How to create a banner

in Revive Adserver

This article shows how to create a new banner in Revive Adserver, with examples, tips and best practices from the developers.

Create a new banner

Once a campaign has been created, you can start adding the banners for the campaign. There are several ways to get started:

After saving a new campaign, there will be a confirmation message with a link to add a new banner.

New Campaign Added, now add a banner

In the Campaign Overview page for any advertiser, there is a link enabling you to Add a new banner.

Adding a new banner from the Campaign overview

In the Banner overview page for any campaign, there is a link enabling you to Add a new banner.

Add a new banner from a campaign's banner overview

Select banner type

Whichever of these links you use, clicking it opens the page where you can start entering the details for the new banner. The first thing you have to do is to select the type of banner you want to create.

Add new banner, choose type of banner

For the remainder of this article, we will be using the “Upload a local banner to the webserver” type. There is a separate article describing all the other types and explaining how to use them.

Banner name

Once the banner type has been selected, start by entering the name of the banner.

Add a new banner, enter the banner name

Tips

We recommend entering the name in a consistent format for all campaigns across all advertisers. That will make it a lot easier to find the banner again in the future. Avoid using names that are must “banner” or “leaderboard”, because that would make it very difficult to distinguish between the banners from the various campaigns later while reviewing statistics or other places.

Consider adding a description of the banner’s dimensions, either as a name or by indicating the width and height of the banner in pixels. For example: “Acme Summer Savings – Leaderboard” or “Acme Summer Savings – 728×90”.

We recommend using a single campaign for all the banners, instead of creating separate campaigns for each individual banner size. See our article about Creating a campaign for more best practices regarding campaigns.

Upload the banner’s image

Now click the Choose file button to open the file manager on your computer, and locate the image file that you have received. This could be stored in a folder on your own computer, or on the company network.

Once you’ve selected the image, the image file name will be displayed to the right of the button.

Add a new banner, Upload Image

Later, when you save the new banner, the file will be uploaded for real and its file name will be changed to a randomized value in order to avoid overwriting any other files also stored on the webserver.

The reason the file name gets changed is because advertisers or banner designers have a habit of always using the same file names every time they develop a set of banners.

Banner link

Now enter the destination URL for the banner. This is the URL where people will be taken when they click the banner when it is displayed on a website or in an app. You will have received the exact URL from the advertiser or their agency, but it could also be a URL of your own website in case the campaign is promoting an internal product.

Add new banner, Enter Link

Tips

Often, these destination URLs will also contain one or more codes that will help with web analytics. Make sure to copy and paste the entire URL you received.

The destination URL could also be a redirect through another system to the actual destination. This will help the advertiser or their agency with the measurement of clicks in their own systems, or with the attribution of sales or other types of results to the campaign’s banners being displayed on your websites.

Make sure that you do not accidentally leave any formatting codes or other unnecessary characters in the URL.

Consider opening a new browser window or a new tab and pasting the destination URL in the address bar, in order to check and make sure that the destination URL actually works and displays a functional webpage.

The field labeled ‘target’, you can enter any specific frame name. If you leave the field empty (which is the recommended use), a click on the banner will open a new tab in the browser or a new browser window and display the destination URL’s page there. This is the most often used option. If you want a click on the banner to open the destination URL in the same browser window/tab, then enter the value ‘_top’.

Banner display

In the three optional fields in the Banner display section, you can enter some text that the browser may or may not use when displaying the banner on a website.

Add new banner, display fields

Tips

The Alt text is the text that the browser shows in a ‘tool tip’ or some other way when someone viewing the banner hovers their mouse or pointer over the banner. You might be tempted to enter ‘Click here’ in this field, but that usually won’t help very much. It could be more useful if you enter an actual call to action here, for example: “20% discount on all patio furniture during our Summer Savings”.

The Status text will not be displayed, it is no longer supported by modern browsers.

The Text below Image will be displayed in the website’s default font size and color underneath the banner. While this might sound useful, it often results in a skewed end result making the banner, or the site, look strange or broken. We recommend not entering anything in this field.

Additional data

In the fields in this section, the only field that’s relevant is the Weight field. The default weight is 1. We recommend leaving this unless there is an absolute need to make changes and you know exactly what you’re doing. There is a separate article about weights.

The Keyword field is present for reasons of backward compatibility only. We do not recommend entering anything here. If you do, it will be ignored anyway.

The comments field can be used to store notes or record changes about the banner. Keep in mind that anyone who can view the banner’s properties later can also see these comments.

Add new banner, additional data

Once you’re done entering everything, don’t forget to Save the changes. The image file will be uploaded and the banner is stored in the database. A message indicating the success of the operations will be shown at the top of the banner overview. Depending on the settings and preferences in your installation, you may also see a preview of the banner.

Banner overview with new banner added

From here, you can continue adding the other banners in the campaign, or you can define the banner’s delivery options.