by “So, where is he going with all this?” I hope that’s your question. Well, what I’m hoping to build is a ad management system for my blogs, and maybe someday for a blog network. Sure, I could have bought a system, but this has been more educational in terms of technologies, and the up front cost and support costs are minimal. Plus, I get to take the system in any direction I so desire.
Work in Progress…
Right now, it just does the 125×125 ads, and only the ones I get from Orange Links– which means I don’t get any of the long standing ads– so here’s the import path:
- Import Orange Links
- Import HTML Links from Perfomics so that I can get all ads that are there that have not come in orange links.
- Input place holders for Google AdSense.
- Input information from other providers and/or interface to their methods.
On the output side:
- Automatically upload files with latest links.
- Create XML control files that will specify ad sizes and output files for more control.
- Use Data field to control how many times a given link appears in output file.
#3 touches on a mechanism I put in place in case I really don’t want a given ad to display. For instance– and I haven’t gotten around to fixing this yet– if you look at the 4 125×125 ads, you may see an ad featuring children’s swimsuits that has a young girl in a bikini. Now, I’m not for advertising bikinis and the store is fine otherwise, but if I simply take the ad from the download and push it to the site, then I get this ad. All taken care of.
So, I’ve put a column in the database that says how many times I should display a given ad. Changing the number to 0 will make sure this ad doesn’t make it to the site. But doing this with database scripts is kinda cryptic, so I’m going to build a tool.
That’s Mr. Ad Manager to You
I’m going to build a utility that can look at the database, show me every ad, and let me adjudicate it as I see fit. I may build it to look like an e-mail ap, in the future, where I can see when new ads show up, what the status of old ads are, and then have the image and the link so I can check the landing page if I so desire.
This application will also show me the current targeted output, and maybe, down the road, keep track of how the different campaigns are going (this would require exporting the data from the separate systems, but this would be the long range plan).
Sound interesting? Wish you had something like this?
