Ads

The Ads app in Aiir lets you manage ad space on your websites and mobile apps.

It's deliberately a relatively basic system, not intended to compete with established advertising platforms. We've integrated with 3rd parties like Google Ad Manager (formerly DoubleClick for Publishers), Adsense and Adtech, should you wish to make use of the more powerful features they offer. 

Ads (Inventory)

Your ad inventory consists of campaigns, which in turn contain ads.

The Inventory page lets you quickly find ads in your organisation, either by search using the box at the top, or filter using the lists on the left.

Expired ads are not shown by default so they don't clutter the list, but you can show them using the option at the top. 

Ads are highlighted in red when they have expired (no longer showing on your website or mobile app) or blue if they are upcoming.
When a campaign is upcoming or expired, the ads within are not live, regardless of their own schedule dates. 

Each ad in the results shows the ad name, client, campaign, type of ad, positions and the stations or sites it appears on. A preview image is shown for image ads.

Ads and ad types

An ad is a single piece of creative for a campaign. 

Ads can have run dates to set when they begin to appear and cease appearing.
Dates are not mandatory, and it is possible to just select either a start or an end date, or both.
Dates for ads are overridden by their parent campaign if the campaign's dates restrain the period in which the ad is set to appear. 

A single ad can appear in multiple positions. Positions have defined sizes that the ad design should adhere to, with the exception of takeover backgrounds. 

Product Categories allow a station to avoid two ads appearing on a page at the same time, where there may be an undesirable clash, such as similar products or competing brands. When an ad has a category set, and the 'prevent clash' option is checked, it will not appear on a page alongside another ad in the same category, on a single page load. 

Web Image

This type should be used for image types such as JPG or PNG, or animated GIF.
The designer must ensure the ad meets the size requirements of the targeted position, e.g. 300 by 250 for MPU.
The image will link to a tracking URL, which then redirects to the URL specified in the 'Link to' box. 

Web Custom HTML

This type allows any HTML to be pasted in to appear in the advertising space.
It should be used for 3rd party ad serving code, or any kind of content which is not a single image or Flash file.
To enable tracking, the URL provided should incorporated into the code. 

Web Custom HTML ads are loaded in an iFrame. If you wish to influence the style of the rest of the page, use the CSS ad type.

Adtech

If you use Adtech's service, this type lets you easily insert their ads, and set up responsive bounds.

Responsive bounds are used to show different ads depending on the viewport size (browser window or screen, whichever is smaller).

If you run 3rd party JavaScript code via Adtech, we've found this doesn't always work great, in which case try using Web Custom HTML instead.

Google Adsense

We support Adsense and it's easy to set up, simply by copying and pasting the tag code provided to you. Our system takes care of serving the ads correctly and efficiently.

Google DoubleClick for Publishers

Like Adsense, we've made it easy to add DoubleClick ads. We just require your account ID (normally around 7 or 8 digits), the code which you give each unit, and the size(s) which you assign to the unit. There is no need to copy and paste the chunks of code which they provide - we've already built all of this into our ad serving platform.

If you're having any difficulties serving ads from Google, try opening their console on your website. It shows useful information about the ads being served.

Takeover Background

A takeover allows the use of the background of the website for advertising space. A website must have been created with this in mind, as part of the design specification. Contact us if you are unsure if your website is compatible. 

There is no recommended size particularly for takeover background images, but there are these guidelines: 

  • It must be wider than the width of your site body. If you are unsure what size this is, speak to us. 
  • Consider where the key brand messages should go. Too close to the page content and it can look cluttered, too far away and many users may not see them on smaller resolutions. 
  • If the background image passes under and is visible through or around other interface elements, such as the site logo, the background should avoid interfering with these. 
  • It is usually undesirable to use a background colour identical to that of interface elements, so that they are no longer distinct from the background. 
  • Ensure the image is as small and compressed as possible while retaining adequate quality. This helps the image to load faster and use less bandwidth. 

The background colour setting must be completed; it is used to fill all background space not occupied by the image. 

There are two options for how the background image is displayed, set with the 'Behaviour' option.

  • Scroll: The background will scroll with the page, so the maximum height depends on the length of the page. Usually people design art to 'fade out' towards the bottom to a block colour, which you can set as well.
  • Fixed: The background position is 'fixed' to the window, and stays in the same place as you scroll down. This means you need to be careful about putting major information not too low down - otherwise depending on screen size, they may not be seen. In this case, it's again as tall as you'd like.

Takeover backgrounds will not be loaded if a user would not see the image, for example on mobile devices. In this case, an impression will not be recorded.

CSS

This type should be used purely to inject extra CSS into to the head of the page. It may be useful if you need to make alterations to the page layout when other ads are running, for example a takeover background.

Player Pre-Roll Audio

This type can be used if you use our standard Aiir Player.

The audio will play before the station stream begins. A skip button can be shown on the new version of our player.

If an image is provided, it will appear until the pre-roll audio ends.

Multiple pre-roll ads can run in rotation, with one being randomly selected each time the player is opened.

Player Pre-Roll Video

This type can be used if you use our standard Aiir Player.

The video will play before the station stream begins. A skip button can be shown, if you choose to enable it.

RadioFeed (legacy)

RadioFeed adverts appear within the feed, among other items such as songs.
They are unique in that they aren't recorded as part of the feed seen by everyone - they are inserted at the time the feed is viewed, to ensure maximum visibility.
For example, an ad will always be inserted immediately below the top item in the feed.
They will then be inserted at regular intervals, specified on the RadioFeed settings page, for example every 5 items.
Each time a RadioFeed ad is due to appear in a user's feed, it will be randomly selected from all currently running RadioFeed ads. 

Mobile App Banner Image

Banner adverts appear at the bottom of each screen of the app. A new banner advert is loaded each time the page is changed. You can have as many banner adverts in rotation at one time as you like, they will be randomly selected on each page load.

Banner adverts will be centered in the available space, and surrounded by an optional background colour which can be set for each advert. Banner adverts should be 100px in height, although the width can vary. Using an iPhone as an average, banner adverts should be no narrower than 640px in width. 

Mobile App Banner HTML

Similar to Mobile App Banner Image, but you can insert your own HTML to be loaded into the space.

Mobile App Pre-Roll

Pre-Roll adverts appear when the app is started, and when changing stations. You can have as many pre-roll adverts in rotation at one times as you like, they will be randomly selected on each app load. 

A pre-roll ad can have audio, or just an image, or both.
If the ad has audio, it will automatically dismiss itself at the end of the audio.
The ad can optionally have a 'Skip' button, which is overlayed near the bottom of the screen.
If there the ad has an image but no audio, the skip button must be displayed, otherwise it would not be possible to reach beyond the pre-roll ad. 

There is no recommended size for a pre-roll image, as it can occupy the entire screen, but screen sizes vary from the smallest Android device, to a retina iPad.
For this reason, you can set an image for phones and an image for tablet devices. The tablet image should normally be double the dimensions of the phone image. Both images should be in portrait orientation for best results.
You can also choose an appropriate background colour to appear in the space around the image. If one is not chosen, black is used by default. 

House Ads

House Ads will only appear if there are no other ads are available to appear in a position. They can be used as filler, to ensure spaces are never left blank. 

Campaigns

Each ad must belong to a campaign. A campaign specifies which stations and sites its ads will appear on.

The Campaigns page lists all campaigns in the organisation. Expired campaigns are hidden by default but can be shown using an option at the top. 

You won't see any campaigns you don't have access to - a campaign is accessible if you have been given access to at least one of the stations or sites it is linked with.

Deleting a campaign will also delete all of the ads it contains.

If a start and/or end date is set on a campaign, this takes priority over the dates applied to each ad. So for example if a campaign is set to start on date X, none of the ads can appear before that date.

If a campaign has an end date, it is possible to set a notification to be sent when a defined time ahead of the end date is reached. Only people who have subscribed to ad campaign notifications will receive these. 

It's possible to set specific times of the week a campaign should appear, e.g. morning show hours.

You can choose to make a campaign only appear when it has been selected in a Roadblock.

A campaign can be set to one of two types:

  • Free: does not require pricing information, however it can be added later.
  • Cost Per Click (CPC): allows the user to choose a price per click and an optional budget per day, beyond which the campaign will cease to appear for the remainder of the day. A budget must be set to a multiple of the price per click.

Clients

Clients can be used to group campaigns together, for ease of filtering and reporting.

They're not linked with stations or sites, and are accessible to everyone who has access to the Ads app.

It used to be a requirement that all campaigns had a parent client, but this is no longer the case.

Deleting a client does not delete any campaigns or ads. Any campaigns which belonged to the deleted campaign will no longer have a parent client selected.

Reports

The reports section lets you view and download impression and click statistics for your ads and campaigns.

A report is available for each client, campaign and advert, with a graph and table of impressions and click-through data for the selected period. Totals and averages are shown at the bottom.

You export any report as it appears, as CSV or printable web page. 

Previewing ads

The preview section lets you select ads in your inventory, to create a preview page based on any page of a website.

For each position, you can select either a specific ad, a blank space, or what would normally appear in rotation by default. Scheduled dates for ads and campaigns are not considered, and impressions are not recorded.

Roadblocks

A Roadblock allows you to restrict a section of a website to only show specific campaigns. 

When you create a new Roadblock, you can select the campaigns and the paths of the website to cover. 

Only the selected campaigns will appear on the selected areas of the website. This affects all ad positions on the page. 

You can optionally select dates when this Roadblock takes effect. 

To prevent a campaign from appearing on pages outside of the Roadblock, you should edit the campaign and select the option 'Visible - Only when selected in a Roadblock'. 

Ads required for displaying news content from IRN

With IRN's news content, ads are required to be present on all pages carrying the Sky news content, but they should not appear on any other page. To achieve this, a Roadblock should be created with the IRN campaign selected, and the National News section of the website. 

The IRN campaign should be set to be visible only when selected in a Roadblock.

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