resources
Ad serving
Ad Serving - Delivery of online adverts to an end user’s computer by an ad management system.
Publishers use ad management systems to book, schedule and target ad campaigns booked by advertisers, and to report the results of the campaign. "Ad tags" in web pages make a call to the ad server when a page is requested by a user. The ad-server looks at currently booked ad campaigns and makes a decision as the optimum ad to send to the user. This decision can be based on a range of criteria including:
- Currently booked campaigns - what campaigns are currently scheduled, and the priority of each campaign
- Geographical targeting (users can be targeted by geographical campaign)
- Frequency capping - campaigns can be defined show ads a specific number of times to each user
- Time-of-day - ads can be restricted to serving only during a particular time-period (e.g "lunchtime" for a food advertiser might be appropriate).
- The user's environment (for example flash ads only being served to browsers that support Flash)
- User behaviour - some ad servers allow a user's previous behaviour (e.g sites visited) to determine appropriate ads
- Content context - ads can be targeted to specific content keywords
- The ad "slot" - which determines the size and shape of the ad to be served
Ad servers technology is usually provided either as a server-based application (an "in-house" ad server) or as a web-based service from an ad server provider. Some ad serving companies offer both options.
In New Zealand, commonly used ad serving companies include DoubleClick, Facilitate Digital and RealMedia. Ad-server solutions range from commercial systems to open-source adservers such as OpenAds.
