A banner is the content (creative) and associated properties that make up an on-line advertisement.

In the iNADS Adserver, a banner is both the content (called a creative in the on-line advertising world) and the associated properties that go along with it.

A banner’s creative could be one of many different supported options – iNADS Adserver can deliver creatives that are images, such as GIF, JPEG and PNG files; SWF or Flash files; as well as plain text and HTML, which can include video-based advertisements.

In addition to the creative, a banner then contains properties such as where and how the creative should be stored, the dimensions of the creative and any delivery limitations that should be applied.

Creating a Banner
Editing a Banner

Creating a Banner

Create a new banner whenever an advertiser wants to display a new advertisement.

Advertisers must have at least one banner per campaign, to ensure that the campaign has at least one advertisement to display! However, a campaign may consist of many banners (for example, for different dimensions, or simply because there are different variants of the advertisements within the campaign). iNADS Adserver will let you add as many banners to a campaign as you need.

To create a new banner, go to Campaigns > Edit Campaign > Creatives

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If you need to, use the drop down menu to select the appropriate advertiser and/or campaign.

Add New Banner

Click on the + New Creative Button. This will take you to the Add New Banner screen.

Banner type

To create the new banner, first select the type of banner you want to create. Which types of banner are available will depend on how iNADS Adserver has been configured and which plugins have been installed, but the following types are supported (and possibly others, if you have installed 3rd party plugins for additional banner types):

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- Upload a local banner to the webserver: The banner’s creative file will be uploaded to the configured webserver directory, and delivered to websites from this location. iNADS Adserver supports the delivery of image-based banners (where the creative is a JPEG, GIF or PNG file) as well as Flash-based banners (where the creative is a SWF file).
url
- Link to an external banner: Revive Adserver will deliver the creative from the URL supplied.
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- Generic HTML Banner: The banner creative will be the specified HTML.
- Inline Video Ad (pre/mid/post-roll): The banner creative will be an inline video ad that can be shown before, during or after another video, which is loaded from the an external location via a supplied URL.
- Overlay Video Ad: The banner creative will be a video, which is loaded from an external location via a supplied URL; an additional static image creative will be shown to the user before the video plays, which will be uploaded to the configured webserver directory, and delivered to websites from this location.

If the banner you are creating requires either a HTML or video-based creative, then the banner type to use is clear – each of these creative options only has one choice. However, if you are using a static image-based creative, there are two choices: local webserver or external banner.

Static Banner Type – The Right Choice?

When creating banners with a static image for the creative, which is the right choice of the two available options?

Upload a local banner to the webserver
- By uploading the banner creative to your webserver, you will be able to achieve far greater performance than by uploading the creative into the iNADS Adserver database, as the banner creative can be delivered directly by your webserver, without the need to look up the file contents from a database.
- You also have a great deal of flexibility in terms of tuning and expanding performance – iNADS Adserver can be configured to upload the banner creatives into a directory that can then deliver the banners using a dedicated, tuned webserver specifically for this purpose; or a cluster of servers; or even a Content Delivery Network, if required.
- However, this additional performance comes at a cost; by default, banner creatives are stored in your iNADS Adserver installation directory, so the creatives need to be managed when iNADS Adserver is upgrade; that, or you will need to perform additional configuration and systems management beyond simply using what is bundled by default to be able to scale performance.
- Recommended for larger installations of iNADS Adserver, or where the installation is expected it may grow in the future.
Link to an external banner
- This option is only really suitable where the banner creative is already available externally, or where the advertiser wishes to retain the ability to change the creative themselves over the course of a campaign.
- Otherwise, this option offers no real performance advantages over the “Upload a local banner to the webserver” option, and so is not recommended as an option except in the above mentioned circumstances.

Once you have selected the type of banner to create, fill out the required fields and set any optional values, as per the type of banner:

URL banners
Generic HTML banners
Inline Video banners
Overlay Video banners

Save Changes

Once you have done this, click on Save Changes to create the new banner. You will be returned to the Campaigns > Campaign Settings page, where you will be able to see your newly created banner.

URL Banners

Use a URL banner whenever the creative is hosted externally.

This page discusses the options that are specific to creating banners of type “url”.

Basic information

There is a single Basic information field for URL banners, which is required:

Name: The name of the banner. It is recommended that you use a name that uniquely identifies the banner, and will allow you to recognize the banner quickly and easily.

Link an external banner

There is a single Link an external banner field for URL banners, which is the URL of the image that should be used as the banner creative.

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Note that if you upload a Flash file as the banner creative, then you will be presented with two additional options.

The first is the Check for hard-coded links inside the Flash file option. When selected, iNADS Adserver will inspect the Flash file uploaded, and converts any hard-coded links found in the Flash file so that clicks on the Flash banner creative will be able to be tracked by iNADS Adserver.

The second additional option is the ability to upload a second creative file, which should be a static image creative, of the same dimensions as the Flash file. This allows iNADS Adserver to serve the static image creative when the user being shown the banner creative does not have support for viewing Flash files.

Banner link

There are two Banner link fields for URL banners:

Destination URL: The URL that the user viewing the banner should be sent to when they click on the banner. Although this is not a required field, you do need to enter the destination URL if you want anything to happen when users click the banner if the banner creative is an image. (That is, if the banner creative is a Flash file, and it contains hard-coded links, this field will not be required to be filled in; otherwise, you will generally want to provide a URL for this field.)
Target: An optional HTML link target. Valid options are _blank, _self, _parent and _top. By default, iNADS Adserver will use _blank.

Banner display

There are three optional and two required Banner display fields for URL banners:

Alt text: Optional HTML alt value for the banner creative.
Status text: Optional text that will be displayed in the browser’s status bar whenever the user’s mouse is hovering over the banner. (This is only supported for image based web banners, when setting the browser’s status bar also supported by the user’s browser.)
Text below image: Optional text that iNADS Adserver will display below the banner creative. This is a quick and easy way to add additional text to a banner without editing the banner creative to include the text.
Size (Width): The width of the creative. As the creative is hosted on an external URL, iNADS Adserver needs to know what the width dimension of the creative is.
Size (Height): The height of the creative. As the creative is hosted on an external URL, iNADS Adserver needs to know what the height dimension of the creative is.

Additional data

Finally, there are three optional Additional data fields for URL banners:

Keywords: A free-form field for storing space-separated keywords related to the banner. Keywords are used by iNADS Adserver’s direction selection mechanism to select banners for display. Unless you are using direct selection (which is not the most common way of delivering banners), you do not need to add keywords.
Weight: By default, all banners in a campaign have a weight of 1, which means that the inventory allocated to the campaign will be shared equally between the different banners. As with campaigns, it is possible to configure different weights, so that different banners receive different ratios of the available inventory allocated to the campaign. See the discussion of campaign weights for Remnant and Override campaigns on the Creating a campaign page.
Comments: A free-form text area to record notes that may be relevant about the banner.

Generic HTML Banners

Use a Generic HTML banner whenever the creative is HTML code.

Generic HTML banners can either be HTML that you have written yourself, or as supplied by an advertiser or banner network or exchange.

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This page discusses the options that are specific to creating banners of type “html”, subtype “Generic HTML”.

Basic information

There is a single Basic information field for Generic HTML banners, which is required:

Name: The name of the banner. It is recommended that you use a name that uniquely identifies the banner, and will allow you to recognize the banner quickly and easily.

Create an HTML banner – banner code

There are two Create an HTML banner – banner code fields for Generic HTML banners, which are:

A free form input area for the banner HTML code. This could be HTML that you write yourself, HTML supplied by the advertiser, or may be HTML code from a banner network or exchange.
Alter HTML to enable click tracking: When set to anything other than “Do not alter HTML”, iNADS Adserver will modify the HTML banner to allow clicks to be tracked. You can either select the “Generic HTML Banner” option for self or advertiser generated HTML code, or you can select from one of the many supported banner networks/exchanges.

Banner link

There are two Banner link fields for Generic HTML banners:

Destination URL: The URL that the user viewing the banner should be sent to when they click on the banner, if the banner HTML does not already contain one or more links. If the HTML banner already contains at least one link, then leave this field unchanged – otherwise, set the destination URL, and the entire HTML banner will be made clickable using this link.
Target: An optional HTML link target. Valid options are _blank, _self, _parent and _top. By default, iNADS Adserver will use _blank.

Banner display

There are two required Banner display fields for Generic HTML banners:

Size (Width): The width of the creative. As the creative is HTML, iNADS Adserver needs to know what the width dimension of the creative is.
Size (Height): The height of the creative. As the creative HTML, iNADS Adserver needs to know what the height dimension of the creative is.

Additional data

Finally, there are three optional Additional data fields for Generic HTML banners:

Keywords: A free-form field for storing space-separated keywords related to the banner. Keywords are used by iNADS Adserver’s direction selection mechanism to select banners for display. Unless you are using direct selection (which is not the most common way of delivering banners), you do not need to add keywords.
Weight: By default, all banners in a campaign have a weight of 1, which means that the inventory allocated to the campaign will be shared equally between the different banners. As with campaigns, it is possible to configure different weights, so that different banners receive different ratios of the available inventory allocated to the campaign. See the discussion of campaign weights for Remnant and Override campaigns on the Creating a campaign page.
Comments: A free-form text area to record notes that may be relevant about the banner.

Inline Video Banners

Overlay Video Banners

Editing a Banner

Edit an existing banner to update the banner details.

You may need to change the details for a banner from time to time, such as to update the creative, correct the link URL, or to alter the banner weight, for example.

To edit an existing banner, go to Campaigns > Edit Campaign > Creatives Tab

Banner properties

If necessary, use the drop down menu to select the appropriate advertiser and/or campaign, and then click on the appropriate banner name. This will take you to the Banner properties screen.

Update, Save Changes

Here, you can update any of the details of the banner. Click on Save Changes to save your changes.