DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF WEB-BASED ADVERTISEMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
TABLE OF CONTENT
ABSTRACT
LIST OF TABLES
LIST OF FIGURES
LIST OF ACRONYMS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Why Internet-Based Marketing?
1.2 How It Works?
2 TECHNOLOGIES USED
2.1 Google AdWords Application Programming Interface
2.2 Google AdSense Application Programming Interface
2.3 PHP
2.4 MySQL
2.5 MVC Architecture
3 web based ADVERTISING
3.1 What is web based Advertising?
3.2 Advertising Metrics
3.3 Key Elements
3.4 Design and Implementation
4 web based PUBLISHING
4.1 What is web based Publishing?
4.2 How it Works
4.3 Design and Implementation
5 FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS
REFERENCES
A USER MANUAL
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1.1 Various Ad Server Vendors
Table 3.1 Various Image Sizes for Image Ads
Table 4.1 Various Ad Formats Available for Different
Ads
Table 4.2 “USER_ACCOUNT” Structure
Table 4.3 “ROLE” Structure
Table 4.4 “USER_ROLE” Structure
Table 4.5 “PUBLISHER” Structure
Table 4.6 “ADVERTISER” Structure
Table 4.7 “CHANNELS” Structure
LIST OF FIGURESPAGE
Figure 2.1 MVC architecture
Figure 3.1 Campaign hierarchies
Figure 3.2 Ad positions
Figure 3.3 Form for creating a new campaign
Figure 3.4 List of all campaigns
Figure 3.5 Form to place a text ad
Figure 3.6 Example of an ad appearing on the side of
the page
Figure 3.7 Example of an ad appearing on the top of
the page
Figure 3.8 Campaign details
Figure 3.9 Campaign ads
Figure 3.10 Report generation form for advertisers
Figure 3.11 Campaigns tracking page
Figure 4.1 Database schema
Figure 4.2 Create a new publisher account
Figure 4.3 Create a new channel
Figure 4.4 Lists of channels
Figure 4.5 Page for generating JavaScript code for
displaying ads on a publisher’s site
Figure 4.6 Page for generating code for implementing
Google search box functionality
Figure 4.7 Report generation form for publishers
ABSTRACT
It takes a tremendous
amount of effort in the form of man-hours and money for advertisers to promote
their product or service through the traditional advertising mediums, such as
the press, billboards, and television. With the advent of the Internet, marketing
through the Internet opened new frontiers for advertisers as well as
publishers. For advertisers to reach out to more people, it is important to
utilize popular platforms such as Google Search and social media like Facebook
and MySpace. For publishers, it is important to get as many ads so as to
generate maximum revenue. In order to reach out to a large audience, an
advertiser ends up advertising the same ads on different ad servers. Many
times, an advertiser also plays the role of publisher. For such users, keeping
track of the advertising campaigns across all ad servers and publishing
channels is challenging. The solution will consist of creating a consolidated
system that allows advertisers to place an ad on all major ad servers and
allows publishers to take an ad from an ad server to display on their websites.
This thesis provides a common platform to advertisers and publishers by
creating a prototype that combines advertising and publishing through Google
AdWords and Google AdSense, respectively.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Advertising
is a form of promotional activity that is used to encourage an audience
(viewers, readers, or listeners) to continue or take some new action. The
desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial
offering. To reach an audience, these promotions must be published. The process
of making information available to the general public is called publishing. An
advertiser is essentially the one who creates a product or offers services and
wants to publicize the product or services with the help of popular platforms
like websites, press, and radio owned by publishers. Publishers either own or
manage platforms, like television channels, radio stations, and websites, which
are available to the general public.
With
the Internet becoming a powerful medium for reaching people, it has become
popular among advertisers and publishers. Promoting a product or a service on
the Internet is called web based advertising, and publishing that information
on websites, forums, and blogs is called web based publishing. As more people
turn to the Internet as a source for socialization, communication, and daily
news, more advertising is done to reach a larger audience. web based
advertising is giving tough competition to other types of advertising media.
Newspapers and magazines all over the world are facing a great challenge in the
form of lost ad revenue. The Internet is not only taking a share of the
advertising, but a share of the audience as well.
Web
based ads can look like television commercials or print ads. With cost per
click (CPC) advertising, the advertiser only pays if a user clicks on the ad.
This type of strategy can make advertising very cost effective, especially for
those who do not have large advertising budgets. Marketers need to find what
their major target market is. They also need to understand the timing of the
ad. The mechanism of web based advertising is comprised of: (a) method—based on
a user’s characteristics and content visited in the past, (b) timing—real time
or non-real time, and (c) target—individual or group.
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The
growing importance of the Internet for advertising nowadays is resulting in the
transition of traditional “one-size-fits-all” advertising to personalized web
based advertising.
web based advertising spending has been increasing at
an unprecedented pace over the past decade. Advertising on the Internet differs
from advertising in traditional outlets such as television and print in various
ways. First, web ads are more relevant to consumers compared to traditional
ads. Traditional ads published on television or in print media are made
available to all irrespective of whether one wants the information or not. On
the other hand, web ads are displayed to users on the basis of their past web
based behavior and interests, making the ads more relevant to consumers.
Advertisers can target a particular group of customers based on their location,
gender, age, and language. web based users tend to perceive ads as self-related
or instrumental in achieving their needs or goals. The behavioral ads also make
campaigns more cost-effective for advertisers. For example, according to the
Wall Street Journal, Pepsi worked with the ad network Tacoda in early 2007 to serve
behaviorally targeted ads for the launch of Aquafina Alive, Pepsi’s
vitamin-enhanced water. The campaign targeted “healthconscious” consumers and
then served them ads wherever they traveled within Tacoda’s network of 4,000
sites. Compared to other kinds of Pepsi web-based campaigns, Aquafina Alive
attracted three times the number of consumers who clicked on the targeted ads.
[1]
With traditional advertising, an advertiser can place
ads on TV shows, radio programs, and magazines, but with web ads, there is no
limit to how finely an advertiser can target the audience. Due to the rise in
popularity of social media, Facebook and MySpace have become hot spots for
advertising. An advertiser can target these platforms using almost any criteria
(e.g., age, gender, location, education, place of employment, favorite music,
and marital status). Advertising companies, such as Google, which targets ads
based on users’ search history, have been taking into account users’
information needs related to their interests for targeted advertising. An
effective interpretation of users’ information needs is necessary for targeted
advertising. However, problems with the accumulated data that describe users’
information needs are huge volume, high dimensionality, and continuous change.
Second, web ads can be presented in various formats,
such as text, graphics, sound, video, or their combinations. These formats may
attract users’ attention much easier due to
heir sensory effects. So web ads, such as animation plus sound, may
increase the opportunity for consumers to process the ads. For example, when
users are reading news on the Internet, an animated banner with flashing text
may easily attract their attention. However, in the web medium, consumers are
highly active and selective. Whether a type of advertising is acceptable or not
depends on the consumer’s perception of whether the ad could fulfill his or her
goals. The different formats of traditional advertising are: billboards,
television commercials, radio ads, and posters. On the other hand, various web
based advertising formats are: banner ads, pop-up and pop-under ads, floating
ads, streaming sidebar ads, pull down banner ads, and text ads.
Third, compared to general advertising, web
advertising is considered less irritating and more acceptable because web based
users can control what they want to access as well as when and how to view
certain information and tailor the information to their particular needs and
preferences by various point-and-click actions. Traditional media ads,
especially television and radio commercials, often forcefully interrupt
consumers’ attention from the media context. Fourth, web advertising enjoys the
benefit of a larger audience as the Internet has become a very popular medium
for gaining knowledge, whereas, in the case of traditional advertising, the
audience is limited to the users of that particular medium of advertising
(e.g., advertisements published in a newspaper of a particular language are
limited to the people who read that newspaper). Fifth, web ads are not limited
to any geographical location or time as the content gets published immediately,
which is not possible in the case of traditional advertising. With web based advertising,
a small manufacturer in one part of the world can find customers in the other
part. web based advertising has broken all geographical barriers that existed
with other mediums.
Sixth, when people click on an advertiser’s ad, they
go right to his or her website where the advertiser can convert them to a
reader or to a buyer. With traditional advertising, people need to see the
advertisement, remember it, and then take action on it later. web based
advertising eliminates the time in between clients viewing an advertiser’s ads
and visiting the advertising site, making the whole sales process far more
streamlined and efficient. [2]
The final benefit of web based advertising over
traditional advertising is the fact that tracking ads has become very easy with
Internet advertising compared to traditional advertising. With web based
advertising, each and every advertising campaign is tracked by the ad server,
saving a lot of time and money. Ad servers monitor all of the visitors who come
to an advertiser’s website through the advertising campaigns and track any
actions they take or orders they make. Ad servers also keep track of the
budget, clicks, impressions, the conversion rate, and other statistics. This
further helps with budget optimization, business decisions, and managing
advertising campaigns. With traditional mediums of advertising, an advertiser
cannot say for sure whether the customer who is watching or reading the
advertisement is actually going to buy the product. Through pay per click (PPC)
advertising, the advertiser is actually paying only when the potential customer
visits his or her website or looks through the product that is being sold. As
said by John Wanamaker, “The Father of Modern Advertising”: “Half the money I
spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half” [3].
This is absolutely true with traditional advertising. Also, there are hardly
any means of doing conversion tracking with traditional advertising, which
makes it difficult to analyze what groups of customers are showing interest in
the product or services offered by the advertiser.
Advertising web based has some negative attributes as
well, such as invasion of property and consumer privacy concerns. Many people
feel that web based advertising constitutes a violation of privacy as well as
personal rights. Users do not want to think that a corporation or business that
wants to sell them a product is monitoring their every move web based. Also,
some people have started using unethical methods of advertising by creating
advertising viruses that can pose a serious threat to Internet users.
With web based publishing, in late 90s, website owners
were struggling with the tedious task of managing and selling their ad space. web
based publishing has shown tremendous growth since then in the form of more
reliable ad server vendors and increased number of customers due to the fast
growth rate of the Internet in the last decade. web based publishing is an easy
way to earn money from one’s web based content. Publishers can simply display
relevant and engaging ads on websites, mobile sites, videos, site search
results, or even web-based games to earn revenue. Google AdSense, one of the
top ad server vendors, provides the means to implement Google Search to site
owners while earning money by displaying Google ads on the search results
pages.
web based publishing takes a minimum amount of time to
include advertising on websites. A publisher can earn advertising revenue from
each page of his or her site. Ads relevant to the site’s content are delivered
to the site as text or images. In the case of Google AdSense, a publisher can
implement Google Search on his or her website that then delivers related ads
based upon search criteria. Developing banner ads or any other types of site
advertisements can be time consuming. web based publishing provides a solution
for sites, both big and small, to place ads and search options easily on a site
with minimal effort.
There are generally two cost structures for
advertisers—CPC or cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM). This means that
advertisers pay either when users click on ads or when the advertiser’s ad is
shown on a site. Using this model, a publisher receives a portion of the amount
paid for either activity on his or her site. In the case of web based
publishing, a publisher can:
– Choose the type and placement of ad units to be
displayed
– Specify where he or she wants ads to appear
– Modify the ad so that it blends with the look of his
or her site
– Choose what types of ads can compete for those slots
– Display highest-paying ads
– Advertisers bid on the publisher’s inventory in a
real-time auction
– Always show the highest-paying ad
– Get paid
– Advertisers are billed through an ad network
– Get paid through reliable payment options
For publishing advertisements that are relevant to
topics discussed on a website, website owners place a brief HTML code on the
website’s pages. Websites that are contentrich are very successful with web
based publishing. Since publishers are ultimately responsible for the traffic
to their ads, they tend to build valuable content on their websites that
attracts advertisements so as to generate the maximum possible revenue. They
use content on their websites that encourages customers to click on advertisements.
Ad servers automatically deliver ads that are targeted to the publisher’s
content or audience. This is done in several ways:
– Contextual targeting: The algorithm uses such
factors as keyword analysis, word frequency, font size, and the overall link structure
of the web in order to determine what a webpage is about and precisely match
ads to each page.
– Placement targeting: With placement targeting,
advertisers choose specific ad placements, or subsections of publisher
websites, on which to run their ads. Ads that are placement targeted may not be
precisely related to the content of a page, they but are handpicked by
advertisers who have determined a match between what users are interested in
and what they have to offer.
– Interest-based advertising: Interest-based
advertising enables advertisers to reach users based on their interests (e.g.,
sports enthusiasts) and allows them to show ads based on a user’s previous
interactions with them, such as visits to advertisers’ websites.
Publishers can track their earnings from the ads being
published by them. Publishers can easily analyze what works and what does not
work using reports. web based publishing helps businesses achieve the following
goals: (a) agile decision making and improved optimization, (b) increased
productivity through integrated interfaces, (c) reduction in time to manage ad
campaigns, and (d) increase in operational efficiencies.
HOW IT WORKS?
Advertisers upload the ad on ad servers, which perform
the task of placing the ads on websites. An ad server is basically a web server
that stores advertisements from web based advertisers and delivers them to
website visitors [4]. The various popular ad servers are Google AdWords,
MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Google has controlled an estimated 69%
of the web based advertising market since 2008 [5]. Table 1.1 shows the top ad
server vendors in 2008.
Table 1.1. Various Ad
Server Vendors
Vendor
Ad Viewer (in millions)
1,118
Double Click (owned by Google)
1,079
Yahoo
362
MSN (owned by Microsoft)
309
AOL
156
Adbrite
73
Ad servers provide the following functionalities:
– Target ads for different users or content
– Display ads on the basis of users’ previous behavior
– Track impressions, clicks, revenue, and conversions
and report ad statistics in real time
An ad server can be a local ad server or a remote ad
server. Local ad servers are bound to the domains of one publisher, whereas
remote ad servers can serve ads to multiple publishers with multiple domains at
a time. Remote ad servers deliver ads from one central source, thereby making
it possible for advertisers and publishers to track the distribution of their web
based advertisements and have one single location for controlling the rotation
and distribution of their advertisements across the web. An ad server manages
all desktop, tablet, and mobile ads from a single, integrated ad server.
The Advertisement Management System (AMS) application
created in this thesis provides a common platform to do web based advertising
and publishing through Google AdWords and AdSense, respectively, thereby
helping businesses that are both advertisers and publishers. The AMS
application aims to utilize the market of web based advertising and publishing
by providing an easy-to-use platform for ad serving. This system will benefit
large and small businesses in advertising their products or services and
generate revenue by publishing ads on their web pages. The Appendix user manual
illustrates how one can advertise and publish using AMS application.
LIST OF ACRONYMS
AFC – AdSense for Content Service
AFS – AdSense for Search Service
AMS – Advertisement Management System
API – Application Programming Interface
CPA – Cost Per Action
CPC – Cost Per Click
CPM – Cost Per Mille
DBMS – Database Management System
HTTP – Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
MVC – Model View Controller
PHP – Hypertext Preprocessor
PPC – Pay Per Click
RDBMS – Relational Database Management System
SQL – Structured Query Language