Usually, most of the websites in order to be profitable, need to create an advertising plan to make them sustainable.
In Joomla you have the ability to manage your ads easily and satisfy your trusted partners without installing any third party component!
From Joomla administrative section, and in particular from the Components -> Banners option, you will view your banners, clients, banner categories and tracks.
From here you will need to organize your plan.
The design logic of this component is to create categories that you will pass your banners to. Just the same way that you would do with the basic article structure of the website.
You'll need to organize your banners in categories because in the module that you will show the banners the way to filter them is the category selection and / or customer selection.
Let's see the structure in more detail.
Add New Category
From Components -> Banners -> Categories you click on New button to open the create category form view.
Following the same view pattern as normal article categories, you must type the category title and if you wish you may type a category description and in general every other information you want. When you finish, you will save and exit and you will repeat the process as many times you want until you have all your necessary categories.
How you organize your categories is really up to you. As a tip, we suggest you make categories by size, such as Square Ads, Wide Banner Ads etc. Or you could make categories by page, such as Front Page Ads, Footer Ads.
Add New Client
From Components -> Banners -> Clients you click on New button to open the create client form view.
In this form you will enter the name of the client (you usually specify the company name), the Contact Name (required) and the Contact Email. You can also set a default Purchase Type for the client and, if you would like to see the traffic of the banners that belong to this client, choose whether to enable Track Impressions and Track Clicks (each one can be set to Use Global, No or Yes). Track Impressions counts how many times the client's banners are shown on screen, while Track Clicks counts how many times they get clicked. In the Additional Information field you can keep any notes about the client.
The Metadata tab lets you add Keywords for the client (plus an optional Keyword Prefix), which can also be used when the module selects banners by keyword.
When you are ready, click Save & Close and repeat the process until all your clients are registered in Joomla.
Add New Banner
From Components -> Banners -> Banners you click on New button to open the new banner form view.
Apart from the obvious Name field, you can also type an Alias. If you leave it empty, Joomla will create it automatically from the name.
The form consists of three tabs: Details, Banner Details and Publishing, which we will describe next.
Details Tab
Type
First of all, you must select the banner type. There are two types: Image or Custom.
If you choose Image, on the next row there will be an Image field so you can select or upload an image (png, jpg, gif etc).
If you choose Custom, in the next row below you will see a Custom Code text area so you can type or copy-paste the desired advertising code, for example Google AdSense, or just an HTML section of what you want to show.
Width and Height
If the image is larger than your available space, you can force its width and height to suit your layout. But of course, if you are not careful, this freedom can break the aspect ratio of the image!
Alt Text
A short description of the image, used by screen readers and shown when the image cannot be loaded.
Click URL
Whatever type you select, you will also see a Click URL field where you can type a valid URL, so that visitors who click the banner are taken to that address. For Custom banners, the Click URL is used only if your code contains the {CLICKURL} placeholder, which Joomla replaces with the (tracked) click link.
Description
An optional description of your banner.
Status, Category and Pinned
On the right side of the Details tab you will find the Status of the banner, the Category it belongs to (required: this is where you assign the banner to one of the categories you created earlier) and the Pinned option. Pinned banners are always shown before the other banners in the module, whatever ordering you choose.
Banner Details Tab
From this tab you can type some information about the specific banner that we will analyze.
Max Impressions
You can set the maximum number of impressions (views) that the specific banner will get on your page. Every page load counts as 1 impression. If you wish, you can leave the field empty or check the Unlimited checkbox so the banner gets shown permanently.
Total Impressions and Total Clicks
These two fields are populated by the system. Total Impressions counts the banner views and Total Clicks counts how many times the banner got clicked. Each one has a Reset button if you want to start counting from zero.
Client
From this field you can select the desired client.
Purchase type
This field is used in conjunction with the client. Practically, you record what your deal with the client is (Unlimited, Yearly, Monthly, Weekly or Daily), so you can later filter the clients by it. Leave it on Use Client Default to inherit the client's setting.
Track Impressions and Track Clicks
Choose whether impressions and clicks are tracked for this banner, or leave them on Use Client Default to inherit the client's settings. The recorded data can be viewed from Components -> Banners -> Tracks.
Publishing
The Publishing tab, like the article Publishing tab, has the options to control the viewing dates of the specific banner. From here you can select when the banner will get published and when it will retire.
In the same tab you may also set some Keywords (and optionally a Keyword Prefix) that you can later use in your banner modules, filtering banners by the keywords of the current article.
So here we are, having all of our ads organized and the last step is to show them to the public.
Module Publish to show Banners
Having organized all your banners, the final step is to display them to the public. To do this, navigate to Content -> Site Modules and click New.
From the list of module types, you will select Banners.
Create Module (Banners)
In this module, you can now choose from a wide range of options for the banners you want to display at specific points on your website.
Target
In the first tab, you can define how the banners will be displayed through the Target option. This gives you the choice of whether the banners, when clicked, will open in the parent (same) window, in a new window, or in a popup window.
Count
In the Count option, you select the number of banners that will appear on the page.
Client
Next, in the Client option, you either leave the field empty so that banners from all clients are included, or you select a specific client. If a specific client is selected, only the banners related to that client will be shown.
Category
In the Category option, you choose one or more of the categories you have created, so that the list of banners gets filtered.
Select by Keyword
Then, there is the Select by Keyword option. When set to Yes, the module compares the keywords you have set on each banner with the meta keywords of the page being displayed (for articles, that is the Keywords field in the Metadata section of the article's Publishing tab, not the article Tags). If there is a match with at least one keyword, those banners will be shown. In this way, you have a targeted method of displaying banners based on the article's subject matter.
Randomise
In the Randomise option, you choose how the banners are sorted: Pinned, Ordering shows them in their set order, while Pinned, Randomise shows them randomly. In both cases, pinned banners remain at the top of the list.
Header Text
In the Header Text, you set some introductory text or indication before the banners are displayed.
Footer Text
In the Footer Text, you set some text or indication that appears after the banners have finished displaying.
Position and Menu Assignment
Finally, don't forget the usual module settings: select the template Position where the banners will appear, make sure the Status is Published and, in the Menu Assignment tab, choose on which pages the module will be shown. Without a position and a menu assignment the module will not be displayed on your site. Click Save & Close and your banners are live!
