This article explains how to add a campaign and creatives correctly, in order to avoid statistic differences between the agency’s and the target site’s ad servers.

Adding a Campaign to the Agency’s Ad Server

When adding a campaign to an agency’s ad server, it is advisable to take the following into account:

Campaign’s Configuration

The agency should neither target nor limit the campaign in any way, unless the target site’s ad server does not allow it or if it is not trustworthy. If the agency targets or limits the campaign and the target site uploads the submitted code to its ad server, differences will arise. This will be due to the fact that the target site will deliver impressions according to the targeting that has been indicated in its ad server and in accordance with the database being used. It is common that differences exist among diverse databases. Therefore, although the campaigns are limited in the same way both in the agency and in the target site, differences in the statistics will arise all the same.

Pop Under/Pop Up

When adding a pop up or pop under campaign, you should take into account that there are many browsers that block the opening of these windows. Therefore, the ad server that makes the opening of these windows will not count the impressions in the campaign. The percentage of blocked pops is approximately 60%. For this reason, we suggest the following:

The target site should upload the ad as a pop (under or up as appropriate) and indicate that the other ad server (the agency’s) does not open the window.

The agency should upload the ad as a banner (flash, .gif or in the appropriate format) and associate it to a variable or fixed space.

In this way, if the browser owned by the user has a popup blocker, neither the agency nor the target site will count the impression in the campaign (although the target site will count the impression in the space).

The target site should add the agency’s tag or space code in an invisible space if the only thing to be shown is a layer (in order to prevent the target site’s space from counting the banner’s impression in the site too).

The agency should upload the ad as a banner (not as a pop) in a variable space if it will not open the window (this is the recommended version). In case the agency’s ad server is the one that opens the window, the space should be invisible and the ad should be uploaded as a pop.

How to Submit Tracking Tags

If you sent the banners directly to the site instead of submitting the space code, please check whether a 1x1 banner was uploaded to the interface in order to count the impressions and clicks. Also, please verify if the tracking tags have been sent to the target site.

This is done as follows:

Upload a 1 pixel x 1 pixel banner and place in it the click-through URL to which the ad should redirect the user when being clicked on.
Then, submit an impression tracking URL and a click tracking URL to the target site.

In order to obtain these URLs, you should access the HTML space’s code that was associated to the 1x1 banner and select “Image” in the Tag Type dropdown menu. There you obtain the Ad’s Address URL (to count impressions) and the Link URL (to count clicks).

No impressions or clicks will be registered if the target site did not add the impression and click tracking URLs (1x1) to its ad server.

Video Layers/Banners (Rich Media)

According to the IAB’s recommendations, e-planning makes the counting of impressions in the creatives when the buffer is full (that is, when the video starts playing). However, the target site counts the impressions as soon as the code is loaded. As a consequence, a greater number of differences arises in the amount of impressions than the usual one between two ad servers.
In case the creative has a long animation before it shows the video, there can be even greater differences in the statistics.
For this reason, in some cases it is suggested to ask the person who includes the tracking codes in the creative to do it as soon as the creative starts to be shown.

Related Links:

- How to Submit Tracking Pixel URLs + Ad Files to a Target Site