smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

Bloke · 2009-01-06 20:12:36

strawberryfusion wrote:

Is it possible to use this for displaying banners / images in a certain order and changing by themselves.

Not directly. The plugin is totally designed for random banner serving and there’s no ordering anywhere.

If your goal is to simply show banners that rotate I’d suggest a gallery plugin. Though you won’t benefit from the match/avoid system in smd_random_banner you can certainly do everything else with a gallery. I know of one gallery plugin in particular that will do it :-)

Having said that, I’ve had some success with serving chained content. It was video (flash actually with embedded .flv files). If you want to see my tag then buckle your seatbelt because it’s a biggun:

<txp:smd_random_banner category="Generic" mode="file" nv_delim="::" count_downloads="0"
       global_params="width::700px; height::300px; bgcolor::#FFFFFF; wmode::transparent; loop::1;
       flashvars::bannlinks=<txp:smd_random_text source="/files/Automotive.flv@@/solutions/automotive |
       /files/Entertainment.flv@@/solutions/entertainment | /files/Finance.flv@@/solutions/finance |
       /files/Health-and-fitness.flv@@/solutions/health-and-fitness | /files/Hospitality.flv@@/solutions/hospitality |
       /files/Signage1.flv@@/" limit="4">{smd_rnd_txt}|</txp:smd_random_text>;" />

On each page refresh you get 4 different videos chosen randomly from the pool, that then play back one after the other.

Explanation: I have a load of flv files and I’ve paired them together with their destination links in the smd_random_text call embedded inside smd_random_banner. The smd_random_text picks 4 items and passes them via flashvars to a .swf which splits them up, error checks them and then serves the content one file at a time, setting the overlay link to the given destination. When the current video finishes playing the swf moves onto the next one, loads the .flv, overlays the link, and so on.

Using a similar technique (without smd_random_text), you could serve a fixed list of banners and get them to cycle. But it’s a lot of work and you have to ask yourself — if you’re serving static images — you might as well use a gallery and the jQuery cycle plugin to save a tonne off hassle.

Not sure if that helps!

mrtunes · 2009-04-22 19:13:03

hi stef, i’m having a little problem with this plugin.

i have used it two times on a page. in one of the blocks, it’s not rotating at all. i saw that i had linkin=“caption” and referrer=”“ and the client left the caption field empty. so i put fake captions in and then they were rotating. so then i took linkin=“caption” out cause i thought this was causing problems. now it’s not rotating at all.

EDIT: another possibility is that it could be taking a large number of clicks to rotate. is there any way to make sure it goes every 1-2 refreshes?

Last edited by mrtunes (2009-04-22 19:29:21)

Bloke · 2009-04-22 20:04:59

mrtunes wrote:

in one of the blocks, it’s not rotating at all

I’ve seen this before. One thing you could try is turn off the Send “Last-Modified” header in your Advanced Prefs. It may be that parts of your page — certain images perhaps — are being cached. Adding the linkin (and having something in the caption) would help the cache algorithm ‘see’ a different page each time which is perhaps why you noticed the change in behaviour with and without this attribute.

is there any way to make sure it goes every 1-2 refreshes?

Sadly no. Remember this generates a random banner not a guaranteed unique each refresh banner. Sometimes the law of statistics (a.k.a. sod’s law) works against you and you’ll get the same banner 2, 3, 4, 5 times in a row. It’s just the nature of randomness. Out of curiosity, how many banners are there in the pool for each category you are using? I know it seems obvious, but if you can possibly increase the number of files/images in each category, you’ll increase the chance the banner will be different next time.

mrtunes · 2009-04-22 20:13:02

ok as i’ve been on the page more, i’m seeing it refresh more often now. i guess we’ll have to see how it works when we put more images in. i’ll also try the change to the advanced preferences that you mention.

thanks!

husainhk · 2009-06-09 19:58:04

How can the visitor logs be used to track the clickthroughs on the banners? I need to setup a site, and the client wants a report on number of clicks each banner receives. Thanks in advance for any tips/advice.

Bloke · 2009-06-09 20:27:33

husainhk wrote:

How can the visitor logs be used to track the clickthroughs on the banners?

First of all, remember this only works on internal clicks. If you’re thinking of using it to track affiliate clickthrough rates you’re better off looking elsewhere or using a dedicated tool for the job. In fact, you may well be better off using a 3rd party tool to analyse log files anyway ;-)

But if that hasn’t dissuaded you then simply use link_in="alt" (you could use caption or name to hold the destination URL if you prefer). When you put a URL in the chosen image field, your banners will become clickable and will have ?bid=ID_of_image added to the URL. Visit your standard TXP Visitor logs on the Admin tab and you’ll see each page that was served from a banner will show the ?bid in the ‘referrer’ column, thus you know which image ID generated the click. Use the search/filtering tools on that tab to see how many of each banner were clicked, or export your logs elsewhere to analyse them.

The ?bid= information should also be available in your server log files; they may have more powerful tools to slice and dice the data. Crucially, that may tell you how many times (and at what times of day) a banner was served so you can correlate that with the number of clicks to find the ratio. The time of day and frequency of click may also allow you to gauge the potential demographic who are using the site at any particular time, though this is subjective at best.

The analysis is useful if you have a bunch of different banners for the same page as you can find out (very roughly, assuming a normal distribution of randomness in delivery of images to visitors) which ads are the most effective. Oh, and if you don’t like the bid part, change it via the referer attribute.

Does that help at all?

progre55 · 2009-09-29 16:14:15

Bloke:

I know this one may be a longshot, but is there anyway to set a timer so that the image appears for a set amount of time and then changes to another image without the page needing to be refreshed.

progre55

Bloke · 2009-09-29 16:29:50

progre55 wrote:

is there anyway to set a timer so that the image appears for a set amount of time and then changes to another image

Not sure if this quite what you had in mind, but how about:

use the limit attribute to grab N random related, random images
dump them all on the page inside a div container that is set to the height+width of one image with overflow:hidden
use the jQuery cycle-lite plugin to iterate over them after some delay

Not sure if it’ll work. If not and you really don’t need the random matching features of this plugin, smd_gallery will do the above without breaking into a big sweat.

progre55 · 2009-09-29 16:47:35

As usual, thanks for the speedy response and I will take a look.

progre55

By the way, the title “Developer” looks sharp under your name and is very well deserved for both past (and I know) future contributions to make TXP what it is and will be …

Scott Girvan · 2010-04-15 14:48:42

This is a great plugin. I have had many plugin acquaintances and dated a few but I’m thinking about going steady with this one. Reminds me of my last girlfriend being so random and all.

One question. I have 2 ‘banks’ of banners in the design, COL1 area and SideBar area. I have placed the plugin in both the COL1 (limit 1) and SB (limit 3). These are drawing banners from the same category. Is there anyway to have the 2 instances not repeat the same image? Assign a name to it, like radio buttons. I dunno. I’m just a designer. Sometimes.

Thanks alot. YOU ROCK!

Bloke · 2010-04-15 15:21:38

Scott Girvan wrote:

Is there anyway to have the 2 instances not repeat the same image?

Not yet, but you’ll have mail in about 5 minutes :-)

Bloke · 2010-07-25 15:19:38

Pure slackerage on my part. I finished v0.42 back in April and then forgot about it. Here’s the link in all its glory. New stuff:

Added file title as a possible location to compare_to (assuming you’re running a recent SVN of TXP 4.3.0)
Added row_delim
Added onclick handler to file mode (thanks renobird)
Added SMD_UNIQUE (thanks Scott Girvan)

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#133 2009-01-06 20:12:36

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#134 2009-04-22 19:13:03

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#135 2009-04-22 20:04:59

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#136 2009-04-22 20:13:02

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#137 2009-06-09 19:58:04

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#138 2009-06-09 20:27:33

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#139 2009-09-29 16:14:15

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#140 2009-09-29 16:29:50

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#141 2009-09-29 16:47:35

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#142 2010-04-15 14:48:42

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#143 2010-04-15 15:21:38

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

#144 2010-07-25 15:19:38

Re: smd_random_banner: Random banner image for advertising

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