jair101 Posted September 14, 2018 Posted September 14, 2018 I am just starting exploring the advertisement options offered by IPS and I have stumbled upon a possible issue, maybe bug. I do have Google Analytics to count my page impressions. So far I haven't investigated how many of my users use adblocks. I've read there are options with Google Tag Manager, but I decided that it is much more elegant and representing real life use case to setup one 1x1 white pixel footer advert and count how many ad impressions IPS will register and compare it with the google analytics stats. I've read that IPS uses ipsAdvertisement class, which is blocked by the most popular adblock plugin, so my experiment should have been pretty reliable. Much to my surprise, IPS actually registers more then 2x ad impressions then GA registers page impressions. Any idea what is causing this? Maybe GA filters search robots, which happily crawl my empty ad and register an ad view? Anyone else experience similar behavior with the ad impressions count by IPS? Issue here is that there is no way I can sell these stats to ad providers, which kinda makes them meaningless. I am sure most of them will accuse of me of cheating and will be not willing to work with me ever again. Many of them provide ad script with their own tracking, which is fair enough, but I also want to have a reliable method for ad impressions count to cross check with their info as well.
Owdy Posted October 1, 2018 Posted October 1, 2018 Yes, that impression counter in ACP is broken somehow. See ticket #1021226. My case: Timeframe: 10.9-30.9. ACP: Banner got 553719 impressions Google analytics: Whole site got 163 154 page views There are 3 images in my ad, for different platforms. PC, tablet and mobile. What if counter counts (so it a bug) 3 times in every load or something? EDIT: And that banner got only 50% page loads, because there was second banner in that spot same time. So difference is actually even larger.
Owdy Posted October 1, 2018 Posted October 1, 2018 On 9/14/2018 at 11:18 PM, jair101 said: Issue here is that there is no way I can sell these stats to ad providers, which kinda makes them meaningless. I am sure most of them will accuse of me of cheating and will be not willing to work with me ever again. ^this. I cant say customer that ad got 10 000 impressions, if GA says whole site got only 1000 page views in same time.
Owdy Posted October 2, 2018 Posted October 2, 2018 Created ticket about this:"Working like it should, regards, IPB staff". Case closed.
jair101 Posted October 2, 2018 Author Posted October 2, 2018 5 hours ago, Owdy said: Created ticket about this:"Working like it should, regards, IPB staff". Case closed. Yeah, I figured this will be the answer when I read that the counter is very basic. I think this counter functionality should be removed, because it can give you stats that no advertiser in his right mind would pay and is misleading at best. Not that I am complaining getting money for providing ads to Bing, Google, Baidu and Alexa, but this is not fair - providers pay for their ads to be seen by humans, not bots.
bfarber Posted October 2, 2018 Posted October 2, 2018 An ad impression is an impression - we just +1 the column whenever the ad is output. You could probably create a small plugin to either (1) not increase the counter for bots, or (2) not pull/show ads for bots.
opentype Posted October 2, 2018 Posted October 2, 2018 3 hours ago, jair101 said: I think this counter functionality should be removed, because it can give you stats that no advertiser in his right mind would pay and is misleading at best. I disagree. First: as already mentioned: a view is just a view. It’s by definition to just mean that the “item” was “requested and displayed”. Whether it’s an ad, a page, a YouTube video – whatever. That’s universally understood in the IT world. A view neither excludes bots nor multiple calls by the same user. For anything else, there are other terms, like “visits”, “unique visitors” and so on. So there is nothing wrong with counting views like views are meant to be counted and there is no point in removing it. The people involved just need to know what it means. If the admins don’t know it, it’s not the function that needs a change, it’s the admin that needs to learn what it means.
Owdy Posted October 2, 2018 Posted October 2, 2018 If you sell ads for customers, you probably understand why this is an issue. On 10/1/2018 at 4:36 PM, Owdy said: ^this. I cant say customer that ad got 10 000 impressions, if GA says whole site got only 1000 page views in same time.
opentype Posted October 2, 2018 Posted October 2, 2018 4 minutes ago, Owdy said: If you sell ads for customers, you probably understand why this is an issue. I do that. And when I sell 50,000 views, I sell 50,000 views exactly like the word “view” is defined. There is nothing misleading about that, nor is it an “issue”. I already addressed the GA mismatch. There is not much to add to that.
opentype Posted October 2, 2018 Posted October 2, 2018 Same thing. But if you’re falling back to single word comments without even attempting to address my arguments or make some of your own, I won’t waste my time with it any longer.
Owdy Posted October 2, 2018 Posted October 2, 2018 Well, someone posts "I have issue" and someone else reply: "no, its not an issue, you just dont understand, move on". That really doesnt help, you know. It is issue for me. I honestly cant say to customer that she/he got 10x more impressions than GA says whole site got page views. Its rediculous. They think im fraud. If you can, fine. I cant.
opentype Posted October 2, 2018 Posted October 2, 2018 7 minutes ago, Owdy said: I honestly cant say to customer that she/he got 10x more impressions than GA says whole site got page views. Then don‘t say it. Who forces you to draw a connection between ad views and GA page views (which I explained measure different things) and even show that connection to your customers? If that is your issue, than change that. If you need other proof for your ad impressions, you need to go with your server stats. That was the first thing I replied to. Your server stats are the only reliable source for what is actually going on on your server/site. External JavaScript-based services cannot do that. Their numbers will always be lower – not just because of bots. Even humans who actually see your ads might not get counted externally, e.g. because they blocked the connection. I explained all this stuff to you and I would say that is a helpful answer.
Owdy Posted October 2, 2018 Posted October 2, 2018 1 minute ago, opentype said: Then don‘t say it. Who forces you to draw a connection between ad views and GA page views (which I explained measure different things) and even show that connection to your customers? If that is your issue, than change that. When customer shows interest to buy ads from our site, they often asks for GA stats, Its really common, not something i "draw". They wanna know how much they get for their money.
Morgin Posted October 2, 2018 Posted October 2, 2018 2 hours ago, Owdy said: When customer shows interest to buy ads from our site, they often asks for GA stats, Its really common, not something i "draw". They wanna know how much they get for their money. The solution is ultimately to use a third party ad server that has more sophisticated visitor tracking. Try Google Ad Manager (formerly doubleclick for publishers). It’s got a bit of a learning curve, but the kind of data your advertisers want requires a full ad software stack.
Owdy Posted October 3, 2018 Posted October 3, 2018 Google ad manager looks very complicated. I think i install https://www.revive-adserver.com/ , i have used that before.
jair101 Posted October 3, 2018 Author Posted October 3, 2018 5 hours ago, Owdy said: Google ad manager looks very complicated. I think i install https://www.revive-adserver.com/ , i have used that before. I think Google Ad Manager is only for adsense or not? I am kinda new in this area, but the publisher is pressuring me to start the campaign as soon as possible and I need some more advanced stuff to ensure 10% banner rotation, etc. @Owdy, can you please give a quick rundown how revive server would work with IPS?
Owdy Posted October 3, 2018 Posted October 3, 2018 Revive works fine with Adsense. 🙂 https://www.revive-adserver.com/faq/using-google-adsense-with-revive-adserver/ Revive works with IPB just great. You create "zone" in Revive and get js-code to put on IPB AD system. Then you can choose what banners to show on that zone. I created "header" zone, pasted code in ACP ad system and now i cant run several banners in site header from Revive. Creat reports etc. You can create user to customer, so she/he can look statics by himself, order email reports etc.
jair101 Posted October 3, 2018 Author Posted October 3, 2018 31 minutes ago, Owdy said: Revive works fine with Adsense. 🙂 https://www.revive-adserver.com/faq/using-google-adsense-with-revive-adserver/ Revive works with IPB just great. You create "zone" in Revive and get js-code to put on IPB AD system. Then you can choose what banners to show on that zone. I created "header" zone, pasted code in ACP ad system and now i cant run several banners in site header from Revive. Creat reports etc. You can create user to customer, so she/he can look statics by himself, order email reports etc. Can I add a custom js add in revive? I assume I can since it works with adsense, but I wonder, how the process works. I add the js script in revive, then revive provides me with another js script that I add in IPS, is it like that? So the ad will pass through two servers before being displayed to the user? I won't be using adsense by the way.
Owdy Posted October 3, 2018 Posted October 3, 2018 34 minutes ago, jair101 said: Can I add a custom js add in revive? If you create HTML banner, you can put anything you like. 35 minutes ago, jair101 said: I add the js script in revive, then revive provides me with another js script that I add in IPS, is it like that? You put "zone" JS into IPB ad system+ one js code in to template. You need to do that only once. Example 1. Create "Just below the page header" -zone in Revive. It gives you js-code for that (or iframe code) 2. Go to IPB ACP - >"Create new advertisement" -> paste Revive JS, choose "Show the advertisement Just below the page header" (with unlimited impressions) Now you have installed Revive in your header section. Now you can run differend campaings and banners in that zone from Revive. You dont have to do anything in IPB side anymore.
Owdy Posted October 3, 2018 Posted October 3, 2018 48 minutes ago, jair101 said: So the ad will pass through two servers before being displayed to the user? Yep, just like with Ad sense.
jair101 Posted October 3, 2018 Author Posted October 3, 2018 @Owdy, I read that revive is fairly resource heavy. Can you provide some ballpark values of the required resources? I imagine that serving a single ad on a single installation could hardly require a lot of resources, I do have about 2gb ram to spare out of 8gb and wonder if it will be enough.
Owdy Posted October 3, 2018 Posted October 3, 2018 I dont know. They have a Forum, you should ask them 🙂
jair101 Posted October 11, 2018 Author Posted October 11, 2018 I am trying Google Ad Manager and it was a steep curve from the beginning, but now I think it works ok and fits my needs.
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