Mewsoft Banner Server

Overview

Mewsoft Banner Server is already integrated component in the Mewsoft Search Engine which simply is an ad management system designed for sites that need fast, reliable, flexible, easy-to-use and full-featured ad serving and management front-end.

With features like trackable rich-media delivery, independent client statistical area, comprehensive activities reporting, unlimited content creations and auto-generate ad codes, Mewsoft Banner Server will simplifies your advertising tasks while at the same time maximizing your advertising revenues.

The banner server administration tools allows you to manage all your banner advertising all over your search engine pages as well as your all other sites pages and your entire network. You can create and manage unlimited zones or groups, accounts, and campaigns as well as check stats and other options.

Features

Table (1) shows a summary of the most important features.

Table (1) Summary of the banner server important features.

Zones

Zones are reserved locations that you assign on your websites pages to run banners. For each zone you can assign unlimited campaigns or banners to rotate. You should consider all banner that will run in specific zone to have the same size, height and width in pixels to consist with your sites pages original design so not to stretch or compress the pages looks when the banner size changes from small to big or from big to small. You can create unlimited zones.

Accounts

For each advertiser or client you just create one account with login which allows the client to login to the clients stats area to check all his campaigns or banners.

Campaigns

For each banner you run you create a campaign with the details of the banner. The campaign information includes type of expiration either by views, clicks or time period specified by start and end dates, banner width and height, banner image location , click target, redirect URL and more.

Steps to setup a campaign

1. Create the account that campaign belongs to from "Add New Account".

2. Create the campaign from "Add New Campaign".

3. Setup the zones that the campaign banner will rotate in, from "Manage Campaigns" then browse to the campaign name line and click on "Config". From the "Configure Banner Campaign" Menu select all the Banner Zones that this campaign will rotate.

4. Make sure that the campaign is active and also the account if you want the client to be able to check the campaigns stats.

Interactive Marketing Units ad formats

You can use the traditional Interactive marketing unit ad standards set by the Internet Advertising Bureau shown below or you can create your own. Of course it is recommended to use the standard media sizes below as it covers all the sizes anyone might need.

Table(2) Interactive marketing units ad formats.

Using and calling the banners

There are many ways to use the banners zones and campaigns either by using the build in classes, direct calls, or SSI calls.

Calling banners using Classes

Classes can only be used inside the program templates or any output from  the program including custom functions and custom classes. The classes used to call the banners are as follows:

<!--CLASS::Banner:Zone_Name-->

This class will call any banner zone and rotate all the banner in this zone. Every time the page that have this class is called, the banner server will return different banner.

Replace Zone_Name with the Zone name you want to rotate. For example to call and rotate a zone you have create with the name Top_468, then put this class in your templates:

<!--CLASS::Banner:Top_468-->

You can call only specific campaign by using the following class:

<!--CLASS::Banner:Get:Campaign_Name-->

Replace Campaign_Name with the campaign you need to call.

Calling banners using SSI

When using server side includes (SSI) calls, you should name your files with the .shtml extension. This is required to run any programs inside static html pages. The format to call banners in your shtml files as following:

<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/search/ads.cgi?ZID=Zone_Name&TID=2"-->

Replace Zone_Name with the zone you want to call and rotate. Please also change the path to the program file ads.cgi if required based on your server configuration.

Your server also must be enabled to run server side includes (SSI) besides the pages containing the banner code itself must be .shtml.

You can also with SSI call specific campaign only using this format:

<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/search/ads.cgi?ID=Campaign_Name&TID=2"-->

Replace Campaign_Name with the campaign name you want to call.

Calling banners directly
You can call the banner directly from the browser by calling the program file ads.cgi with the proper parameters, see this code:

http://www.mewsoft.com/cgi-bin/search/ads.cgi?ZID=Zone_Name&TID=1

The program adclick.cgi is used to track and record the banners clicks which you can use with ads.cgi for simple image banners calls

<A HREF="http://www.mewsoft.com/cgi-bin/search/adclick.cgi?ID=Campaign_Name">
<IMG SRC="http://www.mewsoft.com/cgi-bin/search/ads.cgi?ID=Campaign_Name&TID=0"></A>

Replace Campaign_Name with the campaign you want to call.

You cal also use text links to track clicks on specific banner campaigns as following:

<A HREF="http://www.mewsoft.com/cgi-bin/search/adclick.cgi?ID=Campaign_Name">Click Here To Visit Us</A>

It is better also in image calls to use some JavaScript code to generate random number each time the pages are called or refreshed to avoid the browsers to cash the banners images. The code below is a good example:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!--
document.write('<A HREF="http://www.mewsoft.com/cgi-bin/search/adclick.cgi?ID=Campaign_Name&RID=' + (new Date()).getTime()+'" TARGET=_blank><IMG SRC="http://www.mewsoft.com/cgi-bin/search/ads.cgi?ID=Campaign_Name&TID=0&RID=' + (new Date()).getTime() + '" BORDER="0" HEIGHT="60" WIDTH="468" ALT="Mewsoft Search Engine Software"></A>');
//-->
</SCRIPT>

Checking Campaigns Stats

The banner server has a good tools for generating stats for all campaigns individually. The stats format are summary, daily, or hourly and IP log details.

The system admin can check the stats easily from the admin center "Manage Campaigns" then select Stats under the Actions of the campaign you want to check the stats.

Clients also can access stats using the login assigned in their account and the account itself must be enabled. Call the program file adstats.cgi. Point your browser to the file adstats.cgi, for example:

        http://www.mewsoft.com/cgi-bin/search/adstats.cgi

or

        http://www.mewsoft.com/cgi-bin/search/adstats.cgi?Lang=English

The login page will display, client must enter the account login user name and password to check all the campaigns stats.

As shown in figures (1) to (4) how the details of the reporting system is available for both the system admin and the client.

Figure (1) show the summary page for a client including all the client campaigns over specific one month period.

Figure(2) shows the daily reports for single campaign for a client over one month period in both numerical and graphical mode.

Figure(3) Shows the hourly reports for single campaign for a client over one month period in both numerical and graphical mode.

Figure(4) Shows the IP log and click source for single campaign for a client over one month period which helps to track the source for each single click making the client much satisfied and confidence.

Figure(1) Reports summary for account campaigns over one month period.

Figure(2) Daily reports for account campaign over one month period.

Figure(3) Hourly reports for account campaign over one month period.

Figure(4) IP log reports for account campaign over one month period.

Add New Account

The first thing to do when adding a new advertiser or client is to create an account for this client. You need only to create one account for each client or advertiser. You can assign and run unlimited banners or campaigns to one account.

Figure (5) show the fields and their meanings in the add new account menu.

Figure(5). Add New Account Fields.

Figure(6). Add New Account Menu Example.

Use the Add New Campaign menu to create a new banner or campaign for any account you have created. You can assign unlimited number of campaigns or banners for each Account or client.

Figure (7) below show the fields and their meanings in the add new campaign menu.