When the Google Ads SDK has been integrated into your apps, you can start booking ads in the front screen module of your epaper apps (iOS+Android). This guide will describe how to book the ads. You may only need some of the information in the article to start booking Google Ads.
1) Understanding Google Ad Manager
If you are new to Google Ad Manager, it might be helpful to know some basic terminology in order to understand the setup when combined with your epaper app. Once logged in to your account (see separate guide on how to create an account), Google Ad Manager operates on four levels:
1) Ad Units: These are equivalent to placements in the publication. One Ad Unit can be placed in more apps.
2) Order: An order is a group of Line Items (Line Items explained below). An example: An advertiser has ordered a campaign with four different ads which have different active periods. These make sense to group in the same order.
3) Line Items: A line item contains one or more Creatives that should have the same booking preferences, e.g. same active period, same Ad units, same targeting preferences etc.
4) Creatives: A Creative is synonymous with an ad in this context and is inserted on a Line Item. It is possible to insert more Creatives on one Line Item, but in order to keep a clean setup and guarantee ad exposure, we strongly advise you to insert only one Creative per Line Item.
In this guide we will use the term campaign to describe a collective setup containing all the above four elements.
2) Creating a campaign
To create a campaign you must create an Order, create a Line Item and upload a Creative. Below is described how this is done.
2.1 Create an Order and a Line Item
When creating an Order, you will automatically create your first Line Item of that Order.
1) Click the “Delivery” tab in the left panel
2) Click “Orders” or “Line Items”
3) Click the blue “New order” button
4) On the next screen, give your Order a name and select or create an Advertiser:
Now you are ready to create a Line Item which decides all preferences of the Creatives booked to it. Here all mandatory fields will be mentioned along with some useful optional settings.
1) Name the Line Item:
2) Click the "Expected creatives" field and choose “Visiolink Native Template (Native)” from the drop down menu:
3) Under "Delivery settings" further below, enter a Start time and an End time of your campaign:
This is also where you choose how many times Creatives booked to this Line Item should be shown or clicked. If this number is reached before the end time has come, the Creatives will no longer be shown (write a big number to ensure that the Creatives are shown throughout the whole active period).
4) Under “Adjust delivery” you should set the “Deliver impressions”-option to As Fast As Possible (at least when testing the ad is shown in the app).
5) Under "Ad targeting" you select which Ad unit(s) to target. Click on “Ad units” in the box and then select one or more Ad units to include:
6) Furthermore, you can add for example geographical area or platform (iOS or Android) if you want to target devices more specifically (optional).
7) Click “Save”
2.2 Upload your Creatives using the Visiolink Native Template
We always recommend you to upload Creatives using the native ad template that you have imported into your account (called Visiolink Native Template). By using this native ad template you are certain to display correctly fitted images in your apps, and you are using a setup that has been (and will continuously be) thoroughly tested by the Visiolink QA department.
The template consists of 10 variables, each with a different purpose (numbered 2, 3 and 4 in the illustration "New Creative"). The purpose of each variable will be explained in the following sections.
Illustration: New Creative
2.3 Booking ads in the front screen module
1) Open the Line Item to which you would like to book your ad
2) Select the "Creatives" tab
3) Click “Add creative” -> “New creative” -> "Visiolink Native Template"
In the next screen you can fill in all the details in your ad booking and upload your creatives using the "Visiolink Native Template".
4) Give the Creative a name
5) Insert a Click-through URL to define which website users should open when they tap the ad (numbered 1 in the illustration "New Creative"). This is mandatory.
6) Upload image(s) (numbered 3 in the illustration "New Creative"). Below is an explanation to each of the image fields:
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- landscape_tablet, portrait_tablet, landscape_phone and portrait_phone: Uploading an image to one or more of these four fields will target the exact devices in the given orientation. So if you have an ad you only want to have shown to readers using a tablet held in landscape mode, you should only book it to the landscape_tablet field.
- any_tablet and any_phone: Use these if you want the same ad to go out on tablet and/or phone in any orientation.
- any: This is the easiest way to book an image ad, as you can upload just one image which will be shown on all devices in both orientations.
7) Click “Save” when you have uploaded your material
Example: An advertiser has delivered an image with a lot of detailed information which will be too small on phone-sized screens. Therefore, it should only be displayed on tablets in both orientations. This will result in the following booking:
Notes for displaying image ads in apps:
- We generally advise you to reuse some of the ad sizes that you use on your website. For phone and half modules, 300x250 px ads work well, and for full modules on tablets the standard size 930x180 px works well.
- However, by using the Visiolink Native Template there are no specific requirements regarding size of the booked image, the device will fit the image to the front screen module and display it. Please notice that the height of the ad module in the app is determined during the implementation project, so please consider which ads you are generally going to display and ask Visiolink to adjust the height accordingly
- If an ad does not fit the whole ad space, it will be centered
- An image will always keep it’s ratio, but it will be scaled up or down to fit into a module
2.4 Using Deep Links with ads in the front screen module
Deep Links can be combined with ads in the front screen module. By using Deep Links, you can link directly from an ad in the front screen module to other content in the epaper app. Deep Links are inserted in the "deeplink" field (numbered 4 in the illustration "New Creative")
1) Open the Line Item to which you would like to book your ad
2) Select the "Creatives" tab
3) Click “Add creative” -> “New creative” -> "Visiolink Native Template"
In the next screen you can fill in all the details in your ad booking and upload your creatives using the "Visiolink Native Template".
4) Give the Creative a name
5) Insert a Click-through URL
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NB! Google will require you to insert a Click-through URL in the "Click-through URL" field. However when inserting a Deep Link into the "deeplink" field, the app will ignore the Click-through URL and use the Deep Link instead. |
6) Upload image(s)
7) Insert a Deep Link into the "deeplink" field
8) Click “Save” when you have uploaded your material
Example: A customer would like to promote a podcast in an epaper app by deep linking from an ad in the front screen module to the podcast in the epaper app. This will result in the following booking:
(The Deep Link shown in the example above only works on Android. iOS uses a different type of Deep Links. If you want to use Deep Links with ads in the front screen module on both iOS and Android, this therefore requires two different Line Items to be booked - one that targets Android and one that targets iOS - and on one of these a Creative has to be uploaded with an Android deep link and on the other a Creative has to be uploaded with an iOS deep link.)
| NB! How to create Deep Links is explained in this article. |
2.5 Booking interactive ads in the front screen module
Booking of interactive html ads in the front screen module can succeed in two ways using the fields html and html_url (numbered 2 in the illustration "New Creative").
1) Open the Line Item to which you would like to book your interactive ad
2) Select the "Creatives" tab
3) Click “Add creative” -> “New creative” -> "Visiolink Native Template"
In the next screen you can fill in all the details in your ad booking and insert an HTML snippet or a URL using the "Visiolink Native Template".
4) Give the Creative a name
5) Insert a Click-through URL (numbered 1 in the illustration "New Creative"). This is mandatory.
| NB! Google will require you to insert a Click-through URL in the Click-through URL field. However the app will ignore this URL, so the ad itself maintain full control of the app web view and what should happen when a user taps it. |
Choose either 6a or 6b:
6a) html: insert an HTML snippet here to force the ad view in the app to render content as HTML.
6b) html_url: Insert a URL here in order to force the ad view in the app to render content as a URL.
7) Click “Save”
Important notes for booking interactive ads
The app is not able to differentiate between URL’s that are supposed to open in the ad view (or not open at all, e.g. tracking URL’s) and URL’s that should open in a new browser window (either inapp-browser or external browser). As we give you full control of the ad view, we need a signal from the ad that an URL should open a browser. We have done this by looking for href tagged URL’s. If a URL is href tagged it will open in an in-app browser/external browser. An example:
<a href="https://www.vitec-visiolink.com/”></a>
3) General Notes
Ads are only shown when the user’s device is online. If offline, a “no internet”-graphic will be shown.
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