From time to time we hear stories of advertisers sitting at their computers and clicking refresh over and over, frustrated that they see their ads infrequently, or not at all. Sometimes all they'll see is house ads from the publisher.
Why is this?
When you buy a Web display ad, the typical arrangement is for you to contract for a certain number of impressions spread out across a certain time period.
Your ad is then stored on a complex piece of software called an ad server, run by a third-party company with which the publisher contracts. The ad server that PMMI Media Group uses, Google Ad Manager, is used by thousands of publishers all over the globe.
With each web page displayed to each visitor every second of every day, the ad server is tasked with weighing all the competing requests from all the different campaigns, metering out impressions as accurately and evenly as possible. With every page, the ad server must take into account several criteria, including:
- How much traffic the website is getting
- How far ahead or behind each campaign is, relative to its expiration date
- How much traffic the ad server forecasts in the future, based on recent traffic trends
As you can probably guess, all of these conditions are constantly fluctuating, every day, every hour. In fact, our ad server re-calculates all of the variables for every single campaign every day. Within each day, your campaign is allotted a certain number of impressions to fulfill our obligation to serve your ad and keep it on track across the term of the campaign. Throughout the course of the campaign, the ad server will ensure your ad delivers as consistently as possible by rotating it with other ads including a publisher’s house ads.
Depending on which point in time you are looking for your ad, it could be that the ad server is showing other campaigns or ads. Rest assured your campaign is being managed around the clock by a sophisticated, specialized piece of software whose job it is to make sure you get every single impression you are paying for! On top of that, we have in-house ad server experts, who have been trained to monitor your campaign to make sure everything is functioning properly.
If, at any point in time, you would like to see a screen shot of your ad or receive a delivery report, just let your Rep know.
For more information on ad serving, here are a few articles that we recommend:
Wikipedia
Ad Ops Insider