Advertising products

Product overview

Advertising products are created by brokers and used by advertisers as the "vehicles" for their advertisements. The product is used to define the commercial and performance characteristics of an advertising campaign. Products are associated with AdSpaces, and advertisers purchase products to enable their advertisements to be displayed.

Products are defined by three principal characteristics:

• Type (performance-based, impression-based or tenancy)

• Fixed attributes

• Configurable features

Fixed attributes are set by the broker, and include the set of permitted creative types, cost (setup fees and ongoing charges), ranking models and end-of-life dates.

Configurable features are the elements of the product that may be configured by the advertiser, including demographics, keywords, creative content and target devices.

Brokers normally create products with certain fixed attributes and options for advertiser configuration. Publishers create AdSpaces and associate them with products. Advertisers choose products for use in their advertising campaigns and configure them with creatives and matching criteria as allowed by the product specification. .

Advertisers are bound by a contract for the purchased product. In the case of a CPC product, the advertiser may stop the advertising at any time without financial penalty.

Product types

There are three product types:

• Tenancy (for example, banner advertisements) billed at a fixed price for a fixed period of time

• Performance - cost per click (CPC)

• Impression-based - cost per thousand impressions (CPM)

Product types and pricing models are closely related. The product type is fundamental to contracts and purchasing options, serving of ads and costing. Products define the pricing models that will be used for the AdSpaces and campaigns associated with it.

Some product types may be subject to set-up fees while others only attract charges based on end-user interactions (CPC products).

Product attributes

When a brokers create a product, they determine which of the product attributes may be configured by advertisers. Rules are used to determine which of the product's attributes may be optional or user-definable and which attributes are fixed by the product creator.

The configurable attributes include:

• Product name

• Description (for advertiser and publisher)

• Auction model (costing and ranking models)

• Unit cost (CPM = thousand impressions; tenancy = cost for time period)

• Unit of time for tenancy products (slot length)

• Number of slots (tenancy only) - number of slots available for purchase in any period

• Setup fee - charged when product is purchased

• Ongoing fee (if any)

• Availability of product (start and end dates of period)

• Assignable - permits viewing of product by publishers for assignment to AdSpaces

• AdUnit - size of one AdUnit

• For sale - permits viewing and purchase of product by advertisers

Targeting criteria may be set at product level, for all advertisements associated with the product, including

• Time of day (day parting)

• Keyword match types (exact, broad, phrase, negative)

• Type of creative (text, Flash, image)

Product specifications are generally not able to be modified after publication. Minor changes such as updates to descriptions and changes to the end-of-life dates are allowed. New values are effective from the time of the change.

Updates to tenancy products could impact existing bookings for slots already sold.

CPC Products

For cost-per-click products, the system conducts an auction based on variables such as bid price and matching criteria. Keyword matching is a commonly-used model, but need not be the only one.

In a CPC campaign using keyword matching, the auction considers bids, keywords, click-through rates and any other data that the rank and cost models require. A large number of selected keywords will generally lead to a higher impression rate for an ad, and hence a higher cost to the advertiser.

CPC products have a floor price that is used to determine

1. The minimum bid value - the advertiser cannot bid lower than this value

2. The auction floor price - the price at which a CPC auction starts, equivalent to the CPC value of the lowest ranking advertisement.

CPM products

CPM products are based on a fixed price per thousand impressions of an advertisement. Forecasting is used to estimate the numbers of impressions available for the AdSpaces associated with a product, based on the performance of AdSpaces associated with that product as well as filter criteria selected by the advertiser and impressions already bought by other advertisers.

Advertisers may purchase any number of impressions (in blocks of one thousand).

Creative types may include text, images and multimedia (Flash).

Fees other than the price per thousand impressions may be applied to CPM products,including setup, recurring and cancellation fees.

Purchasing CPM products

When a CPM product is purchased, the associated financial account is debited for the contracted number of impressions and any setup fees. There is no compensation or refund available if the number of impressions cannot be delivered.

Tenancy products

Tenancy products provide a guaranteed slot for a fixed time with unlimited numbers of impressions. Tenancy products are usually associated with AdSpaces on high-traffic web sites.

Purchasing tenancy products

Advertisers will be shown information about tenancy AdSpaces, including demographics, network and AdSpace position. The available slots for the length of the tenancy is shown, the price for the selected slots and the AdSpace format. The relevant statistics are based on the available data, and are extrapolated where they only exist for a short period of time.

Product features

Advertising products have a number of characteristics known as "features." Features consist of a number of rules which a broker may configure to define the characteristics of the product. For example, a broker may configure the period in which the product is available for purchase. Some of the features of the product may be left for the advertiser to configure - this is known as a templated feature.

A product manager may add a feature template to a product to define the selection of available creative types for the product. The advertiser may add creative content to the ad in accordance with the rules associated with the feature.

Feature templates may apply to campaigns, ads or both.

Text creative feature templates

Text creative feature templates are configured to offer default settings to facilitate quick addition of the feature to a product. Constraints may be applied to a feature - for example, the number of characters available in a text creative.

Image creative feature templates

Products with image creative template features will allow the advertiser to upload images for use in the product.

Last updated: December 20, 2021