Tips for Testing Campaigns

I was pondering for a while on the topic to post.At last managed to get a topic for today.The post would focus on few ideas to test new ad and creative type on live environment.When you traffickers receive any new creative/ad format which you wanted to know how it would look on the live publisher, here are the ways you can carry out this test

• Live testing of campaigns MUST be executed in short time.Once the test ad is live, test what you needed, and turn it off instead running it for days(which is a huge mess)

• Always check for the preview and click through on the ad server before going to make live

• If you wanted to do a quick test, book huge inventory, set highest priority, and scheduled it for one day(simply traffic as exclusive/roadblock campaigns).So this test ad becomes live as soon as the Ad server pushes.Note very very importantly this type of test should be finished in short time, say 10 ~15 min after the ad server pushes.Else, it would results in unnecessary impressions delivery and also would compete with other premium advertisements running.So be utmost careful while executing this

• Another good practice is to target.By this you actually reduce the competition with actual live ads scheduled.Pick the less traffic page group of the publisher to target.Usually the publisher would have less ads scheduled, so the possibility of competing is less

• You can also geo-target .Idea is , you target the test ad to to your local(country/state/city)this way you narrow down and keep yourself out of competing with scheduled ads.Example if you are in india further drill down to city level say " chennai/bangalore/mumbai" which is your target city
  

Testing campaign on live environment is a good practice, but do abide your limits and its impact.Always carry out within shorter time and immediately turn off once testing is done.More the testing time, more the inventory loss and higher the cost we would be liable to ad server vendors.

Best Online ad trafficking practices

I have jotted down few points which I think are the most essential qualities for all online ad traffickers to follow along with their everyday trafficking process.

General Practices

• Do not touch the ad server before you read and understand the traffick request thoroughly

• Check for any attachments and download if any (such as Creative, IO’s, Trafficking sheet, etc)

• While replying the clients always remember to include information like Campaign ID, Ad ID, and creative ID instead of long campaign/ad names. Fact is Id’s are easy to search in ad servers

• Once your work is finished on the ad server, just remember to put a brief note of your work in the comment field (if any) in the ad server. This piece of information would help your successor/QA person to understand your work

• Prepare a matrix containing different page groups and its corresponding dimension for quick reference

• Readers, it is a good habit to document a complete trafficking guideline. This document would be useful to you as well as your team to maintain a knowledge base which can be further shared with fellow traffickers and new joiners

• While replying to your client, first type the email body and then attach files(if any) and at last include the email ids required

Technical practices

• Whenever you deal with inventory booking, first run an availability inventory forecast and then book the inventory. Doing this way help you to understand the inventory available and avoid overbooking

• Check for the creative specifications such as creative file size, Creative looping, Dimension against the website specifications

• For Zone Targeting check if the sent creative and zone dimension matches (For example Page group “Horoscope” on a given website would accept only creative of dimension 400x400)

• Check for the Landing page, by pasting the given LP on to the browser and see if it renders properly without error. If you get error then check with various browsers

• For any TPS (3rd party served) Tags ensure you implement correct click tracking and cache busting (Cookie Defeating) of your ad server

• Before making the ad live, ensure that the creative previews and click thru works fine