Newsletter campaigns

Overview

Serving ads in newsletters requires a specific setup to address the limitations imposed by email clients (installed email programs and web based email services): no support of javascript, caching of creatives, proxying etc.
This article explains the specific configuration of newsletter ad tags, the setup of newsletter insertions and creatives as well as all the limitations to keep in mind.

No Gmail compatibility

 

Ad tags for newsletters

Ad tag retrieval

To retrieve the ad tags to be integrated in your newsletter:
 

• first set up the format(s), site, page group and page as usual (more details in chapters “Formats”, “Sites” “Page groups” and “Pages” in the Setting up inventory article);
• generate the ad tag(s) as explained in chapter “Ad tags” in Setting up inventory; when selecting the ad tag type, first click on Show legacy tags, then select NonRich;

 

Timestamp parameter

Below is a sample of a “NonRich” ad tag containing the tmstp= parameter in the a href and img src parts:

<a href="https://diff.smartadserver.com/ac?jump=1&nwid=73&siteid=20697&pgname=mypage&fmtid=35511&visit=m&tmstp=[timestamp]&out=nonrich" target="_blank">                
	<img src="https://diff.smartadserver.com/ac?out=nonrich&nwid=73&siteid=20697&pgname=mypage&fmtid=35511&visit=m&tmstp=[timestamp]" border="0" alt="" />
</a>

The timestamp must be unique per newsletter, recipient and visit – each opening of the newsletter is considered as a new visit. The timestamp can be any kind of string, as it is hashed when the ad is delivered. For instance, the timestamp can be computed from the following data:

• newsletter-id – the identifier of the newsletter, created by the publisher
• recipient-email-address – the email address of the recipient
• visit-id – a unique identifier representing the email opening by the end-user; the visit id can be an incremental id assigned to each instance of a recipient opening the e-mail; for instance, if the end-user is opening the same email in two separate browser tabs, each tab must get its own visit-id

Insertion setup

As required for any insertion, first create an advertiser and a campaign, as explained here. The campaign must have the Channel set to Direct because only direct insertions are supported for newsletter campaigns.

General settings and Delivery

Create a new Insertion in the campaign as explained in Insertions: General settings and Delivery. You must select the Ad type: Display > Web in this insertion.  

Placement

Select the placement, i. e. the format, site(s), page(s), pack(s) as explained in Insertions: Inventory.
 

Creatives

In the Creatives section, select the Newsletter/Email Banner creative template. Upload your creatives as explained in chapter “Adding creatives” in the Configuring creatives article. For newsletter campaigns, the following limitations apply:

• only image creatives are allowed: gif, png, jpg - email clients are not capable of processing other creative types, such as scripts, HTML5 etc.
• do not use the field Custom script since code in these fields would result in javascript creative code that cannot be processed by email clients
• if you need to replace a creative after the insertion started, first disable/remove the existing one; then, upload the new creative

Targeting

Email clients are not able to pass reliable information about the client (IP address, user agent, etc.) with the ad call to Equativ. Therefore, do not use any targeting that relies on data from the client (geo-targeting, browser/OS targeting, targeting of mobile device etc.). In fact, the only targeting feature that will work reliably is Keyword targeting!