Setting up inventory in the Equativ platform is the process of mapping ad slots (placements) where ads will be served: on desktop/mobile web sites, in iOS/Android apps, in video content etc.
In this article you will also learn how to download Equativ tags for your pages.
You can set up inventory directly in the Equativ platform (described in this article) or using the API. Read Getting started with Equativ's APIs and Manage API articles for more details. To read about format/site/page endpoints and to access the list of our WebAPIs resources list go to this link.
Video tutorial
Watch this short instruction video to quickly learn how to set up your inventory in the Equativ platform.
Related articles
To learn more about the Equativ platform setup see the related articles:
In the Equativ platform you can create and manage:
Sites – which represent the publisher’s domain; Depending on your inventory, the site can also be a mobile app, a supply partner, or a group of network sites;
Pages – which represent pages or types of pages belonging to your site, e.g. homepage, article pages, or blog posts;
Formats – which are types of ad slots for creatives, that you want to display on selected pages, e.g. top banner, or skyscraper;
Page groups – which represent collections of formats;
In the Equativ platform, formats are not assigned directly to pages, but they are linked through page groups.
While creating a page you have to place it into a page group, which is the collection of selected formats. These formats will be displayed on pages assigned to this page group;
Additionally, you can use Equativ’s Packs option (described at the end of this article) to group your sites or pages.
Inventory creation
The best practice is to start by creating Formats, then Sites > Page groups > Pages. The below instruction is following this order.
Formats
To create a format:
1. Go to Inventory > Formats.
2. Click the green plus button.
3. In the Format creation window that appears on the right:
First, you need to type in your format’s name (the convention is to name your format using its dimensions, e.g. “top banner 728 x 90”), and then select its type.
Note: the video option is disabled, however you can find two video formats (Video - Linear and Video - Non-linear) you can use in the Formats list. You just need to click on the Video tab.
When you select the Web option you will be displayed with the following fields:
HTML Tags supported – always leave this option enabled
Instances per page – you can decide to use the same format multiple times per page;
in the Platform settings section you can define your format’s size; please note that the size is not restrictive, and it only represents the ratio of the creative that you want to display.
When you select the App (SDK) option you will also be able to set the number of Instances per page and define your format’s size.
4. When you are ready with your edits, click the Save button. If you want to change some settings afterwards you can edit them, except for the type option.
Sites
We recommend setting up one to one equivalents of your domains in the Equativ platform. This practice assures granularity in reports and enables you to better optimize your inventory.
What is more, we suggest creating separate sites for desktop websites, mobile apps and webmobile. This way, you can clearly organize your network.
To create a Site:
1. Go to Inventory > Sites & pages
2. Click the New button.
3. Usually, only the first four fields are needed:
Site Name appears in the interface;
Display Name appears in reporting;
it is strongly recommended to fill out the Site URL or Application ID fields. These are fallback values that Equativ will use in bid requests in case the referrer or the mobile application ID cannot be determined automatically. Failing to fill these fields can decrease your revenue dramatically since buyers consider the inventory as invalid in the programmatic market when it cannot be identified properly. To learn more, see the RTB - application ID and referrer article.
Ad Network Business Model
With this option, ad networks and agencies can define the buying price of the publisher's inventory:
Publisher CPM - the publisher earns the specified value for every 1000 impressions (default is "0", meaning that the publisher earns nothing)
Ad network rate (%) - the ad network retains the defined percentage of the revenue; the ad network rate can also be used in prebid.js integrations (more details in chapter "Create websites in the Header Bidding with Prebid.js - UI setup article)
Note that once a business model has been defined, it cannot be changed!
To learn about the Child-directed site field, read chapter "Declaring a website as child-directed" in the COPPA compliance article
4. When you are ready with your edits, click the Save button.
You can add IAB categories that best fit your Site. These categories will be sent in the bid requests improving your monetization. To do it, expand the IAB categories associated with this site tab, and then click the Edit categories button.
Page groups
To create Page groups:
1. If you are already in the Sites & Pages view (previous step), you only need to select a Site (by clicking its name in the panel on the left), and then click the New Page group button.
2. We recommend to name your page group according to the formats it includes, e.g. 300x250, medium rectangle - MedRec;
3. Click the Save button. 4. Click the green button located on the right of the page group.
5. Now you can select the formats that you want this page group to contain.
Note: you can assign one page group to multiple pages, but each page is assigned to a single page group. A page group can be used for the entire website, but not in other websites; use the Copy Website option in such cases.
Pages
To create a page:
1. Select the site to which you would like to add your page, and click the New page button.
2. In the Page creation window:
first, select the appropriate Page group from the drop-down list;
optionally, if you want to create a tree structure of your pages, you can use the Parent page option; that way you will make this page a child page and nest it under an existing page, which will become its parent page; you can organize the parent/child pages under a site on a maximum of 6 levels, i. e. the entire structure can have a maximum of 7 levels (including the site). Make sure you use short page names in case of page trees with many levels: a page name can contain a maximum of 100 characters and any page name (as contained in the ad tag) is prefixed by all of its parent page names, separated by slashes. For instance, if a page called myParentPage has a child page called myChildPage and a grandchild page called myGrandchildPage, then the full name of the grandchild page will be: myParentPage/myChildPage/myGrandchildPage; this grandchild page has 41 characters — long page names and many parent/child levels will bring you closer to the 100 character limit per page name
name your page;
we recommend filling out the Page URL field, even though it’s optional.
remember to make sure that the option “allow ad delivery on this page” is enabled, otherwise ads will not be displayed.
3. When you are ready with your settings, click the Save button.
Note: Any ad call carries the page id which represents a page. This id is assigned by Equativ when a page is created. You can use the page name instead of the page id. This can be useful if you want to continue to use the names used in your previous/external ad management systems. However, this practice is not recommended as pages can have the same name which might lead to confusion or errors.
Keep in mind: This feature is not available by default. Reach out to your Service contact to have it enabled.
You can add IAB categories that best fit your Page. These categories will be sent in the bid requests improving your monetization. To do it, expand the IAB categories associated with this page tab, and then click the Edit categories button.
Ad tags
CNAME - security warning You can use a CNAME to have an advertising subdomain on your own domain (e. g. ads.mydomain.com) while still pointing to Equativ's servers; when doing so, make sure that your advertising subdomain does not get access to your first party cookies; especially, the advertising subdomain (ads.mydomain.com) must not get access to any authentication token stored on your main domain (mydomain.com).
After you create your pages you can quickly and easily download Equativ tags for them. Equativ tags are .txt export files including all the codes needed for tagging. Each ad tag contains site ID, page ID, format ID, and optionally some targeting information.
For some tag types (e. g. OneCall), you will find a generic code at the beginning of the file. This is followed by all the ad tags, structured by website, page and format.
1. Go to Inventory again, and select Sites & Pages. 2. Expand the selected Site by clicking on the plus icon next to the selected Site in the panel on the left, and then select the Page.
3. In the Tags section, choose the tag type from the drop down menu and expand the generated tag for that format.
Available ad tag types:
OneCall – used to call all formats on a page in a single call ("OneCall"); recommended ad tag for integrations of Equativ ad tags on websites;
Standard – used to call each format of a page one by one (as opposed to OneCall);
Standalone – used to make a third party system (e. g. a publisher ad server) call ads from Equativ; in the third party system, the Standalone tag is used as a redirect tag; usage in an HTML page recommended only if none of the other tag types can be used;
NonRich – used to retrieve ads in environments where javascript cannot be used
To learn more about the specifics of each of the ad tags, see the Tagging guide article.
To download all your tags at once, i.e. tags from all pages of the site, select a Site in the Sites & Pages view, and then click the “download all tags” option.
Video integration codes
Equativ offers a variety of ways for integrating in-stream video ads into your video content. Depending on the integration type you use, there will be different integration codes generated.
To get these codes:
1. First, select the page in the Sites & Pages view. 2. Expand the Video tags section and select the appropriate Integration type.
In mobile apps, the ad requests are managed by Equativ’s SDK (iOS or Android SDK).
To retrieve the code for app placements:
Go to Inventory > Sites & Pages.
On the left side, select the website.
Click on Download all tags for the site ... as shown in the screenshot above.
On the Export tags of sites and pages page, select App placements, as shown in the screenshot below.
Click Generate to download the integration codes.
Packs
Additionally, you can use Equativ’s Packs option to group your sites or pages.
For instance you could create a pack for your verticals, such as all your pages dealing with sports that you may want to sell to a sports advertiser as a pack. That way you can quickly add selected insertions to the pack, instead of individual pages, and run reports on the entire pack.
To create a pack:
1. Go to Inventory > Packs.
2. Click the New button.
3. Then, type in the Name of your pack and select the desired sites or pages and move them to the right column using the yellow arrow.
4. When you are ready with your settings, click the Save button. Note: when a pack is updated with new sites or pages, all online insertions containing this pack are put online again to take into account this update.
