Revive AdServer (Formerly OpenX Source) API – Campaigns and eCPM: Part 3
Today we are going to talk about Revive AdServer (Formerly OpenX Source) Campaigns. First let us start with identifying that types of campaigns that are available in Revive AdServer (Formerly OpenX Source) .
- Contract – a campaign with a daily limit spread out evenly over time
- Contract Exclusive – the same daily limit as in a regular contract campaign, but has a weight parameter which determines its placement ahead of other contract campaigns
- Remnant – can be constrained either by the start and end dates or by the number of booked impressions
The Remnant type campaign is the one we are going to be utilizing in the future API examples, since it allows us to work with a very important feature of OpenX – eCPM (effective CPM). eCPM is a very neat and relatively new feature which was introduced in formerly OpenX Source 2.8 (somewhere in 2009). Essentially, Revive AdServer (Formerly OpenX Source) is able to grab statistics gathered from a running CPA and CPC campaigns and convert them into an eCPM value, which it then can compare to the other CPM-based campaigns to determine which campaign will be loaded for maximized revenue.
The concept is probably very familiar to most people who worked with online advertisement, but we find that it will be critical for the understanding of further articles. So to clear things up, here is a very basic example:
Campaign A:
- Campaign Type: CPC
- Cost: $1 per click
- Impressions tracked: 1000
- Clicks tracked: 10
- eCPM: (10 clicks x $1) / 1000 = $10 per 1000 impressions
Campaign B:
- Campaign Type: CPM
- Cost: $5 per 1000 impressions
In a situation where Campaign A and Campaign B both match to the same Zone, the eCPM value of Campaign A will be compared to the CPM cost value of the Campaign B. In this example, a banner from Campaign A will be displayed ($10>$5). Campaign A banner will keep loading until either the campaign will run out of booked impressions, reach its end date or its performance will drop by so much that the eCPM value will fall bellow $5.
As you can see this creates a type of bidding process for a specific zone between multiple campaigns of various types, andRevive AdServer (Formerly OpenX Source) automatically picks the one which will result in the highest possible revenue for the publisher (well at least in theory, more about that later).
By default, Revive AdServer (Formerly OpenX Source) comes with eCPM functionality disabled. To enable it, as a Manager user go to My Account tab and open the Campaign Preferences section. There you can select both check-boxes to either enable eCPM for just Remnant, Contract or both types of campaigns.
When creating a new Remnant campaign using eCPM strategy, do not forget to specify the Minimum daily impressions field value. It determines the number if impressions required to make eCPM calculations. The default value is 100, but we usually lower it during deployment for testing purposes. Although this short article is very theoretical, it is important for the understanding of the next one where we will demonstrate how to create and properly manage campaigns using the Revive AdServer (Formerly OpenX Source) API.