Comments on: Tip #9: Understand campaign types

By: theguru

theguru — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:50:50 +0000

There are two things you could do — either set up the campaign to run for 3 to 12 months, and give the total number of impressions for the entire run, and let OpenX spread the impressions booked over all of the months, or, as you say, just set up the campaign with a daily target, and let OpenX do it that way.

There are pros and cons with each approach. If you go the long campaign option, there more of a chance OpenX will get delivery “wrong”, and the delivery will not be very even over all of the months the campaign is running. However, if you go the daily target option, then weekends may be problematic, for example, if you have much lower traffic on Saturday and Sunday…

By: ProWeb

ProWeb — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:40:32 +0000

Fantastic reply! I’ll give the test a go. One follow up item: I guarantee the monthly number of impressions, but the campaign might be 3 – 12 months long. Instead of having to go into each campaign monthly to extend the dates, can I simply set a daily impression target?

Best case would be if I could set a daily target and the impressions were spread throughout the day with the remnant campaigns filling in the projected overage for the day.

By: theguru

theguru — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:46:18 +0000

Hi there!

Yes, it is possible to set this up. You would simply create a Contract campaign for each of your 5 advertisers, configured with the month’s start date and end date, and with a lifetime booking of 10,000 impressions. OpenX should then calculate how many impressions are available for the campaign (based on the traffic patterns of the zone(s) the campaigns are linked to), and deliver the impressions accordingly.

This does NOT mean that OpenX will deliver 333 impressions per advertiser per day, however. Do you have lower traffic on the weekend? That’s normal for most advertisers, and OpenX should notice this, and take it into account — so you would get more impressions delivered on weekdays than on weekends.

Similarly, you are likely to get more impressions delivered during peak hours than during hours when you have lower traffic.

Of course, prediction of zone inventory is tough. OpenX generally does a pretty good job at this, but it will never be perfectly even delivery. If OpenX does over- or under-deliver, though, it should notice this, and self-correct.

However, having said that, at the time of commenting, there are a LOT of comments in the OpenX Forums about the current version of OpenX (2.8.1) NOT doing this, and users are seeing huge levels of over-delivery at the start of a Contract campaign, and the campaigns then finish early.

This is not to say every user has this issue — I would try it out on a test campaign, and see how you fair. If it works, great. If not, no loss, as it was a test campaign.

Hopefully, OpenX 2.8.2 (which has been under development for a very long time now!) will address these issues with Contract campaigns….

By: ProWeb

ProWeb — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:03:13 +0000

What a fantastic blog and post! I’m so glad I happened to search and find it so soon after you posted it.

Okay, a question: I’ve been running PhpAdsNew / OpenX for about 5 years. I’ve ALWAYS had my campaigns setup as remnant, but I want to rethink this strategy and would love your thoughts:

Scenario: I have 5 advertisers that each pay for 10,000 impressions a month. My site delivers 80,000 impressions a month, leaving 30k impressions available for “remnant” campaigns.

I’d like to have OpenX deliver the daily 333 impressions per advertiser throughout the day (not just at the beginning of the day) and the rest of the inventory to go to other campaigns (again, throughout the day).

My question: Is it possible to set this up? I don’t see how OpenX could effectively gauge how much volume I’ll get in a day in order to know where to allocate my impressions so it doesn’t over or under deliver on my “contract” campaigns.

By: theguru

theguru — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:59:51 +0000

Yeah, that’s what I would try! Please let us know if that resolves the issue, as it may be worth then reporting the bug to the OpenX team…

By: Delson Moo

Delson Moo — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:48:10 +0000

Thanks for your prompt reply.
Do you mean that I should turn off the eCPM option and probably my Remnant ads will then show up?
Thanks in advance again for your help.

By: theguru

theguru — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:40:24 +0000

… and everything to do with using the eCPM option. To be perfectly honest with you, I have never used this option. The feature was introduced in OpenX 2.8.0, even though it was not included in in the OpenX 2.7-beta testing cycle. Quite why OpenX decided to include a new feature in a “stable” release of OpenX, when it had not been a part of the beta testing cycle, I do not know. All I can say is that the feature should probably not be considered stable, and at this point in time, it is not a feature I have recommended any of my clients to use. If you have issues with it, all I can suggest is that you ask the OpenX staff on the forum.

By: theguru

theguru — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:34:02 +0000

Hi there! The invocation tag that comes from the website level is the Single Page Call type. You do need to know a few things about this type to use it correctly; however, if you have banners showing up when using the Contract (Exclusive) type, then you're using the tag at least sufficiently for delivery to be working, and the fact that Remnant campaign banners do not show up will have nothing to do with the tag type...

By: Delson Moo

Delson Moo — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:45:24 +0000

Sorry, I forget to add that I’ve turned on eCPM also but even when I use a higher CPM for some campaign, such as maybe 0.2 while the rest is using CPM of 0.10, these Remnant campaigns still do not show up.

Thanks again.

By: Delson Moo

Delson Moo — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:41:07 +0000

Hi,

based on your explanation here and my understanding from OpenX user guide, it seems that I do understand the difference between Contract, Contract (Exlusive) and Remnant.

However, it just don’t work on my site!

I’ve tried setting all my campaigns to be Remnant and hope that they will just cycle the banners among itself, however, nothing shows up!

The only way for me to cycle through the banners is when I select Contract (Exclusive) for all the campaigns and it is working beautifully now at my website http://shopbug.sg/blog .

What did I do wrong?

Also, for the invocation code for the zones, I use the zones’ invocation code from the Website invocation instead of the individual Zone’s invocation code. The reason is the website’s invocation code for the zones are shorter and neater as compared to the zone’s invocation code.
Is it because of this and that’s why my Remnant campaign does not work?

Appreciate your help.