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This distribution option is new in
version 6. This option takes all remaining impressions in
the campaign and distributes them evenly over the remaining
time. Rather than serving equal amounts per day, it serves
a percentage of traffic so that days with higher traffic server
a larger number of the impressions. This creates a more
normalized distribution. This also allows you to modify
campaign dates and quantities. In the "Equally distributed
by day over flight dates" option changing the quantity or dates
will often take the campaign out of rotation for days or weeks.
To compute the percentage of
impressions each campaign should serve, Ban Man Pro uses the
previous X weeks of stats. X is defined in the admin setup
area under "Other information". The field is titled
"Number of weeks to base zone averages on".
Because this feature relies on
historical statistics, this feature can only be used after you
have served ads for at least one week. Using it before
that time may cause the campaign to over or under serve.
Based on the past X weeks of stats, Ban Man Pro computes the
percentage of zone impressions required to serve the total
impressions for the campaign. This percentage is
recomputed each day as well as each time a campaign or zone is
modified. |
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This is the original smoothing
algorithm that was originally introduced in Ban Man Pro version
2.0. This algorithm attempts to serve a fixed number of
impressions on each day. For example, suppose an
advertiser purchases 30,000 impressions to be spread out over a
30-day period. Ban Man Pro will now attempt to serve 1000
impressions per day. If your traffic varies by day of
week, then it is recommended that you use the new algorithm
called "Evenly
Spread over Remaining Time". How does the smoothing
algorithm work? First, you must set the preferences to
define the number of minutes the smoothing algorithm is
based on. Values range from 5 minutes to 60
minutes. Which value you choose depends on how much
traffic your web site experiences and how steady the traffic
is. For high-traffic sites with continuous traffic a
small value works great. For low-volume sites with
erratic traffic a higher value will be required. Here
are some suggested values:
|
Suggested
Smoothing Minutes |
Traffic
(Impressions/day) |
Suggested
Value
(minutes)
|
| <5,000 |
30-60
|
| 5,000-100,000 |
20-30 |
| 100,000+ |
5-20 |
| >1
Million |
5-15 |
Based on the
smoothing value you select, Ban Man Pro performs the
following tasks. Each hour Ban Man Pro computes the
number of impressions that are expected up to that
hour. This value is then compared to the number of
impressions that have been served. The difference of
these two numbers is the available amount. For
example, suppose Ban Man Pro computes 5,000 expected
impressions, and 4900 have been served. 100
impressions are now available to be served during the next
hour.
Next, Ban Man
Pro records the number of impressions that have been served
in each zone during the last XX minutes. (XX is the
value of the smoothing minutes that you have set in your
preferences). Suppose your site is basing the
smoothing algorithm on 15 minutes of data. If 250
impressions were served in the last 15 minutes, Ban Man Pro
predicts that 1000 will be served during the next
hour. With 100 impressions available, Ban man Pro will
set this campaign to serve 10% of the time.
Since the smoothing minutes in this example are set to 15,
Ban Man Pro will re-evaluate these numbers every 15 minutes
and reset the percentages.
During the very
last XX period of the campaign, Ban Man Pro will inflate the
available impressions by 45% in an attempt to insure that
the campaign is fully served. If you traffic
drastically decreases, the campaign may not be fully served.
Important
Notes:
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When adding
a new campaign that is to be evenly distributed, they
should always be entered before the start date.
This will ensure the campaign begins immediately at the
start date. Suppose you enter an even campaign at
noon and set the start date to today. Next,
suppose you are expecting to serve 1000 impressions/day
for this campaign. Since 1/2 day has already
passed, Ban Man Pro will attempt to catch up with the
500 expected impressions and that may be the only banner
appearing for some time.
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Never enter
an unrealistic quantity (ie, don't oversell your ad
space). This may cause the smoothing algorithm to
break down and not all campaigns will be served.
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To see how
an equally distributed campaign is performing, while
viewing a listing of campaigns, click the Analyze link next to the campaign
of interest to view an analysis of the distribution for
this campaign. This will also tell you if the
campaign is over or under-delivering.
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