How does the online purchasing option function?

Ban Man Pro includes a basic option for advertisers to purchase advertising directly from your web site. Starting with version 9 a person must first signup as an advertiser before they can purchase advertising. Once signed up, all purchasing is handled from within the advertiser console. Once a purchase is made, a campaign is automatically created and assigned to pre-defined zones. The campaign can be set to begin serving immediately or placed on hold until you approve the campaign. You can also allow advertisers to upload their banners. Currently only standard banners are supported. Please note the purchase option only collects information and does not process the credit card. You must manually process the card.

Note: The online purchasing option should only be used if your web site uses an SSL certificate and supports the HTTPS protocol. This is necessary because advertisers will submit their credit card information when making a purchase.

How do I implement the online purchasing option?

You should begin by enabling the option in Ban Man Pro by selecting Online Orders on the left navigation bar, then clicking "Online Order Setup". First determine if you will allow advertisers to signup from your web site. If you enable that option you will want to link to the signup page from a location on your web site. The link to the signup page is indicated at the top of the page.

Alternatively, you may decide to only allow existing advertisers to purchase advertising. In that case leave the Enable Advertiser Signup option unchecked and only check the Enable Advertisers to purchase Advertising option.

Next, setup the Order Types for the advertising you will accept. This is done on the Add Order Type tab. Order Types can be assigned to specific advertisers if necessary in order to limit who can purchase what type of advertising. An order type also defines the campaign properties as a campaign will automatically be created in Ban Man Pro at the time of purchase. The campaign can be set to automatic or manual approval. The campaign will also be assigned to the zones you select. The fields defined on this screen are shown below:

Before you can accept online orders for advertising, you must define the types, quantities, and price. To Add a new order type, click "Add Order Type". The fields are defined below:

Description (required)

Enter a description. For example, "50,000 Impressions", or "1000 Clicks", or "1 Month Sponosorship".

Orer Total Cost (required)

Enter the cost or price of the advertising. This must be the total cost and NOT the cost per click or cost per 1000 impressions.

Make this option available to all NEW advertisers

By checking this option each time you add a new advertiser this option is made available to them.

Existing Advertisers who may purchase this option

Select any existing advertisers that you would like to make this purchase option available to.

Campaign Properties

Automatically Activate Campaign

If checked the campaign will be automatically approved when purchased. If unchecked, the campaign will remain inactive until you approve it.

Allow Advertiser to Upload their Banner

Check this option to allow advertisers to upload their own banners. If unchecked, they must select from an existing banner. Currently only standard banners are supported.

Default Campaign

Check this box to make the campaign a default campaign versus a standard campaign.

Date/Time Information

Start Date (required)

You can either set the start date to the purchase date, or allow the advertiser to choose one.

End Date (required)

You can either set the end date to X days after the start date or allow the advertiser to choose one.

Daily Start/End Time

Select the period of time to display the ad. For example to display a campaign between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM, select the appropriate times from the drop-down list. ** Setting the start time equal to 12:00 AM and the end time equal to 12:00 AM will cause the banner to rotate during all hours.

Note: This is a Daily Start/End time. It does not simply apply to the first and last day but rather applies to each and every day.

Days of Week

Select the days to show the campaign. For example, the advertiser might choose to display an ad only on weekdays. In this case, select Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. ** If using this option, be sure to include a default campaign in the zone that uses this campaign. This will prevent your web pages from displaying white space if no campaigns are available.

Distribution/Other Information

Distribution (required)

Select the campaign distribution type. Choices include:

Equally Distributed By Day over Flight Dates -- Select this distribution of you want Ban Man Pro to equally spread the impressions over the campaign Flight Dates by day. This option can only be applied to CPM type ads. For example, if you enter a quantity of 30,000 in 30 days then Ban Man Pro will attempt to serve 1000 impressions per day.

Evenly Spread over remaining time -- Use this option to spread the remaining quantity evenly over the remaining time. This option uses a normalized distribution so that more impressions are served on days that have higher traffic. Ban Man Pro determines how often to show the campaign based on previous statistics. It uses the period that you defined in the admin setup area under "Number of Weeks to base Zone Averages On".

Weighted in Each Zone -- Select this option if you will be managing the impression of each campaign via a weighting system. Ban Man Pro now supports 3 weighting systems, 1-100, 1-1000 and a relative weighting system. You will learn more about the weighting system when creating a zone.

Click for more information on the Ban Man Pro Even Distribution smoothing algorithm.

Type (required)

Select the campaign type.

CPM -- Cost Per Thousand campaign. Select this campaign when the advertiser is paying you based on the number of impressions. For example, if the advertiser has purchased 5000 banner impressions and is paying you $30 per thousand, select CPM.

Per Click -- Select Per Click if the advertiser is paying you each time a user clicks on the banner ad. For example, if the advertiser is paying $0.50 cents each time a user clicks on the ad, then select Per Click.

Flat Rate -- Select Flat Rate if the advertiser is paying you a flat rate for the advertising campaign. For example, if you sold the advertiser all impressions on your homepage for $1000, then select Flat Rate. Also select this if you are not limiting the amount of impressions are clicks and are expiring the campaign by dates only.

Quantity (required)

Enter the quantity sold to the advertiser. For CPM type campaigns, enter the number of impressions sold. For Per Click campaigns, enter the maximum number of clicks the advertiser has committed to. For Flat Rate campaigns, there is no need to enter a value as campaign validation is based solely on the Start/End Date and Times as well as the days selected.

Impression and Click Capping

Use this option to place a daily, weekly, or monthly cap on the number of Impressions (CPM Campaigns and Flat Rate only), or on the number of clicks (Per Click campaigns only). For example, if a campaign is set with a daily cap of 1000 impressions and 1000 impressions have been served by noon the campaign will discontinue serving impressions for the remainder of the day.

Cost

Enter the cost to the advertiser. For CPM type campaigns, enter the cost per thousand. For Per Click campaigns, enter the Cost Per Click. For Flat Rate campaigns, enter the full amount being charged to the advertiser.

Frequency Cap

Enter a frequency cap to limit the number of times this campaign is displayed to the same user. This option only appears if you have enabled the frequency cap option under setup. A campaign can be capped based on impressions or clicks. For example, when based on clicks after the user clicks a particular ad it will no longer be displayed.

Session Length

Select the amount of time that defines a session for this campaign. For example, if entering a frequency cap of 5 and a session length of 2 hours, a person will never see this campaign more than 5 times every 2 hours. Note that this option applies only if entering a frequency cap greater than 0.

Track ROI

Select this option to measure acquisitions from this campaign. ROI is an abbreviation for Return On Investment. Advertisers who wish to measure the success of a campaign may require the measurement of sales, leads, or some other type of transaction or acquisition. For example, if a web visitor clicks on a banner ad, then visits the advertised site and makes a purchase this can be recorded as an Acquisition that directly resulted from the campaign. Other events such as signups could also be measured.

Here is how Ban Man Pro measures an Acquisition:

The advertiser places the ROI tracking code on any page they wish to track as an acquisition or sale resulting from this banner or link.

Ban Man Pro will place a cookie on the user's computer when clicking an ad.

If they then visit a page or make a purchase on the Advertisers site containing this embedded code, the event is recorded in Ban Man Pro and hence the ROI or acquisition measured.

To obtain the ROI tracking code that should be supplied to the advertiser, view a listing of all campaigns then select the ROI Link located to the left of the campaign listing.

Note: Ban Man Pro automatically filters out duplicate acquisitions using the IP address and browser header. The filter time applied is 24 hours.

Note: Because cookies are domain specific, changing the domain or IP address on which you host Ban Man Pro will invalidate all previous ROI tracking cookies.

Click here for more information on ROI tracking.

Zone Assignments

Select All Site Zones that this campaign will automatically be assigned to

Select all zones that this campaign will be assigned to. Please note Only zones on sites that the advertiser is assigned to will be applied

Other

Message Displayed after order is submitted

Enter a message that will be displayed in the browser after successfully submitting an order.

Now you should place a test order and make sure the sale is registered. To place a test order you must login to the advertiser console as an advertiser. Once a sale has been registered it can be viewed by clicking "Online Orders". The information should only be access/displayed using the secure protocol (HTTPS) because the credit card information is displayed. An email is also sent to the Ban Man Pro administrator with the information submitted by the advertiser. The credit card information is excluded from this email.

Note: An email is automatically sent to the Administrator of Ban Man Pro each time a sale is made. This email contains all information excluding the credit card data.

Note: All credit card information is stored in the database using encryption.