Additional Features continued.
Automatic Load-balancing
The ad-serving database must endure a large load, as each banner served queries from it multiple times. In order to handle many sites, and to accommodate the loads incurred by high traffic sites, the ad-serving database has been intelligently distributed across several physical machines.
This load distribution is actually automatically monitored and adjusted to optimally handle the constantly changing loads that are seen from the Internet. We have configured in AdRunner multiple hot-spare servers. As soon as the rate of ad serving exceeds our parameters, the hot-spare servers will be fired up and recruited to assist in meeting the demand.
This ensures that banner delivery will always have adequate resources to remain exceedingly fast regardless of the traffic specific sites.
Daily Limits
A daily limit allows users to specify the maximum number of impressions to be served out each day. When the daily limit is reached no more impressions will be served. This ensures that a campaign will serve evenly over its flight dates.
Frequency Capping
Frequency capping allows users to set a limit to the number of times a visitor will see a specific banner in a campaign within an optional number of days. When the viewer has reached the cap for a banner, that banner will be eliminated from the list of possible banners. This cap can optionally be set to expire after a given number of days.
Real-time Statistics
The AdRunner interface provides users with valuable real-time statistics on their campaign's performance:
Banner count / site count: Quickly shows how many banners and sites have been assigned to a given campaign.
Impressions, clicks, and click-thru ratio today: Shows how many impressions and click-thrus have occurred so far today for every banner in the system, in addition to overall statistics for campaigns and sites. Also track banners' click-thru ratios to show how well they perform.
Impressions, clicks, and click-thru ratio total: Shows overall and month-to-date totals of impressions and click-thrus, along with average click-thru ratios.
Campaign on-target percentage: The on-target percentage shows how well a campaign is meeting its objectives for impressions and click-thrus. AdRunner automatically calculates optimal rates of banner delivery and attempts to serve banners so that they will reach their desired number of impressions no sooner nor later than their end dates. If, due to changes in traffic or improper booking of campaigns, a banner serves out faster or slower than its optimal rate, the campaign on-target percentage can be used to improve its performance. For example, if a campaign has an on target percentage of 80%, this means that it has only served out 80% of the number of impressions it should optimally have reached by this stage of the campaign. A campaign that is perfectly on target has an on-target percentage of 100%.
Safety Precautions and Fallbacks
To eliminate the possibility of a banner not being served, the following features are in place:
Global campaigns: Setting up a campaign as a global campaign will cause the campaign to serve on all sites, not just the ones that it assigned to it.
Default campaigns: Setting up a campaign as a default campaign will cause all banners in that campaign to serve at the lowest priority on all sites assigned to it. This type of campaign can be used with a normal campaign to provide a group of banners that will serve if the normal campaign runs out.
Non-JavaScript browsers: If the viewer of a banner doesn't support or has turned off JavaScript, the browser will read in the NOSCRIPT block of the banner code that will cause it to pull an image-only banner.
Network failure: In the event that network connection fails, a transparent banner will be served instead of a broken image icon.
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