owners of advertising campaigns. Advertisers run ad

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campaigns and supply the banners which belong to each campaign. Before you can
add banners to your ad server you must first create an advertiser and at least one
campaign.
Campaigns
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A campaign is a set of banners with the same delivery settings. Delivery settings
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include the frequency and duration of ad delivery, priority settings for ads and
limitations on the display of ads according to a variety of parameters.
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Campaigns are always owned by advertisers, so you must create an advertiser

before defining a campaign.
Banners
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In Openads, a banner is the ad (creative) that is displayed as advertising. Banners

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come in many formats, and Openads supports a wide range: .gif, .jpg, .png, .swf
(Flash), javascript, text, and HTML.
You link banners to zones in order to publish them on your website.
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3. Quick Start Guide

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This section of the Openads 2.4 online documentation gives you a step-by-step guide
to downloading, installing and setting-up Openads. It will take you through the
process of creating the various entities - such as Publishers, Zones, Advertisers and
Campaigns - with the aim of delivering ads to your website as rapidly as possible.
Throughout this guide there are links to in-depth information and guidance about
many aspects of adserving and banner delivery.
Finally, a working example brings all of this information together in a guide that you
can follow as a real-world test of your setup.
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3.1 Installing Openads

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Installing Openads 2.4 is a straightforward process. Follow these steps and use the
links to refer to detailed information on each step where necessary:
a. System Preparation
T T
Before you install Openads, make sure your system is set up correctly. Read HTU
about system pre-requisites here. UTH
b. T Preparatory steps T
Create a database specifically for Openads use and configure your web
server. Read about essential preparatory steps here.
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c. Download Openads
T T
Navigate to the Openads website. Select the Downloads menu, then click
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the Download Openads 2.4 link in the Downloads page. Save the file to a
T T
convenient place on your local machine.
d. Unpack and upload

T T
Extract your downloaded Openads file to your webserver, in the appropriate

location within the server root hierarchy. Read more about uploading the HTU
Openads files to your webserver. UTH
e. Run the installer

T T
Open a web browser and point it to the directory to which the Openads files
were copied, for instance:
http://www.example.com/Openads
This starts the install wizard automatically. If this does not start the installer
automatically your web server probably is not configured to allow PHP files to
be used as a directory index. If this is the case you could try to start the
installer by running the index.php file in the admin directory manually by
pointing the web browser to:
http://www.example.com/Openads/admin/index.php. The wizard consists of
eight tabs or pages. Follow each step of the wizard carefully to install
Openads correctly. Read about the installation process in detail here. On
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successful completion of the installation, you can log in to the Administrator

interface straight away.
f. Set up Maintenance
T T
Openads 2.4 uses a special maintenance script to activate campaigns,

recalculate priorities, clean up statistics and send out advertiser reports. The
maintenance script needs to run every hour for the application to function
correctly. A feature of Openads 2.4 is its built-in automatic maintenance.
Alternatively you can manually configure maintenance, typically using a
cronjob, to suit your own needs. Read about scheduling maintenance.
T T HTU UT
When you have completed the above steps successfully, you are ready to start
loading ad banners to the system. See the Quick Start Guide to loading banners.
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3.2 Load banners

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Now that you have set up your system and successfully installed Openads 2.4, you
can begin to load banners destined for display on your website. Remember that
banners are owned by Campaigns and that Campaigns must be owned by an
Advertiser.
a. Log in
In your web browser navigate to the Authentication page of Openads 2.4, for
example: http://www.example.com/openads/www/admin/. Enter the
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Username and Password you defined during the installation process.

Forgotten your password? Read how to reset your login password. By default,
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the Advertisers & Campaigns page is displayed.

T T
b. Create an Advertiser
Click the Add new advertiser link.
T T
c. Specify Advertiser properties

The Add new advertiser page is displayed. Here you can specify a number
T T
of properties associated with the new advertiser. Read about specifying

HTU
advertiser properties. You must at least complete the Name, Contact and E-
UTH T T T T T
mail fields, which are mandatory.

T
When you have entered the desired information, click Next at the foot of the page.
T T
The Add new campaign page is displayed.

T T
d. Create a new Campaign and specify Campaign properties

There are several properties you can specify related to the campaign. Read HTU
about specifying campaign properties. There are no mandatory fields on this

UTH
page, but you are advised to give the campaign a meaningful name for later
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reference. Click Save Changes at the foot of the page. The Linked zones
T T T T
page is displayed.
e. Add a Banner
Now you are ready to add a creative to your inventory. Select the Banner T
overview tab, then click Add new banner.

T T T
f. Specify Banner properties

The Banner properties page displays. You can choose a banner type from
T T T T
the drop-down list. For the purposes of this example, choose the Local T
banner (SQL) option. You can read about banner types here.
T HTU UTH
• Now upload the image you want to use with the Browse button; T T
• Enter the path to your website in the Destination URL field;

T T
• Enter a short description in the Description field to identify your banner.

T T
Click Save changes

T T
Congratulations - you have loaded your first ad banner into Openads. Now you are
ready to link your banner to a zone on your website.
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3.3 Linking banners to zones

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Now that you have loaded a banner into Openads, your next step is to get the banner
ad delivered to your website. You do this by linking the banner to a zone or zones.
Remember that in order to create a suitable zone, you must first create a Publisher.
a. Click the Publishers & Zones tab

Navigate to the Publishers & Zones page by clicking the Inventory tab, then
selecting the Publishers & Zones tab.
b. Create a Publisher
Click the Add new publisher link.
T T
c. Specify the Publisher's properties

The Add new publisher page is displayed. This is where you can specify a
T T
range of properties associated with the publisher. Read about publisher HTU
properties here. Complete the Name, Website, Contact and E-mail fields.
UTH T T T T T T T T
Note that the full address of the website should be included in Website field. T T
Click Next at the foot of the page. The Zone properties page is displayed.
T T T T
d. Create a zone
The Zone properties page is where you specify the attributes of your zone.
T T
• Complete the Name and Description fields;

T T T T
• Then select the Zone type from the available. Remember that the
T T
type you choose must be compatible with the banner you want to
display in it. As you have loaded an image banner, select the Banner, T
Button or Rectangle option. T
Read more about Zone types here.

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• From the Size drop-down list, select a suitable size. This size must be
T T
compatible with the size of your banner.

• Click Next T
You have created your first zone. Now your task is to link your banner to this
zone.
e. Link a banner to your zone

Select the Linked banners tab. In this page you identify the banner you want
T T
to link to your zone.
• Select Link banners by parent campaign from the first drop-down

T T
list;
• Select the Advertiser that owns the campaign from the second drop-
T T
down list;
• Select the Campaign from the adjacent drop-down;
T T
• Click the arrow button.
The banner that is compatible with your new zone is shown in the list at the bottom of
the page and is now linked to your zone. Your next step is to publish the zone on
your website.
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3.4 Publish zones on your website

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Now you must publish your zone on the website. To do this you generate invocation
code and copy the code to the space reserved for your zone on the web page.
a. Generate invocation code

Select the Invocation code tab. This page lets you choose the type of
T T
banner invocation you need. Read about invocation code here. For a typical
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banner ad, choose Javascript Tag from the drop-down list. The page
T T
refreshes to reveal the required bannercode.

b. Copy the Bannercode
Click the Copy to clipboard link. Now past this code into your website's source
T T
code at the exact place where you would like the zone to be.
You can specify special parameters on this page that are included in the bannercode
and influence the banner's behaviour. Read detailed information about bannercode
HTU
parameters. UTH
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3.5 Quick start worked example

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In this section you can put together everything you have learned in the Quick Start
Guide to create a test banner ad delivered to your website.
First some preparation - download a 468x60 test banner ad and save it on your
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computer. Now create a space on your webpage for the banner you'll deliver to it
using Openads. Typically, you would create a table cell to accommodate the ad.
Make sure that it's at least 468 x 80 pixels.
Now log in to the Administrator interface and create an advertiser:
Name this 'MyAdvertiser' and complete the mandatory fields.
Click Next
T
Now create a new campaign, owned by the Advertiser.
Name this 'MyAdvertiser - Openads example'
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Click NextT
Select the Banner overview tab. Now you'll add the Openads banner you uploaded.
T T
Click Add new banner

T
In the Banner properties page that appears, select Local banner (SQL) from the
T T T T
drop-down list. Browse for the Openads image you saved earlier. In the Destination
T T T
URL field, http://www.openads.org. In the Description field, type 'Openads banner

T HTU UTH T T
468x80'.
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Click Save Changes

T
Now you've added the banner successfully, you must link it to a zone. First, create a
new publisher. Select the Inventory tab, then the Publishers & Zones tab.
Name this publisher 'MyWebsite'. Complete the mandatory fields.

T T
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Click NextT
The Zone properties page appears. Name the new zone 'MyWebsite - Full banner
T T
468x80'. make sure the Zone type is Banner, Button or Rectangle. Select the 'Width'
T T
and 'Height' Size option. You'll see the drop-down list automatically selects 'Custom'.
T T
Enter '468' as width and '80' as height.
Click NextT
Now your zone is created. Select the Linked banners tab. Now link your banner to
T T
the new zone:
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The banner is now linked to the zone. Your next step is to generate Invocation
T
code. Click the Invocation code tab. In the page that appears, select Javascript
T T T T
tag from the drop-down list. Allow the page to refresh, then copy the bannercode.
T
Now copy this code to the table cell you created earlier on your webpage.
Upload the revised website pages in the normal way. Navigate to your website and
view the delivery of your Openads banner!
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3.6 Monetizing your inventory

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Now that you have Openads to manage revenue-earning advertising on your

website, you must consider how to get revenue-generating ads in it. You can do this
by your own marketing efforts or you can use established organisations called ad T
networks that can help you by providing online advertising appropriate to your site.
T
The Openads website has a section devoted to methods of earning revenue through
online advertising. Visit www.openads.org/revenue/ for information and advice.
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4. Installation guide
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This chapter covers a new installation in detail. It assumes that you have successfully
installed PHP, the web server (Apache, IIS, etc.) and database server (MySQL). The
following installation procedure is based on a set-up comprising an Apache web
server with PHP as a concurrent module, and a MySQL database server.
Preparatory steps
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1. You need a database which Openads will use to store data. You must either
create a database for Openads to use or use a database account which has
permissions to create a new databases. You can also choose to install
Openads using an existing database, but make sure to use a valid table prefix
in order to keep Openads' tables separate from tables that already exist in
your database. It is recommended to create a database account specifically
for Openads' use. Make sure the database user you specify has enough
privileges to: alter, select, insert, update, delete, create table, create
temporary table, drop temporary table*, create index, drop index and lock
tables. When you install Openads, default tables are created and default data
is written to them. *MySQL does not have a specific privilege for 'drop
T
temporary table', so 'drop table' will have to be assigned

2. Configure your web server to answer requests for your domain name, e.g.
http://example.com/. Consult your web server documentation for guidance on
doing this. In Apache, you can configure this and many other parameters in
the httpd.conf file.
Deployment considerations
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Openads 2.4 can be deployed in a number of ways according to your current

resources and anticipated ad traffic. This chapter is intended to help you decide
which way to deploy Openads is the best for your specific situation.
Running your website and Openads on one web server

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This is the most straightforward deployment strategy and is a perfectly satisfactory

arrangement unless you have very high visitor numbers. Openads can be installed in
a subdirectory on the same virtual host as your website. For instance, if you are
using Apache, Openads can be installed in the htdocs folder. If your website is built
using PHP, you can use local mode invocation to deliver banners. See the Zones
chapter for more information about invocation tags.
There are some factors to take into account if you do elect to use local mode
invocation. Since Openads sets cookies for certain features, the domain name that
Openads uses must be the same as domain name for your website. This is because
only cookies set by a particular domain name can be read by scripts running under
that domain name. You can use more than one domain name if desired, in which
case Openads will set the cookie using the current one, provided that all the domain
names being used are pointing to the same virtual host. Since there are limitations on
the number of cookies you can set for a particular domain name, it is possible that
older cookies will be replaced (deleted) by new ones once that limitation is passed.
This could also affect cookies which are set by your own website. These potential
issues can be resolved by running Openads on a different domain.
If you do want to run Openads on a different virtual host with a separate domain
name you can't use local mode invocation without causing problems. Other types of
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remote invocation will work fine. This approach also has a couple of advantages:
because there is a limitation to the number of cookies you can set for a specific
domain older cookies will be deleted when new cookies are set. If you are running
Openads on the same domain as your website it is possible Openads will delete the
cookies which are set by your own website. Running on a different domain name will
prevent this.
Running Openads on a dedicated server

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If you want to install Openads on a dedicated server, you can't use local mode
invocation, but all the other types of invocation will still work fine. Apart from the
obvious speed improvements this has some other advantages. Because the ad
server needs to run on a separate domain name the cookies set by Openads are
kept separate from the cookies set by your website. This also means they don't share
the same limitation in the number of cookies that can be set, so Openads won't
delete cookies set by your website once the limit is reached.
Running Openads on more than one server

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It is possible to install more than one copy of Openads in order to distribute the load
over more than one web server. This strategy has some administrative overheads
that should be considered. Firstly there is no provision, currently, for automatic
distribution of configuration settings, nor automatic distribution of uploaded banner
images to multiple copies; secondly, you must use a single MySQL database server
for all the installed copies of Openads, so while the load of delivery is distributed over
multiple servers, the database load is not. Moreover, it is not possible to use shared
memory or files for the delivery cache, since the delivery cache needs to be shared
between all the servers and the database method is currently the only method that
supports this. It is feasible to use MySQL replication to distribute the load over
multiple MySQL database servers, but not without some modification to the
Openads source code.
Within the limitations outlined above there are multiple ways to deploy Openads. Just
like a single server you can install Openads on the same server as your website or
on a dedicated server. For example if you are already using a simple load balancer
and multiple servers to serve your website, you could install a copy of Openads on a
subdirectory on all your web servers. In other cases you might want to use multiple
dedicated servers running Openads and balance the load between them.
As briefly explained above, it is not possible to use shared memory or files for storing
the delivery cache if you plan on using more than one server to deliver the banners.
The reason for this is quite simple, the delivery cache needs to be shared between all
the servers and the database method is currently the only method that supports this.
The distribution of uploaded banners is also something to consider. Openads allows
you to upload banners to the MySQL database or to a web server. The first method is
slow but also very user-friendly. The second method is much faster but may take
some additional configuration. If you are using multiple servers and the second
method you need have two options: upload the banners to a different server which
serves the banner images for all the ad servers or upload the banners to a directory
on one of the ad servers and create a way to synchronize the uploaded images with
the other ad servers yourself. If you don't synchronize the uploaded images it is
possible the images will be requested from the wrong server and the user will see a
broken image instead of a banner.
Openads stores its configuration settings using two different ways. First of all, the
settings which are important to the delivery engine are stored in a configuration file
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for optimization reasons. The name of that file reflects your host name. For instance,
if the host name is www.example.com, then the file is named
www.example.com.conf.php and is stored in the var directory. The rest of the settings
which are mostly used for the administrator interface are stored inside the database.
The settings which are stored in the database are automatically shared between
multiple servers, but the settings which are stored in the www.example.com.conf.php
file are not! So if you change a setting which is important to the delivery engine you
will need to modify this file on all the servers you are running.
Also keep in mind that if you use a load balancer it is not clear on which server the
settings will be changed in the first place, so it is wise to disable the administrator
interface on all but one server. Then use a different domain name which only points
to the server with the administrator interface to change the settings. For example:
ad.Openads.com (192.168.1.0) points to the load balancer which forwards the
requests to adserver1.Openads.com (192.168.1.1) and adserver2.Openads.com
(192.168.1.2). The administrator interface is disabled on ad2.Openads.com, so you
have to use adserver1.Openads.com to manage the inventory or change
configuration settings.
Making your installation secure
Most installations of Openads are installed on the regular webserver and usually are
accessed through the regular insecure http protocol. If you want to increase the
security of the administrator interface there are also some 'hidden' options which
allow you to use SSL for encryption. The only requirements for this are that the
webserver you installed Openads on is capable of serving SSL encrypted pages and
you have a valid certificate. Of course you can also use a seperate server just for the
administrator interface.
If you want to use one server for both the delivery and a secure administrator
interface you can enable the 'hidden' ui_forcessl configuration setting which can
be changed in the www.example.com.conf.php file. If this option is enabled Openads
will always automatically redirect the browser to the secure pages. For example if
you try to access http://www.example.com/Openads, it will redirect to
https://www.example.com/Openads. In order for this to work correctly you must
also set the url_prefix setting to the secure URL where Openads is running, for
example: https://www.example.com/Openads.
If you want to use a seperate secure server for the administrator interface you have
some extra 'hidden' options which you need to configure. On the secure server you
can force Openads to use SSL by enabling the ui_forcessl configuration setting.
Please also ensure you have set the url_prefix setting to the secure location
where Openads is running. On the non-secure server where the delivery engine is
running you need to disable the administrator interface. To do this you need to
disable the ui_enabled configuration setting in the www.example.com.conf.php file.
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4.1 Requirements
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Before you can start the installation you need to make sure your server meets the
requirements described below.
Web server
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Openads 2.4 should be able to run on any web server which is supported by PHP.
Openads 2.4 has been tested with Apache running on Linux; other servers might also
work as long as PHP is supported, but they are currently untested and unsupported
by Openads 2.4.
PHP
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Openads 2.4 is written in PHP and requires that PHP is installed on your server. For
security reasons the use of PHP 4.4.2 or higher is highly recommended, but
Openads 2.4 supports PHP 4.3.10 or higher. Openads 2.4 is also compatible with
PHP 5. You will need at least 16Mb of memory for PHP4 installations and 24Mb for
PHP5.2 and higher. For more information about PHP, see the PHP website. HTU UTH
As Openads performs many operations based on time (eg. logging and presenting
banner delivery statistics), it is important that your server's timezone be correctly
configured in PHP. Read about setting the timezone in PHP.
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When using Apache it is not recommended to run PHP as a CGI binary. Use the
Apache module instead. The Apache module is not only much faster, it imposes less
load on the server, which improves the number of impressions the server can handle.
If you are are using Microsoft IIS 5.1 or 6, please try to use Fast-CGI, because the
ISAPI module is not yet declared stable. If you are using Microsoft IIS 5.0 or earlier
please upgrade to the latest version. If you can't upgrade to IIS 5.1 or 6, please use
the less stable ISAPI module. IIS 5.0 or earlier are affected by a serious bug which
interferes with the correct operation of CGI applications.
Openads 2.4 is fully compatible with PHP 4.3.10 and higher, including when the
register_globals setting is turned off.
TIP
Openads 2.4 requires the following PHP configuration settings:
• magic_quotes_runtime must be off

• safe_mode must be off
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• register_argc_argv must be on if you want to run maintenance via command

line
• file_uploads need to be turned on to allow HTTP file uploads
• register_long_arrays needs to be turned on when using PHP5
Because Openads 2.4 uses a MySQL database, the MySQL extension needs to be
included, but in most installations this is enabled by default. Please see PHP's HTU
documentation. UTH
The ZLib extension is required if you want to convert hard-coded links inside
compressed Flash files which are generated by Flash MX. Without the ZLib
extension Openads 2.4 is not able to decompress the Flash file and won't detect any
hard-coded links. Please see PHP's documentation
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The FTP extension is used to store local banners on the webserver. If the FTP
extension is not present it will try to simulate the FTP extension, but this might not be
as stable as using the actual extension. Please see the PHP documentation
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MySQL
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Openads 2.4 requires a MySQL database to store the banner inventory and
statistics. If you need more information about MySQL take a look at the MySQL HTU
website. UTH
There are no special requirements for the MySQL database server, but it is
recommended that you use MySQL 5.0.41. MySQL 4.0.18 is the minimum supported
version. Openads 2.4 is compatible with all table types, but it is recommended to use
MyISAM tables for quicker access. However, if you are using the conversion tracking
feature you should use InnoDB tables, which support row locking.
Database permissions
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You must either create a database for Openads to use or use a database account
which has permissions to create a new database. You can also choose to install
Openads using an existing database, but make sure to use a valid table prefix in
order to keep Openads' tables separate from tables that already exist in your
database. It is recommended to create a database account specifically for Openads'
use. Ensure that the database user you specify assigns at least the following
privileges:
• SELECT
• INSERT
• UPDATE
• DELETE
• CREATE TABLE
• CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE
• DROP TEMPORARY TABLE
• CREATE INDEX
• DROP INDEX
• LOCK TABLES
Note that MySQL does not have a specific privilege for DROP TEMPORARY TABLE,
so DROP TABLE will have to be assigned.
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4.2 Downloading Openads

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Once you have ensured that your system meets the requirements for Openads to
function properly, you can download the Openads package, which is available in .zip,
.tar.gz and .tar.bz2 compression formats. If you are unsure which format to use,
contact your system administrator or the person responsible for setting up and
maintaining your web server for advice.
Go to the Openads download page and click the appropriate Download Openads
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v2.4 link. The download of the most recent development of Openads 2.4 will begin.
T
Don't forget to sign up to the Openads Community Newsletter to get up-to-date

product, security and service information while waiting for the download to proceed.
Save the packaged file to a convenient location on your local machine. Your next
step is to unpack and copy the files to your web server. See Copying Openads to
HTU
your server. UTH
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4.3 Copying Openads to your server

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In order to install Openads, you must upload the Openads files to your web server.
Unpack your downloaded Openads .zip, tar.gz or tar.bz2 file to the appropriate
location within the web server root hierarchy. Thus, if your web server’s structure is
/var/www/html/, for example, you can place your extracted folders and files in
/var/www/html/Openads.
If you are using a remote, hosted webserver, then you can unpack the downloaded
file to a local disk and upload the files using same method you would normally
employ to transfer files to the web server, such as FTP or SCP. If you are in any
doubt about how to upload the files, consult your system administrator or the person
responsible for setting up or maintaining your web server for advice.
Note that when you extract the file, the root folder’s name will be something like
Openads-vX.X.XX-cc. You can rename this directory to Openads if you want.
When you are satisfied that the files have been properly copied to the correct
location, you are ready to start the installation wizard.
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4.4 The Install wizard

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Openads has simplified the installation procedure by providing an install wizard that
takes you, step-by-step, through each stage of the process.
To start the installer, open a web browser and point it to the directory in which
Openads is copied. For example, http://www.example.com/Openads. If this doesn't
start the installer automatically, it may be that your web server isn't configured to
allow PHP files to be used as a directory index. If this is the case you could try to
start the installer by running the index.php file in the admin directory manually by
http://www.example.com/Openads/admin/index.php.
If you have local access to the server then the path would be:
http://www.example.com/Openads/www/admin/index.php.
The Openads Installation wizard starts. The wizard consists of several tabbed pages
representing each step in the procedure and is designed to help you install Openads
2.4 with the minimum of manual intervention. You can’t click a tab to reveal a page;
use the control buttons at the foot of the page to move from step to step. This
ensures that the installation is properly carried out. A progress bar at the top of the
page shows how much of the procedure you have completed in percentage terms.
1. Welcome : The first page welcomes you to the application and offers
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important advice about referring to the online documentation before

continuing. When you are ready to carry on, click Continue.
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2. Terms : This page gives essential license information about Openads. Before
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you can continue with the installation, you are advised to read and agree to
the terms and conditions of the GPL license. Click the I Agree button to
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proceed.
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3. Policy : This page explains Openads' Privacy and Data Usage Policy. Please
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review this information to learn about the data that Openads collects and how
it might be used. You must agree with this policy before continuing with the
upgrade. Note the Synchronisation settings section - select the the Check for
T
Updates checkbox if you want your copy of Openads to alert you to software
T
updates. Click the I Agree button to proceed.

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4. System check : In this step, Openads checks your system to ensure that
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your PHP installation is properly set up, that the File Permissions for the
application are properly set and whether a previous installation of Openads is
detected. If no errors are detected, you can carry on with the installation by
clicking Continue.T T
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5. Database setup : This step deals with the database you intend to use for
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Openads. Some of these settings will appear by default, since you defined
them when configuring your database server when you created it. In the
Advanced settings section, the Table type default selection depends on your
current database setting. Of the choices available, the MyISAM table engine
is recommended for Openads. If you are unsure of any of these settings,
please contact your System Administrator. When you are satisfied with the
information you have entered, Click Continue. Openads will then attempt to
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configure your database.
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6. Database setup confirmation : When the new Openads database is

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completed, the page refreshes to inform of the successful operation. Click

Continue to proceed to the next step.
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7. Configuration setup : In this page, you specify basic configuration settings,

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such as language selection for the application, time zone and paths to core
directories, for which defaults are already entered. Check them carefully
before proceeding. Click Continue when you are happy with the settings.
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8. Admin setup : Enter username, password and contact email address for the
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administrator in this page. This sets up the admin user who will have full
control over your Openads installation. Ensure that the username and
password are memorable and, if necessary, keep a secure record of them.
Click Continue when you are finished.
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9. Data setup : You are nearly finished installing Openads! This page lets you
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specify if you want to add a demo inventory to your database. It’s a useful
way of learning the relationship between Advertisers, Campaigns and
Banners and how Zones are set up. Select Yes if you would like the demo
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data added, otherwise select No. Click Continue to pass to the final step.
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10. Finished! : The final page of the install procedure appears. This serves to
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confirm your successful installation and reminds you of a couple of important

next steps; firstly that a maintenance file should be run every hour and
secondly that the hostname.conf.php (e.g. www.example.com.conf.php) file
T T T T
is locked to prevent inadvertent or unauthorised changes to it. You can find

your configuration file in /var directory of your Openads installation. This
advice appears in the language that you selected in the Configuration setup
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stage of the installation wizard. Click Continue. T T
You are automatically logged-in to the Administrator interface. The

Advertisers & Campaigns page is displayed. You can now start to manage
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your inventory.
There are a range of parameters and options you can specify related to the
management of your inventory. For comprehensive guidance on specifying settings,
read the Settings chapter of this guide.
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Password Recovery
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If you have forgotten or lost your login password, Openads provides a password
recovery feature. Follow this simple procedure:
1. At the login screen, enter your username;

2. Click the "Forgot your password?" link;
The Password Recovery page displays.
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3. Type the e-mail address you specified when you completed the Admin
settings during installation and click the Proceed button:
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On a refresh of the screen, the "Recovery e-mail sent" advice is shown. An e-

mail is sent to the address that you entered in the password recovery e-mail
field;
4. The email you receive includes a password reset link to an Openads page -
click the link (or alternatively copy and paste the link into your browser
address field and press Enter);
5. In the page that displays, type a new password in the Password field and
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confirm the new password by repeating it in the Repeat Password field below,
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then click Proceed;

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6. On a refresh of the screen, a confirmation that your new password is saved is

shown:
7. Now you can log in as usual with the existing Username and the new
Password.
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4.5 Configuring Maintenance

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Openads requires a maintenance script be run each hour in order to function

correctly. The script summarises the previous hour's raw data into statistics, activates
and deactivates campaigns, recalculates banner delivery priorities and send out
email-based reports.
There are several ways to schedule the maintenance script to be run, the most
common being the built-in automatic maintenance and scheduling a hourly task to
trigger the maintenance script.
Openads will continue to serve ads even if the maintenance is not executed, but
running without maintenance for long periods will have undesirable consequences.
When maintenance is finally run all outstanding raw data will be processed.
Without maintenance Openads is unable to recalculate the priorities, which means
high priority campaigns and campaigns that have either an expiration date or a fixed
number of impressions will be delivered more often than is wanted. If you are having
problems with the delivery of these types of campaigns always check if the
maintenance script is running first.
Built-in Automatic Maintenance

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Openads built-in automatic maintenance uses banner delivery to trigger outstanding

maintenance tasks. It is enabled by default on new installations and means that you
don't have to create a scheduled task on your server for maintenance.
Automatic maintenance waits 5 minutes after the scheduled maintenance task should
have been run to ensure that any manually scheduled maintenance has time to
complete.
You might choose to leave automatic maintenance running even if you have set up a
scheduled maintenance task (below). In this case automatic maintenance will notice
when the scheduled maintenance task is not run as scheduled and will trigger the
task.
You can enable and disable automatic maintenance in the Settings>Maintenance
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page.
You can view the current maintenance status by checking the
Settings>Maintenance page, then choosing the Maintenance option from the drop-
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down list.
You can view the log of maintenance runs in Settings>User Log, where automatic
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maintenance runs are identified by a separate icon.

Although Openads built-in automatic maintenance is a useful feature, you may find
that scheduling maintenance as a task is a more flexible method and better suited to
your needs. The following section discusses the various alternatives for setting up
scheduled maintenance tasks.
Scheduled Maintenance
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The maintenance script can be triggered by executing a locally run script or by calling
the script URL on the webserver. Where possible we recommend running the script
locally.
The most common techniques for scheduling the maintenance tasks on both
Linux/UNIX and Windows servers are described below. For people unable to execute
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scheduled tasks on their server we have also included a section on using external
cron service.
Scheduling tasks on Linux and UNIX based servers

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If you are using a Unix-based server such as Linux, BSD, Solaris or MacOS X, you
can use the cron daemon to automatically run maintenance. You can edit your
scheduled tasks using the crontab utility.
In most cases you will need shell access to your server to add a new scheduled task.
After using telnet or ssh to login to your server use the following command to export
your existing scheduled tasks to a text file:
crontab -l > cron.txt
If you don't have permission to use crontab, please contact your service provider or
server administrator.
After exporting your existing tasks to a text file you can use any text editor you want
to add tasks. The preferred way to trigger the maintenance script is by executing it as
a local script using the php command. The alternative is to use a tool like curl or wget
to request the scripts URL on the webserver.
Based on which tool your server supports add one of the following lines to the
cron.txt file:
# if your server supports php (include the domain name which hosts
Openads as a parameter):
0 * * * * php /path-to-openads/scripts/maintenance/maintenance.php
www.example.com
# if your server supports curl:

0 * * * * curl -s -o /dev/null
http://www.example.com/Openads/maintenance/maintenance.php
# if your server supports wget:

0 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null
# if your server supports fetch:

0 * * * * fetch -o /dev/null
# if your server supports lynx:

0 * * * * lynx > /dev/null -dump
After you changed the cron.txt file and added the line for the tool you want to use,
you need to import the file back again into the cron daemon. To do this type the
following command on the command-line:
crontab cron.txt
Using cPanel to schedule maintenance tasks on Linux and UNIX

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based servers
An alternative method of creating a cron job on Linux/UNIX servers is by using
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cPanel. The general procedure is as follows: T
1. In cPanel, click Cron jobs in the main display of the interface;

2. Click Advanced (Unix style) to access the Cron Manager;
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3. Enter an email address to which reports can be sent (effectively the output of
the command run by the cron job) in the field provided;
4. Select the frequency of the job in the boxes provided; for example:
o Minute :1
o Hour : *
o Day : *
o Month : *
o Weekday : *
In this example, 1 minute past the hour is chosen simply to avoid the typically 'busy'
time for the server on the hour.
Now enter the command you wish the cron job to run; for example:
curl -s -o /dev/null http://the_proper_domain/maintenance/maintenance.php
(where the_proper_domain indicates your full Openads url)
Don't forget to save your changes to set up your cron job. Note that this procedure
does not apply precisely to all versions of cPanel and there may be some variations
in your particular version.
Scheduling tasks on Windows 2000 and XP servers

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If you are using a Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP server you can use the Scheduled
Tasks to automatically run the maintenance file. However there is no standard tool
available to actually run the maintenance file.
Downloading wget
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The first thing to do is to download wget, which is a command line utility to get the
contents of a file stored on a web server. Wget is available for all kinds of operating
systems, including Windows. After you have downloaded the zip file you need to
copy the wget.exe file to the directory where Windows is installed. Wget is not part of
Openads and needs to be downloaded separately. Up-to-date download locations
are listed on the wget homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/wget.html
Creating a batch file

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The next step is creating a small batch file which will call the wget utility with the
correct parameters. This file can be executed as a Scheduled Task later on. You can
use Notepad to create a new file and add the information below, then save the file as
phpads.bat. You can save the file anywhere you like, but it is wise to keep it in a
location that isn't going to change, and isn't accessible by the web server. Also make
sure to specify the correct URL inside the batch file, the URL below is just an
example.
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Creating the scheduled task

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The next step would be to actually add a new Scheduled Task. You can find all
Scheduled Tasks inside a directory inside the Control Panel.
Now click on Add Scheduled Task. The wizard will begin and after you click on Next
it will ask you for the program to run. Just click on Browse... and select the batch file
you just created. Now you need to give this Scheduled Task a name and select to
perform this task daily.
Click on Next and set the Start time to 0:01 and choose to perform this task every
day.
If you click Next the wizard will ask you for your username and password.
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After you supplied your username and password click on Next. Make sure to select
Open advanced properties..., because you will need to make some modification to
this task. Now click on Finish.
To make sure this task runs hourly you will need to go to the Schedule tab and select
the Advanced... button. Now check Repeat task and make sure the task is repeated
every hour. Also select the radio button Time and set the value to 00:01. Now click
OK to close this dialogbox and click Apply to save all settings.
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Using an external cron server

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If your server doesn't support Scheduled Tasks or cron jobs, it is still possible to run
the maintenance file every hour automatically, by using an external cron server.
Cronservices.com
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For a fee, cronservice.com allows you to add as many scheduled tasks as you want
by using a simple web based interface. After logging in at cronservices.com, you
need to specify which task you want to run by clicking the Add new job button.
If you want to run a job hourly you need to select all hours. Don't select a date, day of
week or month. Then enter the full URL of the maintenance file in the Script URL
field. For example: if you installed Openads on http://www.example.com/Openads,
the full URL would be
http://www.example.com/Openads/scripts/maintenance/maintenance.php. After
entering a job name you can click on the Insert button.
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Checking if the maintenance task is running

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The maintenance task is very important for the functionality of Openads. Without
running the maintenance task every hour many different problems can occur.
Because of this it is important to check whether the maintenance task is running
properly.
If you log in to Openads and the maintenance task has not run in the past twenty-four
hours the following warning is displayed. If you see this warning dialog you should
look into why the maintenance task isn't running properly.
Apart from the warning dialog displayed above, there is another way to see if the
maintenance task is running properly. If you have enabled the option Log hourly
priority calculations on the Administrator settings page a log of the priority
calculations will be stored in the User log. If this option is enabled, but there are no
logs visible in the User log, then the maintenance task is probably not running
correctly.
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5. Upgrading
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This chapter shows you how to upgrade your existing Openads, Max Media Manager
or phpAdsNew installation.
• Read the Requirements section to check that your system can run the
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upgraded version of Openads properly.

• The Copying Openads to your server section contains important advice about
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backing-up your existing files and shows you how to re-use your current
configuration files to configure the upgrade.
• The Upgrade Wizard section takes you through the step-by-step procedure
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for a successful upgrade installation.
The upgrade process consists, essentially, of the following steps which allow the
current installation of Openads to be run while the upgrade is carried out:
1. Create a new directory with the same directory name as your previous
installation, but add '_newfiles' to the end of the directory name, (e.g.
directoryname_newfiles);
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2. Unpack the new version of Openads into this new directory;

3. Copy your config file from the current working location to the var/ directory of
the newly unpacked installation - read about config files in previous versions
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of Openads, MMM or PhpAdsNew; UTH
4. Rename your existing working installation directory by adding '_backup' to the

end of the directory name, (e.g. directoryname_backup); T T
5. Rename 'directoryname_newfiles' by removing the '_newfiles' from the

directory name;
6. Use a web browser to visit your Openads site and follow the instructions in
the upgrade wizard to complete the upgrade.
Upgrade considerations
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Before you carry out the upgrade, there are some factors that could have an impact
on the success of your upgrade installation, depending on your current setup.
Compatibility with MySQL 3.x

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Openads version 2.4 does not work with MySQL 3.x. If you are currently using
MySQL 3.x, you must upgrade your MySQL installation before upgrading Openads.
MySQL 4.0.18 is the minimum supported version.
Table prefix format

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It is not possible to install or upgrade to Openads 2.4 using a database table prefix
that includes capital letters. You must revise the database table prefix to be all
lowercase.
Large databases timing out

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In the course of the upgrade, Openads makes a copy of each table that is affected by
the process, effectively locking the table while it is backed-up. For large databases
this can be very time-consuming. You can avoid this process by adding a file named
"NOBACKUPS" to the var/ directory. During upgrade, when this filename is detected,
no tables are copied, speeding up the process noticeably. If you intend to use this
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feature you should ensure that your database is properly backed-up before
embarking on the upgrade process.
Upgrading from Openads 2.0 - invocation codes

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Note that invocation codes in use on Openads 2.0 will remain functional when
upgrading.
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5.1 Requirements for upgrades

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Before you can start the upgrade you must make sure your server meets the
requirements described below.
Web server
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Openads 2.4 should be able to run on any web server which is supported by PHP.
Openads 2.4 has been tested with Apache running on Linux; other servers might also
work as long as PHP is supported, but they are currently untested and unsupported
by Openads 2.4.
PHP
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Openads 2.4 is written in PHP and requires that PHP is installed on your server. For
security reasons the use of PHP 4.4.2 or higher is highly recommended, but
Openads 2.4 supports PHP 4.3.10 or higher. Openads 2.4 is also compatible with
PHP 5. You will need at least 16Mb of memory for PHP4 installations and 24Mb for
PHP5.2 and higher. For more information about PHP, see the PHP website for more
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information about PHP.

configured in PHP. Read about setting the timezone in PHP.
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When using Apache it is not recommended to run PHP as a CGI binary. Use the
Apache module instead. The Apache module is not only much faster, it imposes less
load on the server, which improves the number of impressions the server can handle.
If you are are using Microsoft IIS 5.1 or 6, please try to use Fast-CGI, because the
ISAPI module is not yet declared stable. If you are using Microsoft IIS 5.0 or earlier
please upgrade to the latest version. If you can't upgrade to IIS 5.1 or 6, please use
the less stable ISAPI module. IIS 5.0 or earlier are affected by a serious bug which
interferes with the correct operation of CGI applications.
Openads 2.4 is fully compatible with PHP 4.3.10 and higher, including when the
register_globals setting is turned off.
TIP
Openads 2.4 requires the following PHP configuration settings:
• magic_quotes_runtime must be off

• safe_mode must be off
• register_argc_argv must be on if you want to run maintenance via command
line
• file_uploads need to be turned on to allow HTTP file uploads
• register_long_arrays needs to be turned on when using PHP5
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Because Openads 2.4 uses a MySQL database, the MySQL extension needs to be
included, but in most installations this is enabled by default. Please see PHP'sHTU
documentation. UT
The ZLib extension is required if you want to convert hard-coded links inside
compressed Flash files which are generated by Flash MX. Without the ZLib
extension Openads 2.4 is not able to decompress the Flash file and won't detect any
hard-coded links. Please see PHP's documentation.
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The FTP extension is used to store local banners on the webserver. If the FTP
extension is not present it will try to simulate the FTP extension, but this might not be
as stable as using the actual extension. Please see PHP's documentation.
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MySQL
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Openads 2.4 requires a MySQL database to store the banner inventory and
statistics. If you need more information about MySQL take a look at MySQL website.
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There are no special requirements for the MySQL database server, but it is
recommended that you use MySQL 5.0.41. MySQL 4.0.18 is the minimum supported
version. Openads 2.4 is compatible with all table types, but it is recommended to use
MyISAM tables for quicker access. However, if you are using the conversion tracking
feature you should use InnoDB tables, which support row locking.
Database permissions
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You must either create a database for Openads to use or use a database account
which has permissions to create a new database. You can also choose to install
Openads using an existing database, but make sure to use a valid table prefix in
order to keep Openads' tables separate from tables that already exist in your
database. It is recommended to create a database account specifically for Openads'
use. Ensure that the database user you specify assigns at least the following
privileges:
• ALTER
• SELECT
• INSERT
• UPDATE
• DELETE
• CREATE TABLE
• CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE
• DROP TEMPORARY TABLE*
• CREATE INDEX
• DROP INDEX
• LOCK TABLES
*Note that MySQL does not have a specific privilege for DROP TEMPORARY
T
TABLE, so DROP TABLE will have to be assigned.
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5.2 Download Openads upgrade

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Once you have ensured that your system meets the requirements for Openads to
function properly, you can download the Openads package, which is available in .zip,
.tar.gz and .tar.bz2 compression formats. If you are unsure which format to use,
contact your system administrator or the person responsible for setting up and
maintaining your web server for advice.
Go to the Openads downloads page and click the appropriate Download Openads
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2.4 link. The download of the most recent development of Openads 2.4 will begin.
T
Don't forget to sign up to the Openads Community Newsletter to get up-to-date

product, security and service information while waiting for the download to proceed.
Save the packaged file to a convenient location on your local machine. Your next
step is to prepare your existing files for the upgrade and unpack and copy the files to
your web server. See Copying Openads to your server.
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5.3 Copying Openads upgrade

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Upgrade preparation
73B
Now that you have downloaded the new version of Openads, you can prepare for the
upgrade. During installation, Openads checks to see whether a new installation or an
upgrade is called for, by checking for the existence of configuration files. If a
configuration file is found, the Upgrade Wizard is invoked. You must copy your
existing configuration file to the upgraded installation so that essential configuration
and database settings are retained, allowing you to continue to manage your existing
inventory. Follow these steps to prepare your upgrade properly:
1. Back up your files. It is good practice to make a back-up of your existing

installation by copying it to a suitable archive. In the event of a serious
problem, you have the opportunity of restoring your existing set-up. For the
same reason, you are advised to back up the current database you use for
Openads.
2. Next, remove your existing installation directory, in readiness for the new
version.
3. Unpack your downloaded Openads .zip, tar.gz or tar.bz2 file to same location
within the web server root hierarchy as your previous installation.Thus, if your
web server’s structure is /var/www/html/, for example, you can place your
extracted folders and files in /var/www/html/Openads.
If you are using a remote, hosted webserver, then you can unpack the
downloaded file to a local disk and upload the files using same method you
would normally employ to transfer files to the web server, such as FTP or
SCP. If you are in any doubt about how to upload the files, consult your
system administrator or the person responsible for setting up or maintaining
your web server for advice.
Note that when you extract the file, the root folder’s name will be something
like Openads-vX.X.XX-cc. You can rename this directory to Openads if you
want.
Copying the existing configuration files

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Your next step is to copy the existing configuration file to the new installation. The
name of the configuration file and its location vary according to the version of
Openads, Max Media Manager or phpAdsNew you have currently installed. The table
Version Config Filename Config File location
Openads 2.3+ www.example.com.conf.php /var
Openads 2.0 config.inc.php root
MMM 0.3 www.example.com.conf.ini /var
MMM 0.1 config.inc.php /var
phpAdsNew config.inc.php root
below shows where you can find the configuration file:
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When you have found the file, copy it to the /var directory of your new Openads
installation.
Plugin Configuration files

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If you are upgrading from MMM 0.3 or an earlier version of Openads 2.4, you must
also copy any existing plugin configuration files. You can find these in
/var/plugins/config, within specific directories for each plugin, such as
/var/plugins/config/geotargeting. You may find it easier to copy over all of the
directories within /config, replacing those in the new installation file structure.
In addition copy the contents of /www/images/. Read about storing your banners in a
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local directory. UTH
Once you are satisfied that the configuration files are copied to the correct locations,
you are ready to start the upgrade process. Read about The Upgrade Wizard.
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5.4 The Upgrade Wizard

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This section describes the upgrade process using the Upgrade wizard. Before you
start the upgrade, ensure that you have followed the advice and instructions
contained in the preceding sections of this chapter and read the Release Notes for
latest information. You can find the release notes document in the root directory of
your new installation. Make sure that you have:
1. Created backed up copies of your existing installation files and the database
you use for Openads;
2. Copied all of the new files and folders to their correct location. If you use FTP
then please ensure that there were no errors during transfer;
3. Copied your previous configuration file(s) to the new "var" folder and ensured
that both the folder and the files are writeable by the webserver.
To start the upgrade, open a web browser and point it to the directory in which
Openads is copied. For example, http://www.example.com/Openads. If this doesn't
start the installer automatically, it may be that your web server isn't configured to
allow PHP files to be used as a directory index. If this is the case you could try to
start the installer by running the index.php file in the admin directory manually by
http://www.example.com/Openads/admin/index.php.
If you have local access to the server (i.e. it is not a virtual host), then the
path would be:
http://www.example.com/Openads/www/admin/index.php.
The Openads Upgrade wizard starts. The wizard consists of several tabbed pages
representing each step in the procedure and is designed to help you upgrade to the
most recent version of Openads 2.4 with the minimum of manual intervention. You
can’t click a tab to reveal a page; use the control buttons at the foot of the page to
move from step to step. This ensures that the upgrade is properly carried out in the
right order. A progress bar at the top of the page shows how much of the procedure
you have completed in percentage terms.
1. Welcome : The first page welcomes you to the application and offers
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important advice about referring to the online documentation before

continuing. When you are ready to carry on, click Continue
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2. Terms : This page gives essential license information about Openads. Before
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you can continue with the installation, you must agree to the terms and
conditions of the GPL license. Click the I Agree button to proceed.
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3. Policy : This page explains Openads' Privacy and Data Usage Policy. Please
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review this information to learn about the data that Openads collects and how
it might be used. You must agree with this policy before continuing with the
upgrade. Note the Synchronisation settings section - select the the Check
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for Updates checkbox if you want your copy of Openads to alert you to
T
software updates. Click the I Agree button to proceed. The wizard checks
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for previous installations for a few moments before revealing the next page.
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4. System check : In this step, Openads checks your system to ensure that
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your PHP installation is properly set up, that the File Permissions for the
application are properly set and whether a previous installation of Openads is
detected.
If
a previous version is detected, the upgrader carries out a database schema
integrity check to ensure that the schema has all the correct tables, columns
and indexes for that version. If it detects any of these elements missing it will
report the problems in general terms in the Application check section of the
T
page. For more detailed information you can look in the install.log, where you
T
will find the names of the missing elements.

If no problems are reported and the version can be upgraded, click Continue.
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5. Login : Type the Administration interface username and password of your

T T
existing installation in the appropriate fields. Click Continue.

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6. Database setup : This page displays detected database settings from your
T T
existing installation. Check the settings to ensure they are correct. If they are
not correct, you can amend the settings in your configuration file, then go
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back to the start of the upgrade wizard. When you are satisfied the settings
are in order, click Continue.T T
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After ensuring that your database details are correct, clicking continue begins
the process of altering your database. This may take some time as it will
create backups of any tables that will be altered and also make backups of
your configuration file. The screen refreshes to report that your database has
been upgraded successfully. Click Continue.T T
TIP
After an upgrade you can use the Settings page -> Product Updates tab ->
Manage Past Updates and Backups option to view information about your
upgrade history including details of backup tables that exist. From here you
can delete backup tables and leftover logfiles and configuration backups.
7. Configuration setup : The penultimate step in the upgrade process shows

T T
important configuration settings. Ensure the settings are correct. You can
revise them if they are not as expected. Remember that Openads relies on
the accuracy of information in these fields if it is to function properly. Click
Continue.
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8. Finished! : You have completed the upgrade successfully. This page

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contains valuable advice about Maintenance and Security which you are
encouraged to read. They reminds you of a couple of important next steps;
firstly that a maintenance file should be run every hour and secondly that the
hostname.conf.php (e.g. www.example.com.conf.php) file is locked to prevent
T T T T
inadvertent or unauthorised changes to it. You can find your configuration file
in the /var directory of your Openads installation. Click Continue.
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Your Openads upgrade opens in the Inventory>Advertisers & Campaigns page by

T T
default. You can now continue working with your new version of Openads.
Read the Maintenance topic in this chapter to satisfy yourself that you have set up a
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maintenance schedule correctly.
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5.5 Configuring Maintenance upgrade

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Openads requires a maintenance script be run each hour in order to function

correctly. The script summarises the previous hour's raw data into statistics, activates
and deactivates campaigns, recalculates banner delivery priorities and send out
email-based reports.
There are several ways to schedule the maintenance script to be run, the most
common being the built-in automatic maintenance and scheduling a hourly task to
trigger the maintenance script.
Openads will continue to serve ads even if the maintenance is not executed, but
running without maintenance for long periods will have undesirable consequences.
When maintenance is finally run all outstanding raw data will be processed.
Without maintenance Openads is unable to recalculate the priorities, which means
high priority campaigns and campaigns that have either an expiration date or a fixed
number of impressions will be delivered more often than is wanted. If you are having
problems with the delivery of these types of campaigns always check if the
maintenance script is running first.
Built-in Automatic Maintenance

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Openads built-in automatic maintenance uses banner delivery to trigger outstanding

maintenance tasks. It is enabled by default on new installations and means that you
don't have to create a scheduled task on your server for maintenance.
Automatic maintenance waits 5 minutes after the scheduled maintenance task should
have been run to ensure that any manually scheduled maintenance has time to
complete.
You might choose to leave automatic maintenance running even if you have set up a
scheduled maintenance task (below). In this case automatic maintenance will notice
when the scheduled maintenance task is not run as scheduled and will trigger the
task.
You can enable and disable automatic maintenance in the Settings>Maintenance
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page.
You can view the current maintenance status by checking the
Settings>Maintenance page, then choosing the Maintenance option from the drop-
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down list.
You can view the log of maintenance runs in Settings>User Log, where automatic
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maintenance runs are identified by a separate icon.

Although Openads built-in automatic maintenance is a useful feature, you may find
that scheduling maintenance as a task is a more flexible method and better suited to
your needs. The following section discusses the various alternatives for setting up
scheduled maintenance tasks.
Scheduled Maintenance
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The maintenance script can be triggered by executing a locally run script or by calling
the script URL on the webserver. Where possible we recommend running the script
locally.
The most common techniques for scheduling the maintenance tasks on both
Linux/UNIX and Windows servers are described below. For people unable to execute
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scheduled tasks on their server we have also included a section on using external
cron service.
Scheduling tasks on Linux and UNIX based servers

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If you are using a Unix-based server such as Linux, BSD, Solaris or MacOS X, you
can use the cron daemon to automatically run the maintenance.php file. You can edit
your scheduled tasks using the crontab utility. If you don't have permission to use
crontab, please contact your service provider or server administrator.
In most cases you will need shell access to your server to add a new scheduled task.
After using telnet or ssh to login to your server use the following command to export
your existing scheduled tasks to a text file:
crontab -l > cron.txt
After exporting your existing tasks to a text file you can use any text editor you want
to add tasks. Because every server or service provider is different it is not easy to
provide a way to schedule tasks that will work on every server. Depending on the
configuration of your server you can use one of the following tools to actually run the
maintenance file: curl, fetch, lynx or wget. To find out which is supported by your
server simply type the name of the tool on the command-line. If you get a message
'command not found' the tool isn't supported on your server.
Based on which tool your server supports add one of the following lines to the
cron.txt file:
# if your server supports curl:
0 * * * * curl -s -o /dev/null
# if your server supports fetch:
0 * * * * fetch -o /dev/null
# if your server supports lynx:
0 * * * * lynx > /dev/null -dump
# if your server supports wget:
0 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null
After you changed the cron.txt file and added the line for the tool you want to use,
you need to import the file back again into the cron daemon. To do this type the
following command on the command-line:
crontab cron.txt
Using cPanel to schedule maintenance tasks on Linux and UNIX

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based servers
An alternative method of creating a cron job on Linux/UNIX servers is by using
T
cPanel. The general procedure is as follows: T
1. In cPanel, click Cron jobs in the main display of the interface;

2. Click Advanced (Unix style) to access the Cron Manager;
T T
3. Enter an email address to which reports can be sent (effectively the output of
the command run by the cron job) in the field provided;
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4. Select the frequency of the job in the boxes provided; for example:
o Minute :1
o Hour : *
o Day : *
o Month : *
o Weekday : *
In this example, 1 minute past the hour is chosen simply to avoid the typically 'busy'
time for the server on the hour.
Now enter the command you wish the cron job to run; for example:
curl -s -o /dev/null
http://the_proper_domain/maintenance/maintenance.php
(where the_proper_domain indicates your full Openads url)
Don't forget to save your changes to set up your cron job. Note that this procedure
does not apply precisely to all versions of cPanel and there may be some variations
in your particular version.
Scheduling tasks on Windows 2000 and XP servers

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If you are using a Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP server you can use the Scheduled
Tasks to automatically run the maintenance file. However there is no standard tool
available to actually run the maintenance file.
Downloading wget
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The first thing to do is to download wget, which is a command line utility to get the
contents of a file stored on a web server. Wget is available for all kinds of operating
systems, including Windows. After you have downloaded the zip file you need to
copy the wget.exe file to the directory where Windows is installed. Wget is not part of
Openads and needs to be downloaded separately. Up-to-date download locations
are listed on the wget homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/wget.html
Creating a batch file

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The next step is creating a small batch file which will call the wget utility with the
correct parameters. This file can be executed as a Scheduled Task later on. You can
use Notepad to create a new file and add the information below, then save the file as
phpads.bat. You can save the file anywhere you like, but it is wise to keep it in a
location that isn't going to change, and isn't accessible by the web server. Also make
sure to specify the correct URL inside the batch file, the URL below is just an
example.
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Creating the scheduled task

T
The next step would be to actually add a new Scheduled Task. You can find all
Scheduled Tasks inside a directory inside the Control Panel.
Now click on Add Scheduled Task. The wizard will begin and after you click on Next
it will ask you for the program to run. Just click on Browse... and select the batch file
you just created. Now you need to give this Scheduled Task a name and select to
perform this task daily.
Click on Next and set the Start time to 0:01 and choose to perform this task every
day.
If you click Next the wizard will ask you for your username and password.
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After you supplied your username and password click on Next. Make sure to select
Open advanced properties..., because you will need to make some modification to
this task. Now click on Finish.
To make sure this task runs hourly you will need to go to the Schedule tab and select
the Advanced... button. Now check Repeat task and make sure the task is repeated
every hour. Also select the radio button Time and set the value to 00:01. Now click
OK to close this dialogbox and click Apply to save all settings.
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Using an external cron server

T
If your server doesn't support Scheduled Tasks or cron jobs, it is still possible to run
the maintenance file every hour automatically, by using an external cron server.
Cronservices.com
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For a fee, cronservice.com allows you to add as many scheduled tasks as you want
by using a simple web based interface. After logging in at cronservices.com, you
need to specify which task you want to run by clicking the Add new job button.
If you want to run a job hourly you need to select all hours. Don't select a date, day of
week or month. Then enter the full URL of the maintenance file in the Script URL
field. For example: if you installed Openads on http://www.example.com/Openads,
the full URL would be
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http://www.example.com/Openads/maintenance/maintenance.php. After entering a

job name you can click on the Insert button.
Checking if the maintenance task is running

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The maintenance task is very important for the functionality of Openads. Without
running the maintenance task every hour many different problems can occur.
Because of this it is important to check whether the maintenance task is running
properly.
If you log in to Openads and the maintenance task has not run in the past twenty-four
hours the following warning is displayed. If you see this warning dialog you should
look into why the maintenance task isn't running properly.
Apart from the warning dialog displayed above, there is another way to see if the
maintenance task is running properly. If you have enabled the option Log hourly
priority calculations on the Administrator settings page a log of the priority
calculations will be stored in the User log. If this option is enabled, but there are no
logs visible in the User log, then the maintenance task is probably not running
correctly.
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6. Openads 2.4 Inventory

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This chapter deals with all of the operations necessary for delivering advertising to
your website efficiently and reliably.
You can read about:
• Managing advertisers
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• Managing campaigns
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• Linking campaigns to zones

HTU UT
• Banners, how to add and manage banners

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• Linking banners to zones

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• Specifying limitations to the delivery of banners

HTU UT
• Managing publishers
HTU UT
• Managing zones
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• Specifying zone types

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• Chaining zones
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• Generating ad tags for zones

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• Channels and how to use them

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• Displaying banners using direct selection

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6.1 Advertisers
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Advertisers run ad campaigns and supply the banners that belong to each ad
campaign. Before you can add banners to your ad server you must first create an
advertiser and at least one campaign.
You can view a list of existing advertisers in the Inventory>Advertisers &

T
Campaigns page. Use the sort control (resembling a small chevron) to sort your list
T
of advertisers in either ascending or descending order.

A small blue triangle adjacent to a table row shows that it can be expanded or
collapsed. A rightward-facing triangle indicates that the entry can be expanded. Click
the triangle to expand the entry. A downward-facing triangle shows that the entry has
been expanded. Click the triangle to collapse the entry. When you expand an
advertiser in the list, you reveal its campaign or campaigns. When you expand a
campaign, you reveal the banner or banners it contains.
At the foot of the page, a summary of the quantity of advertisers, campaigns and
banners is reported, including how many of the campaigns and banners are currently
active.
Read Managing advertisers to learn how to create advertisers and specify their
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properties.
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Managing advertisers
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You can add new advertisers on the Advertiser & Campaigns page by clicking on the
Add new advertiser button.
An advertiser has a number of properties that need to be set before it can be added
to your system. The Name, Contact, and E-mail fields are mandatory. The advertiser
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will not be added to your system if they are not completed.

Each advertiser has a unique name that is used in the administrator interface to
differentiate between the different advertisers. You can't create two advertisers with
the same name, even though they have differing id numbers. Type the name in the
Name field. Type the name of the contact for this advertiser in the Contact field.
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When reports are e-mailed automatically to an advertiser, this name is used in the e-
mail message.
The e-mail address of the contact for this advertiser must be supplied in the E-mail
field. The Language field is used to specify the native language of the contact for this
advertiser. The language you specify here is used for reports sent by e-mail and for
the user interface of the advertiser interface.
You can send advertisers an advisory e-mail after a campaign is activated or

deactivated. The e-mail message explains the change in campaign status. If you
want this message to be sent, select the E-mail when a campaign is automatically
T
activated/deactivated checkbox. T
A campaign report includes the statistics of all the banners in campaigns owned by
this advertiser. These reports are sent by e-mail to the address you specified in the
basic information E-mail field. The number of days between reports can also be
specified. If you want to send a regular campaign report, select the checkbox called
E-mail campaign delivery reports. Enter the period between reports required in the
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Number of days between campaign delivery reports field.

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If you want advertisers to view statistics for their campaigns and banners, you can
specify a login username and password for them. It is also possible to give
advertisers special permissions, which allow them to make changes to their settings
and banners.
If the checkbox Allow this user to modify his own settings is set the user is able to
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change his own advertiser properties, including:
• Advertiser contact name;

• Contact e-mail address;
• Campaign delivery repoprt settings;
• Language setting;
• Login password.
If the checkboxes Allow this user to deactivate/activate his own banners are selected
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the advertiser is allowed to deactivate or activate his banners. By deactivating a

banner an advertiser can temporarily remove it from consideration for delivery.
Deactivating and activating are split into two separate permissions, because in
certain circumstances you might not want to give an advertiser the ability to activate
a banner that you deactivated yourself. If you do not want to provide access to the
Advertiser interface, you can leave the username and password fields blank.
Click the Next button to save your new advertiser information and move on to
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creating a campaign owned by the advertiser. See Managing Campaigns.

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Conversion tracking
83B
Many people are interested in more than just tracking how many people arrive on
their web site by clicking an ad. The other half of the equation is to track what people
do on the web site, and if they make a purchase or sign up for an account. For
example, if you offer a credit account and you want to track how many applications
get filled out as a result of your ads, you may want to put a tracker on the application
confirmation (or 'thank you') page, so you can see how many 'conversions' happened
as a result of people clicking on your media.
Basically, a small image beacon or Javascript script can be placed on each page that
you want to track. Every time that a viewer arrives at the page, a 'tracker impression'
is made. Openads then links these tracker impressions to the most recent click or
view that was made within a defined timescale 'window'. A window is the amount of
time allocated in which to search for a valid click or view. For example, if a tracker
impression is made at noon on January 20, and the 'click window' is defined as 1
day, Openads will search through all of the clicks from January 19 at noon until
January 20 at noon, and match the most recent click to the tracker impression.
In addition to tracking conversions, you can also track variables which are a part of
the conversion. For example, on an e-commerce site, the amount spent on a sale
(e.g. basket value) can also be tracked. On a registration site, the registered email
address can also be tracked.
Trackers
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To set a tracker, select the advertiser to which you wish to associate a tracker from
the Advertisers & Campaigns page. The Advertiser properties page is displayed.
T T T T
Select the Tracker overview tab related to this advertiser. Here you can create a new
tracker by clicking Add new tracker.
T T
The Add new tracker page is displayed. Here you can specify the Name,
T T
Description and Conversion type of the new tracker in the Basic information section
of the form. There are three conversion types available from the drop-down list; Sale,
Lead and Signup.
The Default conversion rules section lets you specify the Click window and View
window parameters, and their status.
Note the check box that permits you to link newly created campaigns by default to
the tracker. This can save you time manually linking new campaigns to the tracker.
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Note that a conversion rule is the period of time after a click or a view during which a
conversion is counted. For instance, selecting "10 days" in the Click window
parameter means Openads 2.4 will search through all of the clicks from the period
beginning 10 days from the creation of the tracker and match the most recent click to
the tracker impression. Thus if a visitor clicks on an ad, the fills out an application
form with 10 days, this is counted as a conversion. Add a tracker for each page that
you want to track. Remember to click Save Changes to commit your settings to the
database.
The Linked campaigns page is displayed on saving the new tracker. Here, you can
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select the campaigns owned by the advertiser that you wish to link to the tracker you
have just created.
Simply select the checkbox to the campaign(s) you wish to link. You can update the
default status of the chosen campaign from the drop-down provided, if required :
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Click Save Changes to confirm your selection(s).

T T
The Tracker Variables page is displayed. This is where you can add variables (such
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as basket value). Click the Add variable link to display the page for creating a new
variable.
Once you have saved the variable (if any), the Append tracker code page displays;
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here you can specify code to be appended to each Javascript tracker impression, if
required. On clicking Save Changes, the Invocation code page displays. This is
T T T T
where the code for your tracker is generated:

You have two options for generating tracker code, namely Image Tag and Javascript
Tag. Note that if you are using Javascript tracker variables, you must choose the T T
Javascript Tag option. The Trackercode includes advice about how to handle the
Image Beacon Code. This is the code you copy and paste to the appropriate location
on your website.
Note that View tracking (the View window setting) requires significantly more
resources than Click tracking (e.g. there are usually 1000 times more views than
clicks). Setting view tracking to 30 days, for instance, would be very resource
intensive.
Linked Trackers
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In the Linked Trackers tab of the Campaign Properties page, you can review any
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trackers that are linked to this campaign. Click the name of a tracker in the list to view
its properties and attributes. If there are no trackers available to link to this campaign
and you wish to add one, click the Advertiser Properties link in the left-hand panel,
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then, in the Advertiser Properties page, select the Tracker Overview tab. Here you
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can add a new tracker. Read about adding a tracker.

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6.2 Campaigns
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A campaign is a useful entity that lets you group together any number of banner ads,
of any size, that share common advertising campaign requirements. Grouping
banners within a campaign means that you do not have to define the delivery settings
for each ad separately. A campaign must belong to an Advertiser and can only be
created if there are advertisers available.
In this section you can read about:
• Managing campaigns
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• Linking campaigns to zones

HTU UT
• Setting a cap on the delivery of campaigns

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Managing campaigns
85B
Adding a new campaign

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On creating a new advertiser, (by completing the Add new advertiser form), you are
T T
directed automatically to the Add new campaign page where you can add a new
campaign.
You can add new campaigns to existing advertisers by navigating to an advertiser's
T T
properties page, selecting the Campaign overview tab and clicking the Add new
T T T
campaign link at the top of the page.

T
Basic information
134B
In the basic information section, give your new campaign a name.
By default, a new campaign is given the owning advertiser's name appended by "-
Default". You can change it as required.
Inventory details
135B
A campaign has a number of properties that you can specify which influence the
delivery of the banners it owns, such as Impressions booked, Clicks booked,
Activation date, Expiration date and Priority.
The Impressions Booked field specifies the number of impressions (or Ad views)
before this campaign can end. Every time a banner from this campaign is delivered
the specified value is decreased by one. Once this value reaches zero, the campaign
expires. Usually this value is set to the number of impressions the advertiser bought
for this campaign. If you do not want the expiration of the campaign to depend on a
set number of impressions, select the Unlimited checkbox.
It is also possible to set the expiration of a campaign after a preset number of clicks.
The field Clicks Booked specifies the number of user clicks before this campaign is
ended. Each time a user clicks on a banner from this campaign this value will be
decreased by one. Once this value reaches zero the campaign will be ended. If you
do not want to end the campaign after a specific number of clicks, select the
Unlimited checkbox.
In the Conversions Booked field, enter the quantity of conversions desired before the
campaign expires. Conversions are determined by configuration settings, the general
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criterion being that the product or service offered on the website has been converted
from a query to a sale.
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Contract details
136B
This section of the page is dedicated to specifying the start and end dates of the
campaign. A campaign can be activated at once (on correct completion of the Add
new campaign process) or on a date specified by you, by selecting the appropriate
option button.
If you choose to specify a date, use the drop-down lists to define the day, month and
year of activation. You cannot backdate the start of a campaign. Similarly, you can
specify a date for the expiry of the campaign, or you can effectively create a
campaign without an expiry date by selecting the option button against do not expire
this campaign on a specific date.
The Revenue Information section allows you to specify how the advertiser will pay
the publisher for the campaign and how much they will pay according to your choice
from the drop-down list. CPM denotes cost per 1000 impressions, CPC is cost per
click, CPA is cost per conversion (or acquisition) and Monthly Tenancy represents a
fixed cost per month.
Priority information
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Priority level allows you to choose an option that influences the probability of delivery
in terms of the number of times the banners owned by this campaign appear in their
allotted zones.
In the course of creating a campaign, you can set its priority level. Priority levels
available are Exclusive, High or Low.
Setting the priority allows you to configure the target daily delivery of banners for this
campaign. Some priority options are only available according to choices you make in
other parts of the form.
Available Priority Options according to settings:
Impressions booked Expiration Date Priority available Distribution
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Value entered Date set High Automatic
Value entered do not expire Exclusive, Low None
Value entered do not expire High Daily figure
Unlimited Date set Exclusive, Low None
Unlimited Date set High Daily figure
Unlimited do not expire Exclusive, Low None
Unlimited do not expire High Daily figure
Note that if you enter a value for Impressions booked and select a specific Expiration
date, then only High priority and Automatic distribution is available. Automatic
distribution will distribute the remaining impressions evenly over the remaining
number of days of the campaign.
Exclusive
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Choosing Exclusive overrides other linked campaigns. Distribution is limited to setting

a campaign weight in the None field.
High Priority
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As the form suggests, a high priority choice is primarily for paid campaigns. Openads
attempts to comply with the daily target of impressions for the campaign before
allocating views to low priority (usually in-house and unpaid-for) campaigns. If you
set a value for Impressions booked and a specific Expiration date, your only option is
to allow Openads to calculate the target number of impressions automatically each
day of the campaign’s duration; otherwise you can set the distribution target manually
by selecting either Impressions, Clicks or Conversions from the drop-down list and
entering an appropriate daily figure for the chosen attribute.
The effectiveness of the application in this respect depends upon available statistical
data. On an hourly basis, Openads decides the likelihood that a banner belonging to
this campaign will be displayed, based on banner delivery limitations and delivery
capping, campaign settings, current statistics and predictions based on previously-
recorded statistical information. Bear in mind that as Openads adjusts the probability
of each campaign every hour, a lot can happen in that hour. If, for example, your
website is visited a lot more than predicted in any one hourly period, Openads can’t
compensate for that until the next hour.
Openads adjusts the probability factor if data shows that it is 'slipping back' in relation
to other 'on target' campaigns. Prediction and compensation routines work to comply
with the specified targets, but their effectiveness is always constrained by the depth
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of available data. This can affect the evenness in which impressions are distributed in
the course of the day. In order for Openads to be able to carry out these routines,
you must have maintenance set up correctly and properly scheduled. Read how you
do this in the Maintenance section of this guide.
Important: If the target number of impressions is zero or the field is left empty, the
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campaign will be deactivated.

High priority has a range of values from (1) to (10). The higher the selected value, the
greater weight this campaign has in relation to others.
Low Priority
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Low priority campaigns are usually reserved for campaigns that do not pay for space.
In most cases, these are house campaigns which advertise other parts of the
website. If the high or medium priority campaigns do not use all the predicted
impressions to fulfil their target, low priority campaigns will be delivered to fill the
remaining impressions.
You cannot set an impression target for a low priority campaign. Instead, you can set
a Distribution weight. This is particularly useful in deciding priorities between different
low-priority campaigns. A low priority campaign with a weight value of 2 will be
displayed twice as often as a low priority campaign with a weight of 1. The final
number of impressions for a low priority campaign depends, of course, on the
impressions remaining after high priority campaigns have used their 'quota'. Thus, if
high priority campaigns use 8000 out of a total of 10000 impressions to meet their
target, only 2000 impressions will be available for low priority campaigns. A
campaign weight must have a value of 1 or greater if it is to remain active.
Here’s another example showing how weighting influences low priority campaigns:
Total of 50000 impressions
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Campaign A Target 10000 : Actual impressions: 10000

Campaign B Target 20000 : Actual impressions: 20000
Total impressions used to meet set targets: 30000
Impressions left for low priority campaigns: 20000
Campaign C Weight 3 Actual impressions: 15000 (20000 / 4 (number of campaigns)
* 3 (weighting))
Campaign D Weight 1 Actual impressions: 5000 (20000 / 4 * 1)
Important: If the weight of the campaign is zero or if the field is left empty, the
campaign will be deactivated.
Delivery Capping
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This powerful feature can help you target campaigns more productively. Read about
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delivery capping for campaigns. UT
Miscellaneous - Companion positioning.

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There might be situations where you have two or more zones on a page where you
wish related banners to appear together. Select this checkbox so that banners from
the same campaign appear in those zones simultaneously and are not mixed with
banners from a different campaign.
Remember to click Save changes after you have added or amended campaign
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settings.
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Copying Campaigns
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Openads allows you to copy existing campaigns easily. Select (click) the campaign
you wish to duplicate in the Advertisers & Campaigns page.
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The Campaign properties page is displayed. Click the Duplicate link in the left-
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hand panel's Modify menu. This copies the currently-displayed campaign.

After a brief pause, the new campaign is displayed. By default, the new campaign's
name has 'Copy of' appended to the beginning of the campaign name. Otherwise, all
the properties of the new campaign remain the same as the original campaign from
which it was copied.
You can change the name of the new campaign by amending the Name field in the
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Basic information section of the page. Indeed, you can amend any of the properties
of the duplicated campaign if required. Remember to click the Save Changes button
to commit your new information to the database.
Copying an existing campaign is a rapid way of creating new campaigns that have
common properties. You may have similar campaigns across separate advertisers.
You can copy a campaign in one advertiser and move it to another advertiser if
desired.
Moving Campaigns
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Moving a campaign is a simple operation. Select (click) the campaign you wish to
move in the Advertisers & Campaigns page.
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The Campaign properties page is displayed. In the left-hand panel, you will notice
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the Move to section of the Modify menu.

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The drop-down list contains all of the available advertisers to which you can move
the currently-displayed campaign. Choose the destination advertiser from the list and
click the arrow button to start the move.
After a brief pause, the page refreshes, showing the new campaign and the banners
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it owns is now part of the destination advertiser.

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Linking campaigns to zones

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Campaigns must be linked to zones in order to deliver the campaign's banners to

your website. Read about creating publishers and adding zones.
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There are two methods for linking campaigns and zones:
1. by linking campaigns to zones;

2. by linking zones to campaigns.
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Linking campaigns to zones

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In the Administrator interface, navigate to the zone to which you want to link a
banner. You can do this by clicking the required zone in the index of publishers in the
Publishers & Zones page:
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In the Zone properties page that displays, select the Linked banners tab.
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In this page you identify the banner you want to link to your zone. The page is divided
into two sections. In the top section, you have three options for linking banners to
zones, available from the drop-down list:
Link banners by parent campaign

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Use this method to find suitable banners from a specific campaign. In the lower
section of the page, select the Advertiser that owns the campaign you want from the
drop-down list:
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In the drop-down list that appears next to the Advertiser list, select the appropriate
campaign:
Click the arrow button to the right of the list to confirm your choice. Openads displays
the banners that are compatible to the zone in size and type at the foot of the page.
The banner or banners shown are now linked to the zone. Note that you have
effectively linked the owning campaign to the zone and that all compatible banners in
that campaign would be linked.
Important : If a banner that you expect to see listed is not shown, check that the
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banner's dimensions are compatible with the zone's size. This is especially important
when an existing ad is updated - make sure that its dimensions have not been
changed, otherwise the link to the zone will break.
Linking zones to campaigns

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In the Administrator interface, navigate to the campaign you want to link to a zone or
zones. You can do this by clicking the required campaign in the index of advertisers
in the Advertisers & Campaigns page. In the Campaign properties page, select
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the Linked zones tab.

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A list of available zones is displayed in the page:
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Select the zones to which you want this campaign linked. This means that all
banners owned by your campaign can be delivered to the selected zones, provided
that they are compatible with the zone type and size. Click Save changes. The
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Banner overview page is displayed. This shows the banners that are owned by your
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campaign. At the foot of the page statistics related to the banners; Impression, Click
& Conversion credits and the expiration status of the campaign are reported.
You can check whether the banners in your campaign have been linked to the zones
by clicking on a zone in the Linked zones page. Select the Linked banners tab in
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the Zone properties page that displays to view the list of banners linked to the zone.
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Read about linking banners to zones.

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Delivery capping of campaigns

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Delivery capping is a way of displaying ads more productively by putting a cap on the
number of times a campaign, a zone or a banner is shown to a particular visitor.
You can specify delivery capping of campaigns when creating a new campaign, or in
the Campaign properties page of an existing campaign.
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You can specify two properties:
1. If you want to put a cap on the total number of times a visitor sees banners
from this campaign, enter the total number in the Limit campaign views to:
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total field.
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2. You can limit the number of times a visitor sees banners from this campaign
in a single session by entering the maximum number of views in the Limit T
campaign views to: per session field. T
The number of views is recorded in a cookie. You can reset the views total after a
specified period by setting the period in the Reset view counters after: field.
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As delivery capping is based on the use of cookies, it will work only if cookies are
enabled in the visitor's browser.
If the visitor has disabled cookies the delivery of the campaign's banners will not be
capped. For example, if you use this feature to show a particular campaign only once
a session, the visitor may see it more frequently. Also, if the visitor deletes all of his
existing cookies, the information about capping will be lost and the visitor will see the
banner again until the new limits are reached.
You can cap the delivery of individual banners and of zones.
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6.3 Banners
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In Openads, a banner is the creative that is displayed as advertising. Banners are

always part of a campaign and can only be created if there are campaigns available.
This chapter deals with adding a banner to your inventory; linking banners to zones
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so that you can publish them on your website; applying limitations to the delivery of
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banners and capping delivery of banners to a particular visitor.

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Managing banners
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You can create a new banner on the Advertisers & Campaigns page or on each
campaign's Banner overview page.
Banner types
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Banner type Icon Description
Local banner (SQL) These are stored locally by Openads in your database.
Local banner (Webserver) These are stored locally by Openads in a designated

directory or an FTP site.
External banner These are stored remotely, typically on the Advertiser’s

server.
HTML banner These are banners defined by HTML code and may
comprise plain text, forms, multiple images and external
banner networks, such as Google AdSense.
Text ad A text banner consisting of plain text, best exemplified by

Google’s “Sponsored Links”.
Specifying banners
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When you make a choice from the banner types drop-down list, the page refreshes to
show a form appropriate to the type of banner you have elected to add. Each form
has a common section that specifies keyword selection, description and banner
weighting.
Note: You can deactivate any of the possible banner types in the Banner Settings
page of the Administrator interface. If you do not see all of the banner types shown in
the table above, you may find that the missing types have been deactivated.
Adding a local banner (SQL)

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Openads supports a large number of image formats for local banners, as

summarised below :
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Format Type
.jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .png Image
.swf Flash movie
.mov Quicktime movie
.rpm Real Media movie
The local banner form is divided into four sections. The first section deals with
selecting the desired image as a banner for your campaign. Click the Browse button
to locate the image on your system. The full path to your banner is reported in the
Select the image.., field.
The next section of the form lets you decide the destination address for the banner
you are adding. The destination is the URL to which a user is directed when they
click the banner. Enter the URL in the Destination URL field. Note that the full URL
must be added, including http://.
When a user clicks your banner, you can specify the frame in which the destination
URL will open. Enter this location in the Target field. If you do not specify a frame,
_blank is assumed.
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Frame targets include _top, which opens a destination page in the window occupied by the
current frameset. i.e. replaces the frameset completely; _blank, which opens a destination
page in a new window; _parent, which opens the destination page in the frame that contains
the current frameset. This only differs from _top when 'nested frames' are used; _self,
which opens the page in the same frame as the link.
The next section of the form deals with text options related to the banner :
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The copy you type in the Alt text field will be displayed in the user's browse in the
form of a 'tooltip' when the mouse is passed over the banner. It displays in the
location of the image if the image file has not yet downloaded to the browser. It also
supplies the legend to a popup window's title bar. If you do not want any text to be
displayed then leave this field blank.
You can change the status message in a browser by entering your alternative in the
Status text field. The status message appears in the status bar at the bottom left of
the browser window. When you pass the mouse cursor over a banner, the
destination URL is shown in the status bar by default. In javascript-enabled browsers,
your alternative text will replace the default. If you do not want to replace the default
status message, leave the field blank.
Note that some browsers and browser plugins disable the ability for Javascript to
display the status message. If you do not see a status message, this may be the
cause.
You can add text to appear below your banner in the Text below image field. When
this text is clicked in the browser, the user is directed to the web address you
specified in the Destination URL field. You can format this text using basic HTML
tags. Leave the field blank if you do not wish to add any text below the banner.
Adding an external banner

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Openads supports a large number of image formats for external banners, as

summarised below :
Format Type
.jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .png Image
.swf Flash movie

An external banner is stored remotely on an external server, typically the advertiser’s
server. If the image file you wish to use is stored in this way, then you should select
the External banner option from the banner type drop-down list. The appropriate form
for this type of banner is displayed after a brief refresh of the page.
In the External URL field, enter the location of the image you want, in the form of a
complete URL, including the image filename.
In all other respects, the external banner form is the same as the local banner form,
but note that in the text options section, you must also specify the size of the ad, as
Openads can’t detect the size of an image held remotely:
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Adding an HTML banner

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You can add a banner using raw HTML code. If you wish to add a banner using
HTML, then select the HTML banner option from the banner type drop-down list. The
appropriate form for this type of banner is displayed after a brief refresh of the page.
Enter the desired HTML code in the HTML banner field. Use the Return or Enter key
to start a new line of code if required. Since this code will be inserted within the target
page, there is no need to enter <html> or <body> tags.
Note that Openads inserts the HTML directly into the page that hosts the ad tag. Any
omitted character (like a closing bracket) in this field will adversely affect the display
of the web page that hosts the ad tag.
The checkbox Alter HTML to enable tracking of AdClicks permits you to specify that
Openads can alter the HTML code you add so that click tracking can be logged.
You can paste HTML from a supported third-party ad server into the text box. Select
the corresponding third-party ad server from the drop-down list box just beneath the
HTML banner text box.
In all other respects, the external banner form is the same as the local banner form.
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Adding a text banner

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Text ads, as the name implies, consist of plain text with the option of including basic
HTML to format it. Naturally, no image needs to be created or specified for this kind
of ad. If you wish to add a text banner, then select the Text banner option from the
banner type drop-down list. The appropriate form for this type of banner is displayed
after a brief refresh of the page.
Enter the desired copy into the Text ad field. Use the Return or Enter key to start a
new line of text if required.
In all other respects, the external banner form is the same as the local banner form.
Flash banner support

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Openads can handle Flash banners just like normal banners. For example, you can
simply click Add new banner in the usual way and then select the type of banner you
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want to add. If you choose Local banner (Webserver) or Local Banner (SQL) you can
select your .swf file and upload it as usual. It is also possible to link to an external
Flash banner (External Banner) and specify the full URL to the .swf file.
Openads automatically detects the type of the file and generates the HTML code
needed to display the banner during invocation.
After adding a Flash banner, you may notice Openads does not track clicks for that
banner. This is normal behaviour. Usually the destination URLs are hard-coded in the
Flash banner and if the user clicks on the banner the Flash player will tell the browser
to visit the hard-coded URL directly. Once this URL is set by the creator of the Flash
file it is not usually possible for the ad server to replace it with its own click-logging
mechanism. Different ad servers use different mechanisms to overcome this
problem, but usually it requires the creator of the Flash file to supply a specially
prepared version of it.
Openads has a unique feature which allows you to use any Flash file (even
compressed Flash MX files) and still log AdClicks for that particular banner. The only
requirement is that the links must already be defined in the Flash file (customarily as
a hard-coded URL). Thanks to a small Flash editor which is included in Openads, the
hard-coded URLs can be converted and changed to any value you want. You don't
need to have any knowledge about Flash to enable the tracking of AdClicks.
In Openads, if you create a new banner and select a Flash file, a small checkbox
called Check for hard-coded URLs will be displayed below the upload field.
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Once you submit the new banner and if this box is selected it will automatically check
for hard-coded URLs inside the Flash file. If Openads finds any in the uploaded file,
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you are asked whether you want to convert these URLs. To the left of each hard-
coded URL you will find a checkbox, which allows you to turn off the conversion for
specific links. Also you can change the hard-coded URL and the target frame from
within this screen.
When you are finished making the needed adjustments, click on Convert and the
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URLs will be converted to Openads' own AdClick tracking mechanism.

Openads also supports transparent Flash banners. Choose "Yes" from the
Transparent background (Flash only) drop-down list in the Banner properties page if
your flash banner has a transparent background. Openads changes the embedding
code accordingly to allow the transparency. Note, though, that Openads does not
transform the Flash file and can not make it transparent - the original file must have
transparent parts in the first place.
Keywords, Description and Weight

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All Add banner forms share a common set of fields in which you can specify
Description properties and a Weight value.
The Keywords field can be used to assign one or more keywords to the banner.
These keywords are used by the delivery engine to determine which banner must be
displayed when using direct selection. Read about delivering banners using Direct
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Selection. If you want to assign multiple keywords to the same banner, use a space
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to separate them.
The Description field allows you to enter some meaningful text for your own use to
identify the banner. This content is optional and is not used by the application in any
operations.
The Weight field is reserved for entering a value that will determine the banner
weighting and influences the likelihood that a particular banner may be displayed
within a campaign. Thus, a banner specified with the weight of 3 is likely to be
displayed three times as often as a banner with the weight of 1 within the same
campaign.
Completing the banner ad process

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Once you are satisfied with the information you have entered, click the Save
Changes button to complete the process. The information is committed to the
database.
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By default, the Delivery Options page is displayed, since this is the next logical step
in the process. Read about delivery options in Delivery limitations.
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The image you chose for this banner is displayed at the top of the page and is fully-
functioning, in that the links, alt text and status text you specified are all active.
When you have specified Delivery Limitations, the Linked Zones page is displayed.
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Read about linking banners to zones.

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Banners - advanced
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The Advanced page deals with using additional code added to the HTML generated
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during banner invocation for this zone.

For instance, if you wish to show another form of banner - a popup, for example - on
the same page(s) as the zone to which this banner is linked, you can add the code of
the popup here. This code is executed each time this banner from this zone is
delivered.
You can paste the code in the text input box. The code can be from any of the
supported ad servers. See also Zones - Append and Prepend.
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Copying banners
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Openads allows you to copy existing campaigns easily. Select (click) the banner you
wish to duplicate in the Advertisers & Campaigns page.
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The Banner properties page is displayed. Click the Duplicate link in the left-hand
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panel's Modify menu. This copies the currently-displayed banner.

After a brief pause, the new banner is displayed. By default, the new banner's name
has 'Copy of' appended to the beginning of the banner name. Otherwise, all the
properties of the new banner remain the same as the original banner from which it
was copied.
You can change the name of the new banner by amending the Description field in the
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banner properties form. Indeed, you can amend any of the properties of the
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duplicated banner (including the image file) if required. Remember to click the Save
Changes button to commit your new information to the database.
Copying an existing banner is a rapid way of creating new banners that have
common properties. You can copy a banner in one campaign and move it to another
campaign if desired.
Moving Banners
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Moving a banner is a simple operation. Select (click) the banner you wish to move in
the Advertisers & Campaigns page.
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The Banner properties page is displayed. In the left-hand panel, you will notice the
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Move to section of the Modify menu.

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The drop-down list here contains all of the available campaigns to which you can
move the currently-displayed banner. Choose the destination campaign from the list
and click the arrow button to start the move.
After a brief pause, the page refreshes, showing that the banner is now part of the
destination campaign.
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Linking banners to zones

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Of course, the primary purpose for setting up publishers and the zones owned by
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those publishers is to deliver and display designated banners to them. After you have
created a zone you can link banners to it. Only linked banners will be displayed in the
zone. You can link banners to a zone on the Linked banners page of each zone. In
addition to this it is also possible to link a banner to a zone on the Linked zones page
of each campaign or banner.
1. By linking banners to zones;

2. By linking zones to banners.
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Linking banners to zones

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Banners must be linked to zones in order to deliver them to your website. You can
link banners to zones as part of a campaign, or link them individually. Read about
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linking campaigns to zones. UT
In the Administrator interface, navigate to the zone to which you want to link a
banner. You can do this by clicking the required zone in the index of publishers in the
Publishers & Zones page.
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In the Zone properties page, select the Linked banners tab.

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In this page you identify the banner you want to link to your zone. The page is divided
into two sections. In the top section, you have three options for linking banners to
zones, available from the drop-down list :
Link banners by parent campaign
Use this method to find suitable banners from a specific campaign. In the lower
section of the page, select the Advertiser that owns the campaign you want from the
drop-down list:
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In the drop-down list that appears next to the Advertiser list, select the appropriate
campaign:
the banners, that are compatible to the zone in size and type, at the foot of the page.
The banner or banners shown are now linked to the zone. Note that you have
effectively linked the owning campaign to the zone and that all compatible banners in
that campaign would be linked. See also Linking campaigns to zones.
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Link individual banners

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Use this method to link a single banner to your selected zone. In the lower section of
the page, select the Advertiser that owns the banner you want from the drop-down
list:
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In the drop-down list that appears alongside the Advertisers list, select a campaign to
which your banner belongs:
In the new list that appears alongside the Campaigns list, select a banner to link to
the zone. Only banners that are compatible in size and type with the zone are listed:
the banner at the foot of the page. The banner is now linked to the zone.
NB: If a banner that you expect to see listed is not shown, check that the banner's
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dimensions are compatible with the zone's size. This is especially important when an
existing ad is updated - make sure that its dimensions have not been changed,
otherwise the link to the zone will break.
Linking zones to banners

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In the Administrator interface, navigate to the banner you want to link to a zone or
zones. You can do this by clicking the required banner in the index of advertisers in
the Advertisers & Campaigns page.
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In the Banner properties page, select the Linked zones tab. Only zones that are
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compatible to your selected banner in type and size are listed here:
Select the zone or zones to which you want this banner linked. Click Save changes.
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Delivery limitations
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Delivery limitation is a powerful feature of Openads that lets you create very specific
situations in which banners are displayed. The purpose of this feature is to give you
the opportunity of tailoring banner delivery to reach the optimum market for the type
of advertising that you carry.
You can specify delivery limitations for banners in one of two ways:
• By clicking the Delivery options tab in the Banner properties page;

• By clicking the Delivery link in the Banner overview tab of the Campaign
properties page:
Specifying delivery limitations

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The Delivery options page is the place where you can set limitations on the delivery
of a banner to its assigned web sites. In addition, you can specify certain parameters,
called Delivery Capping, where you define an overall limit or 'cap' to the banner
delivery.
Delivery limitation by date and time

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Date
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You can limit the display of a banner to a particular date or period bounded by a
starting date and expiration date. The drop-down list allows you to qualify your date
selections:
Thus, you can create a limit that ensures a banner is displayed on or later than 7
June 2006:
If you want to create a delivery limitation that is bounded by a start and finish date,
then you can combine two date delivery options for the same banner. The second
date delivery option would represent the end or expiration date:
Note the logical operator drop-down list. You can choose from AND and OR. In the
case of the example cited above, AND is the proper choice to combine the two dates.
Now, a banner will be limited to displaying between a date on or after 7 June 2007
and 7 October 2007.
Day of week
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You can limit the display of a banner to a day or number of days of the week. In the
following example “Is not any of” is selected in conjunction with the choices in the
form, to limit display to just Monday and Tuesday:
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Hour of day
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You can even specify the display of a banner limited by hour of the day. In the
following example, the banner is limited to display between 6pm and 9.59pm only.
Of course you can combine the time-based delivery limitations to restrict the delivery
of a banner to a very specific time period (such as a certain hour of a certain day
within a particular week).
Delivery limitation by client browser

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Domain
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Domains are expressed in human-readable form and typically include a country-

specific suffix (such as .de, .fr etc.). Users who connect to the internet have a domain
name in addition to their unique IP address. It is possible, therefore, to limit banner
delivery by targeting the user's domain.
Using the domain to determine in which country the user resides is necessarily
accurate, since a user in one country might connect to the internet using an ISP
based in another country.
The domain limitation can match a specific portion of the users domain. If you specify
.nl as the limitation, for instance, you can deny or allow all users who are online in
The Netherlands.
The value of this is that if you own a website which targets different countries and a
client wants to show his banner in only one specific country, you could allow this
banner to be displayed only from that specific country. The client could also provide
you with the same banner translated in various languages, in which case, you can
specify the appropriate country suffix with each banner.
IP Address
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You can limit the display of a banner to users that have a particular IP address.
Typically, you would specify a range of IP addresses to target. You can do this in one
of two ways:
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1. Using wild (*) cards;

2. Using the base IP and the net mask.
Using wild cards is straightforward. For example, specify 217.205.*.* to target all IP
addresses from 217.205.0.0 to 217.205.255.255.
The alternative is to enter the base IP and net mask in the following format:
217.205.0.0/255.255.0.0
This targets all IP addresses from 217.205.0.0 to 217.205.255.255. A valuable
advantage in specifying a client IP address is in targeting users of a specific ISP
(Internet Service Provider). ISPs are allocated blocks of contiguous IP addresses.
You can target those blocks using either of the above-mentioned methods.
User agent
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When users visit a web site, a text string is sent to identify the user agent to the
server, and forms part of the HTTP request. This contains information such as
application name, host operating system and language. You can use this limitation to
target a particular user agent.
If there is some other parameter in the Useragent string that you want to target (e.g.
Javascript version), you can set a limitation on a pattern in the useragent string. Note
that this can be unreliable - each browser and OS has a different useragent string,
and the formats of the string vary widely. In most cases, you will only want to target
either an OS or a browser, and should use those limitations rather than Useragent.
Delivery limitation by website properties

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Page URL
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You can specify a particular page URL so that the banner is displayed only to those
visitors who visit via a particular website address.
Referring page
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By using this delivery limitation it is possible to show a banner when the URL of the
referring page you visited contains a specific text. For example if an external website
has a link to a page on your website you can show a specific banner targeted at
visitors from that website.
Important: This limitation works only if you use the Javascript tag to show your
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banner. This limitation will not work if you are using any of the other invocation types.
This is because Openads uses Javascript to determine the referrer on the page that
contains the ad tag. Also note that browser support for the referrer header is
decreasing, as a result of privacy concerns.
Source
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"Source" in this case refers to the source parameter of the banner invocation code. In
most cases, 'source' is used to tell the ad server the specific section of the web site
that the ad attached to. Thus, by limiting by a source, you are limiting the display of
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the banner to only one section (channel) of the site. You have six options to qualify
your keyword entry :
If the source parameter, for instance 'headlinesection', agrees with that defined in the
banner invocation source parameter, then the banner will be displayed.
This feature can be useful to show a banner only on a specific page or section of
your website. The advantage of using this condition is it is easy to change the display
location of a banner by using this limitation.
Note the "Regex" options. You can specify that your site source value matches (or
does not match) a regular expression. You can learn more about regular expressions
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here. UTH
Channel
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A channel is, effectively, a pre-defined set of limitations that usually relate to a

specific set of subject matter on your website. Read how to create Channels. The
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channels you have defined are listed in this section:
Select the desired channel(s). The delivery limitations grouped within the channel
determine how the banner's delivery is limited.
Delivery limitation by geography

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By using Geotargeting you can determine in which country or continent a specific

banner is delivered. For example, if you have a banner intended only for a specific
country you can use this feature to make sure the banner is only delivered to people
who are currently in that country. The Geotargeting capabilities are built into
Openads 2.4, but are not available by default, because you need to use a suitable
plug-in that holds information about the geographical location of the IP address of the
user. For more information about the GeoIP database, see http://www.maxmind.com.
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Refer to the Settings chapter to learn how to activate Geotargeting. During delivery,
Openads 2.4 determines the IP address of the visitor and looks inside the database
for the geographical location of the user. This information is then compared to the
requirements you set for the banner.
Limiting delivery by country

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If you want to show a banner to users from a specific country you can use this
limitation. Select the country where your banner must be shown and Openads will
attempt to detect the location of the user before the banner is delivered. If the
location of the user matches the country you specified, the banner will be shown,
otherwise the banner will not be considered for delivery. If for some reason the
location of the user can't be detected, the banner will be shown also. It is also
possible to select multiple countries at the same time. If the user is located in any of
the selected countries the banner will be considered for delivery.
Limiting delivery by continent

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Similar to limitation by country, in this case you can select a entire continent. Since
Openads knows in which continent a country is located, it can use the detected
country to deliver banners only to users from the selected continent. If the country of
the user is not located in the selected continent, the banner won't be considered for
delivery. You can select multiple continents at the same time.
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Delivery capping of banners

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You can specify delivery capping of banners when creating a new banner, or in the
Delivery options page of an existing banner.
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1. If you want to put a cap on the total number of times a visitor sees this
banner, enter the total number in the Limit banner views to: total field.
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2. You can limit the number of times a visitor sees a banner in a single session
by entering the maximum number of views in the Limit banner views to: perT
session field.
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If the visitor has disabled cookies the delivery of the banner will not be capped. For
example, if you use this feature to show a particular banner only once a session, the
visitor may see it more frequently. Also, if the visitor deletes all of his existing
cookies, the information about capping will be lost and the visitor will see the banner
again until the new limits are reached.
You can cap the delivery of campaigns and of zones. See also Delivery limitations.
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6.4 Publishers
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After you have added banners to your inventory you need to define how banners are
delivered from your ad server to website visitors. Before you can define which
banners are displayed you need to create at least one Publisher. Usually the first
publisher you define is used for your own website. If you have more websites that
use the same ad server, you can also create a new publisher for each of your other
websites. The delivery model of Openads is ready for multiple websites, and each
can have multiple zones where banners are displayed. Additionally, you can add new
publishers for partner websites that use your ad server, but are not under your
control.
Read about creating and managing publishers.

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Managing publishers
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New publishers can be created on the Publishers & Zones page, by clicking Add new T
publisher. T
Basic information
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A publisher has a number of properties that need to be set before it can be added to
your system. The Name, Website, Contact, and E-mail fields are mandatory. An error
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message is displayed if you do not complete all of the mandatory fields.
Each publisher must have a unique name that is used in the administrator interface
to differentiate between different publishers. Type the name in the Name field and T T
enter a suitable short form of the name in the Mnemonic field. This value is used by
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Openads in the channel script of publisher invocation.

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In the Website field, add the full address of your website (including http:// or https://),
add a contact name in the Contact field and an e-mail address for the publisher in the
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E-mail field.
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The option Make the zones owned by this publisher publicly available is a special
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setting which can be used to make the zones from this website available to other
publishers. The significance of this option becomes clear when you choose to create
a chain of zones. Briefly, where banners can't be delivered to a zone for some
reason, you can create a chain of zones so that the next in the chain of zones can be
used to deliver banners. You can specify that another publisher can be made
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publically available so that compatible zones from that publisher can be used as part
of the chain. Read more about Zone chaining.
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Login information
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If you want publishers to be able to have some control over their zones and view
publisher statistics, you can specify a login username and password for them.
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Enter a suitable name in the Username field and a memorable password in the
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Password field. Usernames must be unique (among publishers) and may contain any
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alphanumeric characters, including spaces. Passwords may contain any

alphanumeric characters, including spaces. Passwords should be a minimum of 1
character, with no maximum limit. Both usernames and passwords are case-
sensitive.
The checkboxes associated with the login information grant the logged-in user
various degrees of control over what can be done in the publisher interface.
Select Allow this user to modify his own settings if you are happy to let the publisher
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change his the Contact name, E-mail address and Login password.
Select Allow this user to modify his own zones, if you wish to grant the publisher the
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right to change their zones without the right to choose which banners are linked to
their zones. When you make this selection, you can then make detailed choices
about how much the user can modify his zones. Select Allow this user to define new T
zones if you wish to grant the publisher the right to create new zones and specify
T
which banners are displayed in the new zones. Select Allow this user to delete T
existing zones if you wish to grant the publisher the right to delete existing zones,
T
which includes any newly-created (and thus existing) zones.

Select Allow this user to link banners to his own zones if you wish to grant the
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publisher the right to decide which banners are to be displayed in their own zones,
remove banners from their zones and link new banners to their own zones.
Select Allow this user to generate invocation code if you wish to grant the publisher
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the right to generate ad tags for the zones owned by this publisher.
Select Allow this user to view zone statistics if you wish to grant the publisher the
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right to view statistics for the zones owned by this publisher.

Note that it is only possible for a publisher, with the appropriate rights, to make
changes to their own zones.
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You can specify that the publisher can be restricted to viewing only approved or
pending conversions. Note that when creating and editing conversion trackers, you
can choose the status of the conversion, namely ignore, pending or approved. If you
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select Allow this user to view only approved or pending conversions, you prevent the
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user from viewing conversions whose status is ignore.

If you do not want the publisher to log into the interface, do not create a username
and password.
Payment information
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[to be added]
Other information
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[to be added]
Click Next to confirm your publisher settings (when creating a new publisher) or
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Save changes when you are editing an existing publisher. When creating a new
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publisher, the Zone properties page displays after you click the Next button. Read
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about creating zones. UTH
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6.5 Zones
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Zones can be fully configured in the administrator interface, allowing you to link
campaigns and banners from your inventory to a zone. After you have set up your
zones you generate a small piece of HTML called bannercode or invocation code,
which you can place on your website. The invocation code directly calls your zone to
deliver the banners that are linked to it.
Zones always belong to a publisher, so you need to create a publisher before you
can create any zones. Read about creating publishers.
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In this chapter, you can read about:
• how to create a zone and specify its properties;

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• the types of zone you can create;

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• how to chain zones to prevent the non-display of banners;

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• append code to a zone;

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• the probability of banner delivery to a zone;

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• how to generate invocation code for a zone;

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• capping zone delivery.

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Managing zones
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On creating a new publisher, (by completing the Add new publisher form), you are
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directed automatically to the Zone properties page where you can create a new
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zone.
You can add new zones to existing publishers by navigating to a publisher's
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properties page, selecting the Zone overview tab and clicking the Add new zone
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link at the top of the page.

Each zone has a unique Name which can be used to differentiate between all the
available zones. In addition you can specify a Description of each zone, which is also
displayed in the administrator interface. This way it is easy to determine what a
specific zone is used for.
The Zone type you select determines how the banners of this zone will be displayed
on your website. The options available from the invocation code generator depend on
the type you select here. Read about Zone types.
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Unless the zone type is a Text ad, the zone will have a specific width and height and
only banners with the same dimensions will be shown in that zone. When you create
a new zone you can choose the Size of the zone from a drop down menu which
includes all the standard dimensions, defined by the IAB. It is also possible to specify
the width and height of the zone yourself. This should only be necessary when you
use non-standard banners.
In certain conditions you might need a zone which isn't limited to a specific size, for
example when you want to create a bar of different banners which have the same
width, but may have a different height. Note that you can choose a Custom size. You
enter the custom sizes in the Width and Height fields provided below the drop-down
list box.
When choosing a custom size, you have the option to enter a specific size (e.g. '468'
for the width), or a wildcard ('*'). A wildcard can be entered for the width, height, or
both.
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For example, a banner of the size of 120x* means that all banners with the width of
120, and of any height will be eligible banners for linking to this zone.
Remember to click Next when you have finished specifying your new zone, or Save
changes when you have finished editing your zone.
You are automatically directed to the Advanced page, where you can specify
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additional properties related to the zone. These include Chain settings, Delivery HTU UTH HTU
Capping and Appending code to banners displayed by this zone. When you have
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completed any settings in this page, click the Save Changes button. T T
The next page that displays, Linked banners, deals with linking banners to this zone
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. This is where you link ads to the zone for display in your website. Once you have
linked the required ads, you generate invocation code for placement on your web
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page(s).
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Zone types
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Banner, button or rectangle option

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Choose this option to have banners displayed as part of the content of the website.
Interstitial or Floating DHTML

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Choose this option to have banners displayed on top of the website content. These
banners typically appear on loading of the page and disappear after a defined period
of time.
Popup
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Choose this option to have banners appear within a separate window or popup. This
window can appear either above or below (pop-under) the browser window in which
the website is displayed.
In each of the above options, you can specify the size of the zone you define for the
type in the Size drop-down list box. Openads uses this size to limit the available
banners that can be linked to this zone. For example, if a zone size is 468x60, you
will not be able to link a 120x600 banner. The available options are all industry-
recognised (IAB) standard sizes.
Text ad
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If your choice was the text ad zone type, then the part of the form relating to size
appears dimmed, since a text ad's dimensions are rendered by its content, rather
than any physical boundary.
Email/Newsletter zone
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Choose this option to create a zone that can be served in an html email. You create
the zone in the normal way, selecting the Email/Newsletter zone option. Click Save
Changes, and then select the Invocation code tab to view the generated ad tag. Add
this tag to your html email template.
There are some important conditions to setting up this zone:
• When you create a campaign to include your email/newsletter zone, you must
specify activation and expiration dates for it. If you do not, an error alerts you
to this omission when you attempt to link your banner to an email/newsletter
zone.
• Secondly, you cannot link a campaign to an email/newsletter zone; you must

link at the banner level. You can do this by adding the desired banner to the
campaign, viewing the banner properties page, then selecting the Linked
zones tab. Here, you can choose the email/newsletter zone to link to your
banner.
• You can use only plain banners in this type of zone - such as .gif, .jpg, .png;
you cannot use .swf files or html ads.
• Ads cannot be rotated through email tags since the click-through has to be
hard-coded in the tag, as most email clients do not support cookies. Without
cookies you cannot determine the destination URL.
The concept behind this tag is that you can provide a single tag to be served in an
email, and that this does not need to be changed when the banner creative changes.
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Zone chaining
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A situation may arise where a zone is not currently linked to active banners, or where
delivery limitation or capping settings prevent linked banners from being displayed. In
such a situation, creating a chain of zones can prevent the non-display of banners.
You can set a chain of zones in the Advanced tab of the Zone properties page.
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This tab is automatically displayed after you have created a new zone.
Chain settings
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In a chain of zones, if the first zone in the chain is unable to display banners, then the
second zone in the chain is invoked.
The Chain settings section permits you to define the application's behaviour in the
event that this zone cannot deliver its linked banners.
Select the Stop delivery and don't show a banner option if you prefer to have no
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banners displayed should the linked banners in this zone not be delivered. Note that
this means an empty space would be left in the target website in the event that no
banners can be delivered to this zone.
Select Display the selected zone instead option if you wish to deliver banners from
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another zone if the linked banners in this zone cannot be delivered. The zones
available to you will be listed in the associated drop-down. Note that only zones from
the same publisher are made available, unless another publisher's zones are made
public. Read Managing publishers for information about making a publisher's zones
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public.
In the Advanced tab of the Zone Properties page you can also append code to a
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zone and specify zone delivery capping.

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Zones - Append and Prepend

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Appending other invocation codes

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In certain conditions you might want to append another code to the HTML generated
during invocation. For example, if you wish to show another form of banner - a
popup, for example - on the same page(s) as particular zone, you can add the code
of the popup to the desired zone. This code is executed each time a banner from this
zone is delivered.
You can paste the code in the text input box. The code can be from any of the
supported ad servers.
If the type of your zone is set to Text ad, there will be some additional settings for you
to configure on the Advanced page. By using the bottom two fields, you can
determine the layout of all text ads delivered by this zone, by specifying the HTML
which must be prepended and appended to the text ad.
Note that the append and prepend settings only get delivered if an ad is delivered. If
a blank ad is delivered, the append and prepend settings do not get delivered. If you
want to override this behaviour, and deliver the append and prepend HTML
regardless of whether an ad is delivered, then set the 'Append even if no banner is
delivered' radio button to 'yes'.
You can specify these settings in the Advanced tab of the Zone properties page.
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Zones - Probability
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The Probability page of each zone (Zone properties - Probability tab) includes a list
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of all the banners which are currently considered for delivery for this zone. The list
includes the name and id of the banner and also includes the probability of how often
a banner is delivered.
If you want to change the probability of a specific banner you can do this by changing
the priority of the campaign to which this banner belongs or by changing the weight
of the specific banner. Please note: these change not only affect this zone, but all
zones to which the banner or campaign are linked to.
If a linked banner isn't listed on the Probability page it simply means this banner isn't
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currently considered for delivery. If for some reason you think that a particular banner
should be listed, please read the Openads website troubleshooting FAQ for
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information about how to resolve this problem.

If there aren't any banners currently considered for delivery the list will be empty,
unless you created a chain between this zone and another. If this is the case, you will
see how the chain is followed and the end result of the chain. In this case, you might
see banners listed, which aren't linked to the current zone, but linked to a different
zone in the chain.
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Zone invocation tags

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Zone Invocation
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Where you wish to generate ad tags for the delivery of banners linked to a particular
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zone, you use zone invocation. Navigate to the Invocation code tab in the Zone
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properties page. Here you will see a form, the elements of which vary according to
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the type of zone for which you wish to create ad tags.
Completing this form sets parameters for the generation of ad tags. You must click
Generate or Refresh to update the bannercode once you have set or changed
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parameters.
The generated code is displayed in a Bannercode text box. You can copy this code
to the clipboard for subsequent pasting in the website page.
Each type of zone has its own form for adding parameters to the generated
invocation code.
The bannercode you generate is influenced by two factors:
1. The type of tag (banner invocation) you select in the Invocation code page;
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2. The type of zone you select when adding a zone to a publisher.
The type of banner invocation available to you in the drop-down list depends upon
the type of zone for which you are generating bannercode.
Each zone type has its particular range of parameters, although some parameters
are common for all zone types.
Generating Ad Tags for Banner, button or rectangle type

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For example, let us assume you wish to generate ad tags for a Banner, button or
rectangle zone type. In the Invocation code page, you now have a choice of
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invocation tag that corresponds with the zone type.
You must choose one of the options from this list for banners to be displayed in this
zone. The parameters available to you in the remainder of the form vary according to
your choice of zone type and lets yoou set conditions for the way banners are
handled in this zone:
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Target frame
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Note the optional parameter that permits you to specify a target frame when the
T
visitor clicks on the displayed ad. Adding a target here overrides any target setting
made for a specific banner.
Source
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This optional parameter works in conjunction with delivery limitations. See Delivery
T HTU
limitations for more information. UT
Support 3rd Party Server Clicktracking

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You can set this parameter to support clicktracking by a 3rd party server. This
T
provides additional statistical information that can be viewed in reports.
Interstitial type
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The form in the Invocation code page for generating ad tags for an Interstitial or
Floating zone type varies according to the chosen Style. There are four styles :
1. Cursor
2. Floater
3. Geocities
4. Simple
This display defaults to the Geocities style. The first three parameters are common
throughout the invocation code forms;
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Target frame
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Note the optional parameter that permits you to specify a target frame when the
T
visitor clicks on the displayed ad. Adding a target here overrides any target setting
made for a specific banner.
Source
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This optional parameter works in conjunction with delivery limitations. See Delivery
T T
limitations for more information.

T

T T
T

You can set this parameter to support 'cache-busting' by a 3rd party Ad Server. This
T
adds "cb=INSERT_RANDOM_NUMBER_HERE" in the generated code, providing a

placeholder for the Ad Server's random number insertion.
Openads sets the required 'no cache' headers with all tags to ensure that banners
are never cached. However, some ISPs may still cache content despite that request.
Therefore, while you do not need to change INSERT_RANDOM_NUMBER_HERE, it
is recommended you do so since changing the URL by having a random number in it
helps to prevent that kind of 'unwanted' caching of content.
Geocities style
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This style of interstitial draws its inspiration from the Yahoo Geocities banner ads
displayed on its members pages. These are displayed in a top of the browser
window. A banner thus displayed can have its state changed by a user via buttons
located above it. The banner can be collapsed by a button click such that only the
control buttons are displayed. A collapsed banner can be closed by a subsequent
button click.
This parameter controls the location of the interstitial:
There are three options, allowing you to choose the left top, right top or centred (at
the top) positions.
This text provides the legend for the control to close the interstitial, located just below
the banner. When a user clicks on this text, the interstitial will be dismissed.
The interstitial can be collapsed automatically after a defined period (in seconds).
The associated controls for re-displaying or closing the banner are still available for
use.
You can specify padding to be inserted between the border of the banner and the
boundary of the interstitial. The value you enter corresponds to pixels.
Cursor style
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As the name suggests, this style displays a banner adjacent to the user's mouse
cursor and will follow it wherever the cursor is moved on the page.
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The first two parameters are common throughout the invocation code forms;
This optional parameter permits you to specify a target frame when the visitor clicks
on the displayed ad. Adding a target here overrides any target setting made for a
specific banner. See Adding a banner for more information about specifying a target
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frame for banners.

This optional parameter permits you to specify the name of the current page. This
works in conjunction with any delivery limitations that you may have set for a banner.
See Delivery limitation options for more information.
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You can set Smooth movement so that the banner does not 'chase' the cursor, but
moves smoothly in its track, at a predetermined speed. If this feature is not enabled,
the user will be unable to click the banner.
This option list is only available if Smooth movement is enabled. It determines the
speed at which the banner tracks the mouse cursor's path.
By default this parameter is set to "No". If you enable this setting, the banner is not
displayed when the cursor is at rest. This prevents the banner from obscuring the
content of the page when the mouse is not being moved.
Delay before banner is hidden
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This setting determines the length of time the cursor should be at rest before the
banner is hidden, when Hide the banner when the cursor is not moving is enabled.
Transparency of the hidden banner
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You can set a percentage transparency of the banner when the cursor is at rest and
Hide the banner when the cursor is not moving is enabled. This setting only functions
with Internet Explorer 5.5 or above. The percentage you set will determine how
visible the banner will be and consequently how much of the page content can be
viewed 'through' the banner.
Horizontal shift
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This setting (in pixels) determines the banner's horizontal position in relation to the
mouse cursor. The default value is 10.
Vertical shift
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This setting (in pixels) determines the banner's vertical position in relation to the
mouse cursor. The default value is 10.
Floater style
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This type displays a banner that displays on top of the page content. It gravitates
from one side of the browser window to the other, according to settings you specify in
the parameters.
The first three parameters are common throughout the invocation code forms;
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frame for banners.

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This parameter determines the direction in which the banner moves.
Note that the banner will move beyond the window boundary until it eventually
disappears. You can specify that the banner repeat this movement in the Looping
parameter.
This parameter allows you to specify a number of times the banner moves across the
page while being viewed.
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Choosing Always active sets the banner to repeat continuously until the user leaves
the page.
The default value is 3. This determines the speed at which the banner travel across
the page. '1' is the slowest, '5' is the fastest.
Where you have defined Looping to be more than '1', you can specify a pause, in
seconds, between the disappearance of the banner at the end of its travel across a
page and its re-appearance on the other side of the page. The default value is 10
seconds.
This parameter specifies the banner's vertical location in relation to the top of the
page, in pixels. Entering 300 in this field, for instance, places the banner's top border
300 pixels below the top of the page.
This parameter allows you to determine left- and right-margin settings for the banner.
Setting this parameter enables the Left margin and Right margin parameters. If this
parameter is not set, the margins are set as the left and right borders of the window.
Here you can specify a margin from the left border of the window, in pixels. Thus,
entering a value of 200 would place the left margin 200 pixels from the left border of
the window. Note that specifying a negative number will start the measurement from
the right border.
Here you can specify a margin from the right border of the window, in pixels. Thus,
entering a value of 200 would place the right margin 200 pixels from the right border
of the window. Note that specifying a negative number will start the measurement
from the left border.
Enable this parameter to set the background of the DHTML layer to transparent.
Set this parameter to specify a background colour.
Use the colour picker to specify a colour. Note that monochrome values are also
available. The chosen colour is displayed in the sample box to the left of the picker.
Simple style
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This style displays a banner inside a box on top of the web page content.
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frame for banners.

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Set the horizontal position of the banner
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Use this parameter to determine the horizontal position of the banner on the page.
Choose one of three options : Left; Center and Right. Note that these positions are
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calculated in relation to the overall window size, so if the user re-sizes the window,
the banner will re-locate accordingly.
Set the vertical position of the banner
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Use this parameter to determine the vertical position of the banner on the page.
Choose one of three options : Top; Middle and Bottom. Note that these positions are
calculated in relation to the overall window size, so if the user re-sizes the window,
the banner will re-locate accordingly.
Set this parameter if you wish to offer the user the option of closing the banner by
clicking a typical close button in the top-right corner of the bounding box.
Enter a value, representing seconds, after which the banner should close
automatically. If no value is entered, the banner does not close automatically.
This parameter determines the space, in pixels, between the displayed banner and
the interstitial. The default value is 2.
This setting allows you to specify a value, in pixels, to shift the default horizontal
position defined by the Horizontal alignment parameter. Thus, if the interstitial is left-
aligned, the horizontal shift value you specify is inserted between the left window
border and the left edge of the interstitial. You can use this to be more precise with
the positioning of the banner.
Vertical shift
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This setting allows you to specify a value, in pixels, to shift the default vertical
position defined by the Vertical alignment parameter. Thus, if the interstitial is top-
aligned, the vertical shift value you specify is inserted between the top window border
and the top edge of the interstitial. You can use this to be more precise with the
positioning of the banner.
Background color
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In this context, the background is that area occupied by the interstitial, 'beneath' the
banner within it. Effectively, then, the visible area of the background will be whatever
you specified in the banner padding parameter. With this setting, you can specify the
colour of that area from the colour picker, by clicking the colour strip. Note that
monochrome is also available.
Border color
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The border is a one-pixel wide line defining the boundary of the interstitial. You can
specify the colour of the border from the colour picker, by clicking the colour strip.
Note that monochrome is also available.
Popup type
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Popup ads are those that appear over (or indeed under) the current browser window,
contained within a separate window which is sized to match the dimensions of the
banner it contains.
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TIP
There is a minimum size limit of the window in most browsers, so it is recommended

that the banner ad you with to display in the popup should be of at least that
minimum size - 200mm x 200mm is advised. If a banner smaller than the minimum
window size is displayed, there will be an area of 'dead space' around it.
The popup window has a title bar. The legend of this title bar is, by default,
'Advertisement', unless you specified an alternative in the alt text field of the Add
Banner form.
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frame for banners.

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Pop-up Type
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Select the desired option button to choose between a window that displays above
(over) the current browser window (Pop-up) or one that displays under (behind) the
current browser window (Pop-under).
Instance when the pop-up is created
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This parameter determines when the desired popup is displayed. You can choose
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Immediately; When the page is closed or you can specify a period in seconds before
the popup appears to the user.
Initial position (top) & Initial position (left)
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These two parameters allow you to specify the precise position of the popup when
first it is displayed. The 'top' position being the number of pixels you enter measured
from the top border of the browser window; the 'left' position being the number of
pixels you enter measured from the left-hand border of the window. If no values are
specified here, then the popup window will display in the top-left corner of the
browser window.
Automatically close after

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Normally, your popup will remain in view at all times unless dismissed by the user.
You can override this default behaviour by specifying a period, in seconds, after
which the window will close. The period of time you specify will start counting down
from the moment the popup is displayed.
Window options
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This section of the form allows you to specify popup window controls and capabilities.
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Delivery capping of zones

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You can specify delivery capping of zones in the Advanced tab of the ZoneT T T
properties page. T
1. If you want to put a cap on the total number of times a visitor sees the
banners linked to this zone, enter the total number in the Limit zone views to:
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total field. T
2. You can limit the number of times a visitor sees banners delivered to this
zone in a single session by entering the maximum number of views in the
Limit zone views to: per session field.
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If the visitor has disabled cookies the delivery of the banners linked to this zone will
not be capped. For example, if you use this feature to show a particular zone only
once a session, the visitor may see the banners linked to it more frequently. Also, if
the visitor deletes all of his existing cookies, the information about capping will be lost
and the visitor will see the banners again until the new limits are reached.
You can cap the delivery of campaigns and of individual banners. See also Delivery
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limitations. UTH
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6.6 Channels
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A channel is a group of delivery limitations which can be selected when specifying

banner delivery limitations. This is particularly relevant when you want to provide an
opportunity for advertsiers to target specific groups of visitors who may have an
interest in certain types of subject matter, such as sports or finance, for example.
Channels are associated with publishers and their specification influences the
Publisher invocation code. Read about Publisher invocation.
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You can create a channel by clicking the Channels button in the Publishers & Zones
index:
Where no channels associated with a publisher currently exist, the Channels button
is dimmed.
On clicking the button, the Channel overview page is displayed. Existing channels
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are displayed in this page. Click the Add new channel link to create a new channel.
In the Name field, enter a suitable title for the channel. In the Description field, type a
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description for the channel - it's purpose, for instance. You can add comments about
this channel in the Comments field. Click Save Changes when you have completed
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the form.
The Delivery options page displays. Here you specify delivery limitations for this
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channel. Read more about Delivery limitations.

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The important factor about channel limitations is that you can group delivery
limitations and subsequently refer to the channel when creating a delivery limitation
for a banner. For example, you might create a set of limitations that aims at visitors
who speak English; who have been referred from a specialist website and if the
source parameter is "entertainment":
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When you have finished specifying delivery limitations, click Save Changes.
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When specifying delivery limitations for a banner that is aimed at the visitor whose
interest is "Entertainment", you can select the Site: Channel delivery limitation and
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choose the appropriate channel:
In the above example, the Source parameter of the zone to which the banner is
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linked would have "entertainment" specified as a value.
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6.7 Displaying banners using direct selection

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Direct selection is a method of making a selection from your inventory by putting

together a special selection string and placing it directly in the invocation code. The
content of the selection string instructs Openads which banners to consider for
delivery.
The big advantage of this method is the increased flexibility in selecting banners. As
you can use paths, multiple expressions, logical operators and different types of
statements, direct selection is potentially much more powerful than using zones.
However, there is a price to pay for all this power; because the selection is made
during invocation, you have to change the invocation code every time you want to
change the selection. Bear in mind, too, that because direct selection is much more
powerful, it is also more difficult to implement on your website. Direct selection is only
intended for advanced users.
You specify the banners for direct selection in the Inventory>Direct selection page.
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Here, you choose the type of invocation you require from the drop-down list.
Your next step is to specify the parameters associated with the banner invocation:
In the above example, these are the parameters available to you on selection of the
Javascript tag.
Banner selection - Statements

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The idea behind direct selection is that each banner has a number of properties such
as id, width, height, banner type and even keywords, which can be assigned to a
banner in the administrator interface. These properties are available when making a
selection. For example, with direct selection it is quite easy to show a number of html
banners with a specific size and with certain keywords assigned to it. Also if you want
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to show one specific banner you can easily use the id property of the banner in the
selection string.
A statement is nothing more than an indication of the property you want to look at
and the value the property must be if the banner must be considered for delivery.
Below you will find an explanation of each statement that Openads currently
supports, which you enter in the Banner selection box.
Banner id
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If you want to show a specific banner, the easiest way to achieve this is to use the
banner id statement. The banner id statement consists of the identifier bannerid, a
colon and the id of the banner you are looking for, for example: bannerid:3. Because
of backwards compatibility it is also possible to simply specify the id of the banner,
without the identifier and the colon, for example: 3 is equivalent to bannerid:3. When
you enter multiple statements, you separate them with a semi-colon.
Width
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Every regular banner, except for text ads, have a fixed width. There are two variants
of the width statement, one which allows you to specify the specific width and one
which allows you to specify a range. The first variant consists of the identifier width, a
colon and the exact width you want to use, for example: width:120.
If you do not want to limit the selection to just on specific width you can also use the
second variant and specify a range of allowed widths. The second variant consists of
the identifier width, a colon, the minimal width, a dash and the maximum width, for
example: width:120-160. If you do not want to have a minimum width you do not
have to specify it, it's optional. If it is not specified Openads will consider every
banner that has a width smaller than the maximum you specified, for example:
width:-160. Just like the minimum width, it is also possible to ignore the maximum
width, but you can't ignore both at the same time. You must specify either the
minimum or the maximum. If you ignore the maximum the statement will look like
this: width:160-.
Height
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Just like the previous statement does every regular banner, except for text ads, have
a fixed height. There are two variants of the height statement, one which allows you
to specify the specific width and one which allows you to specify a range. The first
variant consists of the identifier height, a colon and the exact height you want to use,
for example: height:250.
If you do not want to limit the selection to just on specific height you can also use the
second variant and specify a range of allowed heights. The second variant consists
of the identifier height, a colon, the minimal height, a dash and the maximum height,
for example: height:250-500. If you do not want to have a minimum height you do not
have to specify it, it's optional. If it is not specified Openads will consider every
banner that has a height smaller than the maximum you specified, for example:
height:-500. Just like the minimum height, it is also possible to ignore the maximum
height, but you can't ignore both at the same time. You must specify either the
minimum or the maximum. If you ignore the maximum the statement will look like
this: height:160-.
Dimensions
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If you want to show banners which a specific width and a specific width, you don't
have to use the width and height statements, but you can simply use the dimensions
statement, which combines the two previous statements and looks at both the width
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and height parameters of the banners at the same time. The dimensions statement
does not have a identifier and consists of the width of the banner, an x and the
height, for example: 468x60. It is not possible to use ranges for the dimensions
statement.
Text ads
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Apart from regular banners, Openads can also be used to display text ads. Text ads
have no fixed width or height, so the previous three statements can't be used for
selecting text ads. We do have a separate statement for making sure only text ads
are considered for delivery. The text ad statement only consists of the string text ad.
Keywords
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The last statement is also the most powerful and deals with keywords. As described
in the chapter Banners, you can assign one or more keywords to each banner. Read
about Banner properties. You can use the same keywords also as a statement in a
selection string. For example if you assigned the keyword 'sports' to a banner, it will
be considered for delivery if the use 'sports' as a keyword statement. If the banner
contains more than one keyword, for example sports, news and science, you can use
any one of these keywords to select the banner. So using sports will consider the
banner, but using news will also work.
There are currently two reserved keywords which have a special meaning: default
and global. Banners with the keyword global are always considered for delivery.
Banners with the keyword default will be automatically linked to zones without any
linked banners.
Campaign parameter
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Every banner in the inventory is owned by a campaign. By selecting a campaign from

the drop-down list, you restrict the display of banners (as specified in your banner
selection statements) to those owned by the chosen campaign.
When you have completed setting the parameters click the Refresh button to
generate the appropriate invocation code. Note this fragment of invocation code, for
a javascript tag;
which was generated from these parameters:
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7. Statistics
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7.1 Overview
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The Statistics feature provides essential results feedback for both Advertisers and
Publishers of the effectiveness of campaigns and website management. Openads
offers statistical results for AdViews, AdClicks, AdSales, click-through and sales
ratios that can be viewed for advertisers, campaigns, banners, publishers and zones.
This diversity of information can help you make informed judgements on the value of
very specific elements of a campaign, such as visitor AdViews at particular times of
day, or the usefulness of certain zones in relation to their web page position.
The admin interface gives access to statistics gathered by the maintenance scripts
supplied with the application. Statistics are grouped by three tabs - Advertisers &
Campaigns, Publishers & Zones and Global history. Global history shows total
statistical data. Each view has a summary table included at the bottom of the page.
You have a number of options for viewing gathered statistics by specific periods in
the drop-down list. Note that All statistics refers to figures compiled since the
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advertisers or publishers were originally defined.
Specific dates activates the “From” and “To” fields adjacent to the list, where you can
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enter dates to create a ‘custom’ period of results.
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7.2 Advertisers & Campaigns

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As an example, consider statistics for Advertisers and Campaigns for This month.
After making the selection from the drop-down list, the page refreshes to show a list
of your advertisers with their associated statistics.
You can specify the categories (column headings) of statistical data in Settings. Read
about administration settings.
Each advertiser name is clickable, linking to specific statistics for the chosen
advertiser.
You can expand each entry by clicking the small triangle adjacent to a table row. You
expand each entry to view the campaigns owned by the advertiser; in turn, you can
expand each campaign to view its contained banners. In each case, relevant
statistics for the displayed entries are shown for the period chosen in the drop-down
list at the top of the page.
You can click a banner’s link to view results in even more detail. In the case of this
example, clicking the “Downloads Openads 2.4” link reveals daily results for the
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chosen period, last month. Furthermore, you can click on any one day to view an
hourly breakdown of results.
History pages
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When you click an item from your statistical list, a history page opens for the item.
There are history pages for Advertisers, Campaigns and Banners.
Each history page shows a detailed daily breakdown of results for the period you
chose. In a history page you can create a graph of the available statistics and export
the data to an Excel spreadsheet.
You can specify the detail to be shown on the graph by expanding the “Show Graph
of Statistics” link and selecting the categories you want displayed:
Select the checkbox(es) of the data you want to see in the graph, then click Update.
To export data to Excel, click “Export statistics to Excel”. Through your browser’s
control you are given the choice of saving the data to disk (in .xls format) or opening
the data in your local copy of Excel.
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Advertiser history
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When you click an advertiser from your statistical list, the Advertiser history page
displays. Note the associated tabs – Campaign overview, which lists the statistics of
the campaigns owned by the advertiser and Publisher distribution, which lists the
statistics of the websites that have published the banners owned by the advertiser.
Campaign history
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When you click a campaign from your statistical list, the Campaign history page
displays. Here, the associated tabs are Banner overview, listing the statistics of the
banners belonging to the campaign and Publisher distribution, which lists statistics of
the websites that have published banners belonging to the campaign.
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7.3 Publishers & Zones

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You have a number of options for viewing gathered statistics by specific periods in
the drop-down list. Note that All statistics refers to figures compiled since the
publishers were originally defined.
Each publisher name is clickable, linking to specific statistics for the chosen
publisher.
Publisher history
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When you click a publisher name, the Publisher history page displays.
The Publisher history page shows a detailed daily breakdown of results for the period
you chose. Click any one day to view an hour-by-hour breakdown of the statistics. In
a history page you can create a graph of the available statistics and export data to an
Excel spreadsheet.
You can specify the detail to be shown on the graph by expanding the “Show Graph
of Statistics” link and selecting the categories you want displayed:
Select the checkbox(es) of the data you want to see in the graph, then click Update.
A fragment of a typical chart is shown below:
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To export data to Excel, click “Export statistics to Excel”. Through your browser’s
control you are given the choice of saving the data to disk (in .xls format) or opening
the data in your local copy of Excel.
Note the tabs available in the Publisher history page, namely Zone overview and
Campaign distribution.
The Campaign distribution page shows statistics for those campaigns that have
banners displayed by the selected publisher. You can view the results of the banners
belonging to those campaigns here, too.
The Zone overview page lists the zones belonging to the publisher. Click any one of
these to view the Zone history page. This is where you access statistics for the
chosen zone. This page also has a Campaign distribution tab associated with it. This
shows data for campaigns (and the banners belonging to them) that are linked to the
selected zone.
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7.4 Global history

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As the name suggests, global history offers you a chance to view aggregated
statistics that show total activity for all advertisers and their campaigns and banners.
You access the Global history page by clicking the appropriate tab in the main
Statistics display.
In line with other history pages, you can specify a range of periods, create graphs
and export data to Excel. Each view has a summary table included at the bottom of
the page.
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8. Reports
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Openads can generate reports based on collected adserving data for agencies,
advertisers, campaigns and zones. As these reports are produced in .xls format, it
provides an excellent way to analyse data and produce personalised reports in Excel
about your adserving performance.
Creating reports
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Creating your report is simplicity itself. First, click the Reports tab to display the list of
available report categories. Then click the link of the sort of report you want to build.
The report types are grouped by category:
• Admin Reports
• Standard Reports
The Agency Breakdown report summarises impressions, click and conversions for a
specified period for an Agency. Read about creating and managing Agencies.
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On clicking a chosen report link, the report specification page displays. Here,
according to the type of report you choose, you can specify the report’s attributes.
For example:
From the Period drop-down list, choose a date range for the statistics you want to
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include in your report. If you choose “Specific dates” from the period drop-down list,
the “From” and “To” fields adjacent to the list become available, where you can enter
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dates to create a ‘custom’ period of results. From the Campaign list (in this case),
choose your data source.
Openads gives you the option of showing related data in separate Excel worksheets.
In the Worksheets group, the data you can include in each worksheet is shown and
by default all checkboxes are selected. You can deselect any checkbox to exclude a
worksheet if desired.
When you are satisfied with the selections you have made, click the Generate button.
In Internet Explorer 7, you can choose how to handle the file in the typical download
dialog:
Note the file format is .xls. Provided you have Excel loaded on your machine, you
can open the report at once. Note how the data is arranged by worksheet in the
downloaded file:
Below is a fragment of a Campaign Analysis report, in the default style:
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9. Settings
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9.1 Overview
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Openads 2.4 can be extensively configured by using the Settings tab of the
Administrator interface.
Some settings are stored inside a configuration file for speed improvements; other
settings are stored inside the database. Only settings stored in the database can
always be edited. The settings that are stored in the configuration file can only be
edited if the configuration file is writeable by the web server.
Locking and unlocking the configuration file

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The configuration file is stored in the /var directory. The filename is made up of your
website address, appended by .conf.php; for example www.example.com.conf.php.
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Before you can edit the settings stored inside the file you must unlock it and allow the
web server to make changes to it. By default the web server is not allowed to make
changes to the file for security reasons. If you are finished editing the settings you
must ensure the file is locked, otherwise it would be possible for other users on the
same web server to be able to edit the settings.
Unlocking the www.example.com.conf.php file

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If you are using a Windows web server check the properties of the file and make sure
the read-only flag is not set. If you are using a Linux or Unix web server you can alter
the write permissions with the chmod command from the command prompt:
chmod a+w www.example.com.conf.php
If you do not have command line access to your web server then your ftp client
should be able to change file permissions.
Locking the www.example.com.conf.php file

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If you are using a Windows web server check the properties of the file and make sure
the read-only flag is set. If you are using a Linux or Unix web server you can alter the
write permissions with the chmod command from the command prompt:
chmod a-w www.example.com.conf.php
If you do not have command line access to your web server then your ftp client
should be able to change file permissions.
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9.2 Main settings

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Openads can be configured by using the Settings tab of the Administrator interface.
This page contains a series of tabs, the first of which, Main settings, is selected by T T
default.
The advisory at the top of the page reminds you that the configuration file is not
locked. After you have checked and made any changes to the settings, you can lock
this file to secure your system. You can find your configuration file in the /var
directory of your Openads installation. The configuration file's name is comprised of
two parts; your website address appended by .conf.php. For example, T T
www.example.com.conf.php.
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You have a range of settings options accessible from the Choose section drop- T T
down list:
You can read about these options in the following topics:
• Administrator settings;
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• Banner settings;
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• Database settings;
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• Delivery settings;
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• General settings;
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• Geotargeting settings;
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• Interface defaults;
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• Invocation settings;
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• Statistics & Maintenance settings;

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• User Interface settings.

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Note that after you have made changes in the above sections, you must click the
Save changes button to store the settings. After you have clicked on this button you
will be redirected to the next section in the list automatically.
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Administrator settings
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This page comprises five groups of settings:
1. Login credentials;
2. Basic information;
3. Preferences;
4. Synchronisation settings;
5. Timezone information.
Login credentials
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You can change the username and password of the Admin user here. Ensure that
you keep a secure record of the changes you make here. If you have forgotten your
password, follow the password reset procedure.
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Basic Information
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This is where you add or amend the contact details of the admin user.
Preferences
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Here you can specify the default language of the interface in the Language drop-
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down list. Select Admin's delete actions need confirmation for safety if you want a
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confirmation dialog to appear when the user attempts a delete operation. This gives
users an opportunity to cancel a delete action that they may have taken
inadvertently. Remember, you cannot undo a delete in Openads. If you want all
outgoing email messages made by openads (notifying the end of campaigns etc.) to
be recorded, select the Log all outgoing email messages checkbox.
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Synchronisation settings
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You can tell Openads to check for updates to the software automatically; select the
Check for updates checkbox.
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Timezone information
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Set the timezone for your adserver here. If you change the timezone from its original
setting, you may affect the statistics you gather, as the interval since the most recent
scheduled maintenance might then be altered.
configured in PHP
There are two different ways to do this, depending on which version of PHP you are
using.
PHP 4.3, PHP 4.4 PHP 5.0
Setting the timezone in these versions of PHP requires that you export an
environment variable called TZ in your web server configuration. This is obviously
dependent on the web server you are using. As an example, if you are using the
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Apache web server, you can do this with the SetEnv directive:
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SetEnv TZ Europe/London
You should also set the environment variable for your maintenance cronjob, for
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example, at the top of your crontab file, enter:
export TZ='Europe/London'
These examples may be different, if you have a different web server or crontab shell
environment.
PHP 5.1, PHP 5.2
Setting the timezone in these versions of PHP is quite easy! Simply set the correct HTU
timezone in your php.ini file.

UTH HTU UTH
For example, in your php.ini file, set:
[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
date.timezone = Europe/London
Help! I can't do either of those things!
If you do not have access to set the timezone on your server, don't panic! You should
start off by asking your system administrator or your hosting provider to set this up for
you. (Any decent hosting provider will be happy to learn about PHP timezones, and
make the required changes to their setup so that everyone can have it set up
correctly).
Alternatively, you can call "date_timezone_default_set()" on PHP 5.1 and PHP

5.2 or you can set "date.timezone" in a .htaccess file.
If you're still out of luck, however, Openads can be installed without the PHP
timezone setup - Openads will simply make a best guess about which timezone your
server is in, and you can then select a timezone manually if it's wrong. However, we
strongly recommend that you set up the timezone in PHP correctly.
Other Time Issues
It is important that the time on your server is correct, otherwise your statistics may
not be accurate. This is especially important if you are running Openads on more
than one server.
As a result, it is important that you configure your server with an NTP service, to
ensure that your server clock(s) are accurate. See your operating system
documentation for more information.
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Banner settings
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This page covers default settings related to banners. The Default banners section
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allows you to specify a global default banner in the event that Openads is unable to
connect to the database server, or if there is a problem with the database. The
specified banner may also be displayed if there are no active matching banners
available.
Note that this feature is disabled by default (left blank) and can be overridden by
zone chain settings. A default banner specified here is not logged for statistics-
gathering.
The Allowed banner types section lets you specify the types of banner that can be
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used.
These settings determine which types of banner you can specify in the Administrator
interface. Enabled banner types appear in the drop-down lists when adding banners,
for example.
If you select Automatically alter HTML banners in order to force click tracking,
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then Openads will alter HTML banners in order to allow clicks on HTML banners to
be logged. This feature can be overridden on a per-banner basis in the Administrator
interface when you add an HTML banner, by deselecting the Alter HTML to enable
T
tracking of Clicks checkbox. Note: Google Adsense is an easy way to display

T T T
Google text or image ads and is popular among Openads users. With the Alter T
HTML to enable tracking of clicks option selected, Openads can track Adsense
T
clicks by visitors who use Internet Explorer (IE 6 & 7), Firefox and Opera (9) in
Windows. In fact, the HTML in this case is not altered; instead Adsense ads are
T
automatically detected and handled as a special case, using Javascript methods.
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Database settings
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Global database server settings

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Before you can use Openads you need to specify the type of database, username
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and password to use. You did this first during the installation process, but you can
change those settings here. All of these settings are stored inside the configuration
file, so if you want to change these settings the configuration file must be be
unlocked.
Database hostname
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Specify the hostname or the IP address of the database server.

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Database port number

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Specify the number of the port of the MySQL database server to which you are trying
T
to connect. The default port number for a MySQL database is 3306.

Database username
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Specify the username which Openads must use to gain access to the database
T
server.
Database password
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Specify the password which Openads must use to gain access to the database
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server.
Database name
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A MySQL server usually contains a lot of different databases, for different users or
T
projects. Each database has a unique name. You need to specify the name of the
database which is used for Openads.
Global database optimisation settings
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If you want to use persistent connections to the database server check this option.
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The use of a persistent connection can speed up Openads considerably and may
even decrease the load on the server.
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There is a potential disadvantage however, where on sites with a lot of visitors the
load on the server can increase and become larger than when using normal
connections. Whether you should use regular connections or persistent connections
depends on the number of visitors anticipated and the hardware you are using. If
Openads is using too many resources, you should take a look at this setting first.
Persistent connections are turned off by default.
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Delivery settings
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This page allows you to specify settings related to ad delivery.

Global Openads Server Access Paths
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This group of settings defines access paths to specific elements of your Openads
server. These are specified by default when you first install the application.
Admin Interface URL

The URL by which you will access your Openads installation's user interface.
Delivery Engine URL
The URL that will be used for delivering banners. This URL will be put into all of your
zone invocation tags.
Delivery Engine URL (SSL)
The URL that will be used for delivering banners over SSL connections. This URL will
be put into all of your zone invocation tags.
Image Store URL
The URL that will be used for delivering banner images.
Image Store URL (SSL)
The URL that will be used for delivering banner images over SSL connections.
If you have installed Openads in the normal way then the Administrator Interface
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URL needs to be "www.example.com/path/to/openads/www/admin ", while the the

two delivery engine URLs need to be
"www.example.com/path/to/openads/www/delivery", where " www.example.com" is
your site's URL, and "path/to/openads" is the directory under your site where you
have installed Openads.
By default, the image URLs will be "

www.example.com/path/to/openads/www/images", however, you would be free to
change these to whatever you require, assuming you also configure Openads to
store banner images in a location that will result in the images being available via the
URL(s) you select here. See Global Webserver Local Banner Storage Settings .
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Note: If you have installed Openads by using virtual hosts, then the URLs you use for
these sections must match the domain names of the virtual hosts you have selected.
A word on Configuration Files
For a normal installation , Openads will have one configuration file in the var
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directory: www.example.com.conf.php. You will only be able to access Openads via

this domain name (ie. www.example.com). If your web site can also be accessed by
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"example.com", for instance, then Openads will not work using this domain name. It
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is not recommended that you attempt to configure your configuration files so that this
will work - instead, use your web server to redirect web access. So, for example,
calls to " example.com/openads/" will be sent to "www.example.com/openads".
For an installation using virtual hosts, [nb:link to be added] then there will be a
number of configuration files, one for each domain name used. However, you will
note that only one configuration file contains the real configuration for Openads - the
delivery domain configuration file, so that less file parsing is required during delivery.
All other configuration files are place holders that will redirect to the real configuration
file.
Global Webserver Local Banner Storage Settings

T
Storing method
When adding a banner to your inventory, you must choose a banner type. If you
choose the Local banner (Webserver) type, you can specify where the banner you
upload is stored. If you want to store the banners in a local directory set this option to
Local Directory. If you want to store the banner on an external FTP server set this
T T
option to External FTP Server. On certain types of web server you may want to use
T T
the FTP option even on the local web server.

Local Directory
If you specify Local Directory, enter the full path to the desired directory in the Local
T T T
Directory field. T
Moving banner files from the database to a local directory

An advantage in having your image files in a separate directory, outside of the
Openads root, is that they are unaffected by subsequent upgrades. If you already
have those files stored in the database, you can move them to the local directory.
Firstly, as mentioned above, specify Local directory as a storing method in the Main
settings:Banner settings page. Ensure that you define the Public url and and Local
directory in the appropriate fields. Click Save Changes.
Now click the Maintenance tab . From the choose section drop-down list, select
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storage. Click the Move images stored inside the database to a directory link. Your
T T
images are moved from the database to the local directory you specified.
Note that the storage option in the choose section drop-down list is only made
available when you have specified the public url and local directory locations.
External FTP Server
if you specify External FTP Server, complete the details in the form. Specify the FTP
T T
Host server where Openads needs to copy the uploaded banners to. The Host
Directory path you specify needs to be in the web server's document root, as the web
server must be able to serve the files directly. Do not specify a trailing slash (/). If you
don't specify a directory Openads will upload the banner to the root directory of the
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ftp server. If you don't specify a username and password Openads will attempt to log
in as an anonymous user with the administrator's e-mail address. Note that security
can be compromised if you are able to store your banners on an FTP server that can
be accessed by anonymous users and is not recommended.
Global File Names
T T
The files named here effectively constitute the Openads delivery engine.
Global Delivery Caching Settings
T T
To help speed up delivery, Openads uses a cache which includes all the information
needed to deliver the banner to your website visitors. You can specify the interval
between cache updates in the Time Between Cache Updates (seconds) field. The
T T
default value is 1200 seconds. Remember that changing this value is a compromise -
reducing the interval updates your cache more frequently, but at the expense of
more load on your adserver; increasing the interval reduces the load, but you will
have to wait longer for banner and zone changes to appear on the website.
Use Remote Origin Server
T T
Currently undocumented.
Global Banner Delivery Settings

T
Evaluate banner delivery limitations during delivery

This checkbox is selected by default. De-select this checkbox if you do not wish to
use delivery limitations and, since Openads would no longer check for delivery
limitations during delivery, gain a small improvement in performance.
Obfuscate channel when delivering ads
Select this checkbox if you wish to prevent channel information being detected.
Allow PHP code in ads to be executed
Select this checkbox to permit PHP code in ads to be executed. Note that this is a
potential security risk and due consideration should be given to the consequences of
this permission.
3rd Party Click Tracking Delimiter
[to be added]
Global P3P Privacy Policies
T T
Use P3P Policies

Internet Explorer 6 is the first browser to implement the w3c P3P standard. The P3P
standard is created to protect the privacy of your users. By default Internet Explorer
will reject third party cookies unless a valid privacy policy header is also sent,
together with the cookies. These setting will allow you send these privacy policies
headers together with the cookies which Openads sends. If you want to enable P3P
Privacy Policies, select this checkbox.
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P3P Compact Policy

This is the compact policy which is sent together with cookies. The default setting is:
'cur adm our nor sta nid', which will allow Internet Explorer 6 and later to
accept the cookies used by Openads. If you want you can alter these settings to
match your own privacy statement.
P3P Policy Location
If you want to use a full privacy policy, you can specify the location of the policy in
this field.
Remember to click Save Changes when you have completed specifying your
T T
settings.
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General settings
10B
Production server
By designating your Openads server as a Production server, you suppress any error
T T
and debugging messages in delivery, ensuring that the system doesn't output any
PHP messages to a live site. During testing you can de-select this checkbox so that
any error messages during delivery are shown.
User Interface Enabled

This checkbox, selected by default, controls the availability of the user interface.
There may be certain changes or other maintenance operations you want to carry out
where the user interface ought to be disabled, in which case you de-select the
checkbox. This means that users, whether an Advertiser, Publisher or Administrator
can no longer log in to the interface. The Authentication page shows this message:
T T
Take care when choosing to disable the user interface as you will not be able to log
in to the admin interface subsequently. You can, however, alter your configuration file
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directly to enable the user interface again, by changing the uiEnabled value to "1".
T T
T T
settings.
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Geotargeting settings
1B
Openads 2.4 can determine the geographical location of a visitor from their IP
address using a geotargeting database. You can exploit this information for statistical
or marketing purposes, or you may wish to set delivery limitations based on
geographical location.
Select an option from the Geotargeting Module Type to specify which database
T T
should be used. Openads supports GeoIP databases. A free country database is

provided from MaxMind, but if you need a more accurate database, or want a
database with more information, you can buy one from MaxMind. For every purchase
MaxMind will guarantee a small donation to the Openads project. For more
information, refer to the MaxMind website.
HTU UTH
By selecting a geotargeting module, you enable Geotargeting delivery limitations.

Alternatively you can select the Show geotargeting delivery limitations even if GeoIP
T
data unavailable checkbox to make Geotageting delivery limitations available.

T
In the Geotargeting database location fields, enter the path to the geotargeting
database directory corresponding to the category of geotargeting database. The
directory should not be placed in the web server's file structure to prevent someone
accessing and downloading it via a web browser.
GeoIP Apache module
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If you are using the GeoIP Apache module, select MaxMind mod_apache GeoIP
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from the module type drop-down list. You do not hace to specify the database
locations when using this type.
T T
settings.
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Interface defaults
12B
This page allows you to specify default values for the administrator interface, notably
including default banner and campaign weight.
Inventory
T
Show extra campaign info on Campaign overview page - set by default

T T
If this option is enabled extra information about each campaign will be shown on the
Campaign overview page. The extra information includes the number of Impressions
booked, Clicks booked, Conversions booked, activation date, expiration date and the
priority setting.
Show extra banner info on Banner overview page - set by default
T T
If this option is enabled extra information about each banner will be shown on the
Banner overview page. The extra information includes the destination URL,
keywords, size and the banner weight.
Show preview of all banner on Banner overview page
T T
If this option is enabled a preview of all banners will be shown on the Banner
overview page. If this option is disabled it is still possible to show a preview of each
banner by clicking on the triangle next to each banner on the Banner overview page.
Show actual banner instead of plain HTML code for HTML banner preview
T T
If this option is enabled the actual HTML banner will be shown instead of the HTML
code. This option is disabled by default, because the HTML banners might conflict
with the user interface. If this option is disabled it is still possible to view the actual
HTML banner, by clicking on the Show banner button next to the HTML code.
Show banner preview at the top of pages which deals with banners - set by
T
default T
If this option is enabled a preview will be shown at the top of the Banner properties,
Delivery options and Linked zones pages. If this option is disabled it is still possible to
view the banner, by clicking on the Show banner button at the top of the pages.
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Hide inactive items from all overview pages

T T
If this option is enabled all inactive banners, campaigns and advertisers will be
hidden from the Advertisers & Campaigns and Campaign overview pages. If this
option is enabled it is still possible to view the hidden items, by clicking on the Show
all button.
Show matching banner on the Linked banner pages - set by default
T T
If this option is enabled the matching banner will be shown on the Linked banners
page, provided the Campaign selection method is chosen. This will allow you see
exactly which banners are considered for delivery if the campaign is linked. It will also
be possible to look at a preview of the matching banners.
Show parent campaign on the Linked banner pages
T T
If this option is enabled the parent campaigns of the banners will be shown on the
Linked banners page, if the Banner selection method is chosen. This will allow you to
see which banner belongs to which campaign before the banner is linked. This also
means that the banners are grouped by the parent campaigns and are no longer
sorted alphabetically.
Default campaigns to anonymous
[to be added]
Statistics
T
Beginning of Week - set as Monday by default

T T
For most people a week starts on a Monday, but if you want to start each week on a
Sunday you can.
Percentage Decimals - set as 2 by default
T T
Specifies how many decimal places are used to display a percentage on statistics
pages.
Default weight
T
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Default banner weight

If you want to use a higher default banner weight you can specify the desired weight
here. This setting is 1 by default.
Default campaign weight
If you want to use a higher default campaign weight you can specify the desired
weight here. This setting is 1 by default
Publisher defaults
T
Modes of payment
T T
Enter the forms of payment you allow in this field. Separate each mode by a comma.
This list populates the Mode of payment drop-down list in the Payment information
T T
section of the Publisher properties page.

T T
Currencies
T T
Enter the currency denominations that you allow in this field. Separate each
denomination by a comma. This list populates the Currency drop-down list in the
T T
Payment information section of the Publisher properties page.

T T
Tax ID
T T
If you want to take the tax id of the payee, select this option. A field is made available
for entering the id in the Payment information section of the Publisher properties
T T
page.
Approved check box
T T
Select this option if you want to record whether the tax id is approved or not. Yes and T T
No options are made available in the Payment information section of the Publisher
T T T
properties page.T
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Invocation settings
13B
Invocation settings
14B
This page allows you to specify defaults related to banner invocation.
Allowed invocation types

19B
Specify the options a user can have for invocation tags. When you generate
invocation code, you can choose the tag type from a drop-down list. The settings you
choose here populates that list.
Invocation defaults
192B
You can choose whether 3rd-party clicktracking is enabled by default and which type
appears in the clicktracking drop-down list by default.
When you generate invocation code, the Support 3rd-party server clicktracking list in
T T
the Settings section of the Invocation code page reflects the choice you make here.
T T T T
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Statistics & Maintenance settings

15B
This page allows you to specify a number of settings related to Statistics and
Maintenance.
Global Statistics Logging Settings

193B
This section deals with the extent of statistics that are logged.
Reverse lookup the hostnames of viewers when not supplied

230B
Where a viewer's hostname is not supplied, you can instruct Openads to perform a
lookup on the viewer's IP address to resolve a hostname for it. Storing hostnames
allows you to see which hosts are retrieving the most banners.
Extract the viewer's Operating System and web browser using phpSniff
231B
phpSniff is bundled with Openads and determines the client's browser and system
information. Note that presently this is rather resource-hungry and should be used
only if the information it gathers is an essential requirement.
Global Prevent Statistics Logging Settings

194B
If you don't want to keep track of click-throughs and impressions from certain
computers you can add these to this setting. For example: you can add your own IP
address to prevent your machine from influencing the statistics each time you visit
your own website. You must type each hostname or IP address on a new line. Note
that you can only use hostnames if they are provided by the server or by Openads. If
the hostname isn't available you can only use IP addresses. Instead of using the full
hostname or IP address you can also use wild cards (i.e. *.altavista.com or
192.168.*).
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Global Maintenance Settings

16B
Default Ad Impression Connection Window & Default Ad Click Connection Window

These two settings control the default conversion 'window' used when creating a new
tracker. The value you enter here (in seconds) is entered by default in the
corresponding Default conversion rules fields in the Add new tracker page. Read
T T T T
about Conversion Tracking.

HTU UTH
Global Priority Settings

T
Update advertisement priorities immediately when changes made in the UI

23B
Select this checkbox to ensure priorites are updated immediately. When this setting
is not selected, advertisement priorities are updated during the next scheduled
maintenance.
E-mail Warnings
23B
In this section, you can specify when and to whom email warnings should be sent.
The Enable qmail patch setting prevents a known bug in qmail that causes emails
sent by Openads to show the headers within the body of the email.
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T T
settings.
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Customizing the admin interface

17B
Openads gives you the option to customize the appearance of the administrator
interface.
Application Name
195B
Enter the name that you want to appear in the page’s header, typically the name of
your website.
Name of custom logo file

196B
Enter the name of the image file of your custom logo. You can use .gif, .png or .jpg
formats. This file should be placed in the www/admin/images directory of your
Openads installation.
Colour of the header foreground

197B
Specify the colour (in RGB format) of the tabs that are currently inactive.
Colour of the header background

198B
Specify the colour (in RGB format) of the header background.
Colour of the active tab

19B
Specify the colour (in RGB format) of the currently selected (active) tab.
Colour of the text in the header

20B
Specify the colour (in RGB format) of the text that appears in the header.
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9.3 Maintenance management

40B
Click the Maintenance tab of the Settings page to carry out a number of
T T T T
maintenance operations. Select a section from the drop-down list:
Maintenance
18B
This section allows you to check the status of your current maintenance setup. If you
have yet to set up scheduled maintenance, you may see this advice:
If you have set up scheduled maintenance, you may see this advice:
Read more about the importance of maintenance and how to set up scheduled
HTU
maintenance. UTH
Priority
19B
Click the Recalculate priority link to instruct Openads to calculate campaign priorities
T T
again.
Storage
120B
The images used by local banners are stored inside the database or can be stored in
a directory. If you store the images inside a directory the load on the database will be
reduced and this will lead to an increase in speed. This option is only available if you
have specified Local directory as a storing method in the Main settings>Delivery
T T
settings page. Ensure that you define the Public url and and Local directory in the
appropriate fields.
Delivery Limitations
12B
Under some circumstances the delivery engine can disagree with the stored ACLs
(Access Control Lists) for banners and channels. Click the Check ACLs link to
T T
validate the ACLs in the database. The results of that vaildation are reported in the
page.
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Append codes
12B
Under some circumstances the delivery engine can disagree with the stored append
codes for trackers, Click the Check append codes link to validate the append codes
T T
in the database. The results of that validation are reported in the page.
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9.4 Product Updates

41B
The Product Updates page allows you to check on the status of your current
T T
Openads installation and to manage past updates.

Select Check for updates to view the status of the current version of your Openads
T T
installation. Note that this is a good place to check which version your are running
and the versions of each part of the associated software bundle.
Select the Manage past updates and backups option to view information about your
T T
upgrade history including details of backup tables that exist. From here you can
delete backup tables and leftover logfiles and configuration backups.
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9.5 User log

42B
This page lists all maintenance operations carried out by Openads.
You can view the details of each operation by clicking the appropriate Details link.
T T
This displays the User log details page. Here, the script actions are shown in detail.
Advertiser reports can be specified in an Advertiser's properties page. The period

between reports can also be specified. If you selected the Log all outgoing e-mail
T
messages checkbox in the Preferences section of the Administrator settings

T T T T T
(Settings>Main settings>Administrator settings), then e-mail messages sent to

Advertisers are included in this list. The User log details for an advertiser report
shows exactly what is contained within the email to be sent to the advertiser. The
following illustration shows a portion of an email report :
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9.6 Agency Management

43B
Agencies use Openads to administer multiple groups of advertisers and publishers in

a single installation.
Overview
123B
This method of working is used when a single installation of Openads supports more
than one organisation that manages advertisers and publishers. Agencies cannot
share or access each other's information. All reports, campaigns, zones, etc., are
unique to the agency that set them up.
Agency Management can also be used if you have an Advertiser or Publisher who
wants to traffic all of their own campaigns and zones. You can set up these entities
as an Agency, and they can run Openads as if it were their own setup.
Note that from the outset, a decision should be made whether or not to use agencies.
If agencies are used, then all users should log in to the agency while trafficking
campaigns. If you log in as administrator, there is the potential to link campaigns to
zones across agencies, in which case Openads may not function properly.
Also note that at the moment, prioritisation is performed across agencies. This
means that a huge campaign on one agency could affect the delivery priority on
another campaign.
Note that if you want to link a banner from one agency to a zone in another agency,
you should treat this transaction as if the agencies are on two separate servers -
create a tag from the Advertiser, and load it as an HTML banner in the website. In
order to track clicks, make sure that you select 'Alter HTML to enable tracking of
AdClicks', and select 'Rich Media - Openads' from the associated dropdown.
Agency Management
201B
You can add and modify Agencies in this page. Agencies use Openads in a similar
way to Advertisers, except that they manage multiple advertisers in a single
installation.
Adding a new agency

20B
To create a new agency, click the Add new agency link.

T T
The Add new agency page displays. There are two sections to this form, Basic
Information and Login Information.
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Here you add information that identifies the new agency and the contact details for
the agency user. The Language drop-down list contains languages currently
supported by Openads.
Login information - New Agency

203B
Choose a username and memorable password that you will use to log in to the
Agency interface.
If, on logout, you would like the user to be redirected to a specific address, enter the
full URL in the URL to redirect to on logout field.
T T
Select the Allow this user to edit conversions checkbox if you wish the agency user to
T T
be able to change the status of conversions (from Pending to Approved, for

example). You can read about conversions and conversion status in the Conversion
HTU
Tracking section.
UTH
Click Save Changes to complete the process. The Agency Management page re-
T T T T
displays with your new agency listed.

When you log in to the interface as an agency user, your agency name appears on
all pages. In the Agency interface you can start to add Advertisers, Campaigns,
Publishers and Zones.
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Channel Overview
204B
This page shows any channels you have created associated with this agency. You
can create a new channel by clicking the Add new channel link. Read more about
T T HTU
Channels. The channel you create here is associated with the agency, which means
UTH
that when you create a delivery limitation, it will be available to all zones, to which a
banner is linked, that are owned by publishers created within the agency. Read about
banner delivery limitations. You can review all of the channels you have created in
HTU UTH
the Settings>Channel Management tab.

T T
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9.7 Channel Management

4B
This page allows you to manage existing channels and create new ones. Read more HTU
about Channels UT
To create a new channel, click the Add new channel link.

T T
Existing channels are listed here, noting their associated publishers. When you set
"Site - Channel" delivery limitations on a banner, the available channel limitation
HTU UTH
depends upon the owning publisher of a zone to which the banner is linked. If the
zone's owning publisher has a single channel called 'News' associated with it, then
that will be the only "Site - Channel" limitation available for the linked banner. In this
page, however, you can create a new channel that is not associated with a particular
publisher and is, therefore, available to all banners, irrespective of the owning
publisher of the zone to which the banner is linked. Thus, a new channel created
here called (for example) 'Finance' would be available for selection in a delivery
limitation:
Adding a new channel

205B
Enter a Name and Description for the new channel in the appropriate fields of the
T T T T
Basic Information section. You can add relevant information, if required, in the
T T
Comments field. Click Save Changes at the foot of the page. On saving, the
T T T T
Delivery options tab is displayed. Here you can specify Client and Site delivery
T T
limitations. You can read more about specifying delivery limitations relevant to a
HTU
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channel here . When you are satisfied with the delivery limitations you have set, click
UTH
Save Changes.
T T
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Openads 2.

1. Openads 2.4 Overview

This guide includes:

2.1 What is Openads 2.4?

2.2 Adserving concepts

Openads is designed to help you maximise your website's advertising potential by

Advertisers represent the owners of advertising campaigns. Advertisers run ad

Campaigns are always owned by advertisers, so you must create an advertiser

In Openads, a banner is the ad (creative) that is displayed as advertising. Banners

3. Quick Start Guide

3.1 Installing Openads

about system pre-requisites here. UTH

convenient place on your local machine.

d. Unpack and upload

Extract your downloaded Openads file to your webserver, in the appropriate

Openads files to your webserver. UTH

e. Run the installer

successful completion of the installation, you can log in to the Administrator

Openads 2.4 uses a special maintenance script to activate campaigns,

3.2 Load banners

Username and Password you defined during the installation process.

the Advertisers & Campaigns page is displayed.

c. Specify Advertiser properties

of properties associated with the new advertiser. Read about specifying

mail fields, which are mandatory.

The Add new campaign page is displayed.

d. Create a new Campaign and specify Campaign properties

about specifying campaign properties. There are no mandatory fields on this

overview tab, then click Add new banner.

f. Specify Banner properties

• Enter the path to your website in the Destination URL field;

• Enter a short description in the Description field to identify your banner.

Click Save changes

3.3 Linking banners to zones

a. Click the Publishers & Zones tab

c. Specify the Publisher's properties

• Complete the Name and Description fields;

Button or Rectangle option. T

Read more about Zone types here.

compatible with the size of your banner.

e. Link a banner to your zone

to link to your zone.

• Select Link banners by parent campaign from the first drop-down

• Click the arrow button.

3.4 Publish zones on your website

a. Generate invocation code

refreshes to reveal the required bannercode.

3.5 Quick start worked example

Name this 'MyAdvertiser' and complete the mandatory fields.

Now create a new campaign, owned by the Advertiser.

Name this 'MyAdvertiser - Openads example'

Click Add new banner

URL field, http://www.openads.org. In the Description field, type 'Openads banner

Click Save Changes

Name this publisher 'MyWebsite'. Complete the mandatory fields.

Enter '468' as width and '80' as height.

the new zone:

3.6 Monetizing your inventory

Now that you have Openads to manage revenue-earning advertising on your

temporary table', so 'drop table' will have to be assigned

Openads 2.4 can be deployed in a number of ways according to your current

Running your website and Openads on one web server

This is the most straightforward deployment strategy and is a perfectly satisfactory