An ad campaign follows the hierarchical structure:

Supercampaign
↓
Flight (campaign)
↓
Banners

At the top of the hierarchy, the supercampaign consolidates various campaigns with their creatives and allows you to define general restrictions for them: start and end dates, schedules, and number of impressions.

A flight is an additional level between a supercampaign and banners, which allows for more granular control over impressions within the ad campaign.

The final level consists of banners. Adfox supports various ad formats with images, videos, and HTML files.

Campaign types and rotation

By using campaign types and rotation, you can distribute traffic among campaigns served on the same placement.

Here’s how a campaign is selected for display:

Let’s break it down in detail.

There are three types of campaigns:

1. Guarantee campaigns have the highest priority. They are displayed first. This type is used for campaigns with guaranteed sales that have display obligations.

Direct sales are configured at this level.

Guarantee campaigns range from level one to ten.

Level is a parameter that determines how campaigns are selected for display. The highest level is the first.
You can set up priority to rotate campaigns within the same level. By default, the priority is set to 100. The higher the campaign’s priority, the greater its chance of being shown.

2. Dynamic Monetization: Campaigns where impression decisions are based on the CPM or CPC model.
Campaigns of this type are assigned level 11.

3. Promo campagins are served when no campaigns of the Guarantee and Dynamic Monetization type are selected. You can use them to advertise your own promos, services, or projects.
Promo campaigns range from levels 12 to 20.

If Adfox fails to select any campaign for display, it returns an empty response with the 204 No Content status.

The statistics for such banner ad responses include the ‘Unfilled ad responses’ parameter.

This parameter can be used, for example, to evaluate, the amount of free traffic for a placement that wasn’t allocated to commercial ad campaigns due to settings or limits, or wasn’t bought through Dynamic Monetization.

Let’s look at how to add an ad campaign using direct sales as an example.

Note: When creating a new campaign, it’s enough to specify its name and the advertiser. Feel free to leave the other fields empty or populated with default values.

Create a supercampaign

Click Create.

In the window that opens, fill in the primary fields: “Campaign name”, “Advertiser”, and “Impression count method”. Flights will inherit the advertiser and the impression count method.
In addition, in supercampaign settings, you can apply limitations to a group of flights based on dates, limits, or frequency.

• Name: Add an arbitrary name for your ad campaign.
• Advertiser: From the list, select the Default Advertiser or the advertisers that you previously created in this account. We explained how to create a new advertiser in the “Understanding the Adfox interface” module.
• Impression count method
  Defines which event counts as a banner ad impression.
  Important: You can’t change the impression count method after adding the campaign.
  • Banner ad responses (default): An impression counts when the banner ad tag is delivered in response to a request sent from the site page.
  • Viewable ad impressions, Yandex (IMS): An impression counts only if at least 50% of the banner area remains in the active browser window for at least 2 seconds.
  • Impression (IMS): An impression counts at the start of ad rendering.
  • Viewable impressions (IMS): An impression counts based on international media industry standards: the minimum percentage of pixels in the viewable area and the time spent in the active browser tab.

    IMS is a technology that measures impression viewability based on international media industry standards and filters out invalid traffic (SIVT and GIVT). Supported only by banner templates labeled as IMS.

For details about other impression count methods, see Help.

Create a flight

After creating a supercampaign, the Flights tab automatically opens. Set up the campaign.

Campaign type

• Campaign type. Choose Guarantee.
• Specify the campaign profile.

1. Direct sale: Use this to create a regular campaign with default fields
2. Carousel: Use this to create a Carousel master campaign. The carousel displays rotating banners from various campaigns, sharing the same placement.

General settings

• Campaign name: Add a unique name for your ad campaign.
• Status: By default, the campaign is set to Active.
  You can later pause the campaign.
  After the end date, it will automatically change to Completed.
• Advertiser: This setting is inherited from the supercampaign.
• The impression count method is inherited from the supercampaign.
• The advertiser can change banners: Enable this option to grant the advertiser access to edit and add banners in this campaign.
• Assistant: Appoint a user who can be granted access to manage campaigns and view reports.

Rotation

Rotation allows you to distribute traffic across campaigns if two or more campaigns are running on the same placement. For more details about rotation, see “Campaign and banner structure”.

Configure the rotation settings.

General restrictions

Choose how quickly you want your impressions and clicks to be delivered, set their maximum numbers, and specify the dates.
Learn more about restrictions and impressions.

The speed of unscrewing impressions/transitions: Determines how the campaign’s impressions or clicks will be distributed over time.

• As fast as possible: Banner ads are served at the highest frequency possible until the impression or click limit is reached.
• Spreading traffic evenly by day limit: Impressions or clicks will be evenly distributed throughout the day.
• Spreading traffic evenly throughout the entire period: The system will evenly distribute impressions or clicks throughout the entire campaign period.
• Spreading traffic evenly by general limit (automatic prolongation): If the campaign doesn’t meet the specified delivery limit within the allotted time, it is automatically extended by one day and runs at maximum speed on that day.

Placement

Choose the ad placement for your app: site, section, or placement. Click Save.

Placement profile: If necessary, you can create them in advance in the Settings tab. This way, you can combine placements into a profile for automatic campaign placement on the profile’s placements.

Learn more about creating a profile.

Targeting

Add targeting criteria.

Configuring targetings is key to setting up a successful ad campaign.

Targetings are parameters that determine which users will see your campaign’s banners and under what conditions. You can set up targetings at the level of a 

campaign, flight, placement, or banner.

Targeting at the banner level takes priority over the parameters set at the placement or campaign level.

For example, the entire ad campaign can target all of Russia, while one banner can be limited to a specific region. In this case, the banner will be shown only in the specified region, while others will run across Russia according to the campaign’s settings.

Supported types of targeting:

• Frequency: For example, you can choose to display a banner no more than twice a day, or to stop displaying it if the user has already clicked on the banner link.
• Demographics: You can display banners to an audience based on gender, age, and income.
• Geography: You can select countries, regions, and cities where you want to enable or disable banner impressions.
• Yandex Audience segments: You can use your own user data or data from Crypta and third-party providers.

In addition to these targeting types, you can also use targeting by time, keywords, URLs, IP addresses, positions, operating systems, device types, browser, and user behavior.

Targeting profile: If you often repeat your placement scheme or targeting criteria, you can create a profile in the Settings tab.

Learn more about creating a profile.

To use additional targetings, logical targeting, or keyword targeting for direct sales, configure passing of parameter values within the Adfox ad request.

To target keywords, pass parameters with their values in the format adf_pk = value to the ad tag.

• adf_pk: Parameter name.
• value: Parameter value.

To use additional and logical targeting:

• Create a directory for the targeting characteristic, containing a list of values and keys.
• Upload the directory to Adfox
• Pass the parameter with the values adf_puidN = value in the Adfox request code.

For sample Kotlin code and more details about targeting, see Help.

Newsletter

You can set up automatic report delivery to your contracting parties (advertisers, agencies and managers) by email. For the newsletter, you can set up a schedule, a dimension, and statistical metrics from the start of the campaign to its end.

Campaign forecasting

Before you save a Guarantee campaign, you can build a forecast for it. With the forecast, you can quickly assess how likely your campaign is to succeed, based on your targeting settings, limits, and current inventory. Moreover, the forecast considers other campaigns that use the same inventory.

A forecast can be made for a maximum of 180 days from the current date. If the campaign lasts longer, the forecast will be calculated for the next 180 days.

Forecasting principles

• The forecast is based on accumulated statistics. If there is not enough traffic on the site, or if it is unstable, the forecast may be inaccurate or fail to generate.
• If you run several Guarantee campaigns on the site, a separate forecast is made for each of them. Finally, the forecast provides the number of impressions that the campaign is losing to other campaigns or, conversely, gaining from other campaigns using the same inventory.
• If the forecasted campaign includes deprecated features, you won’t be able to generate a forecast for it.
  You can view the list of deprecated features in Help.

The forecast accuracy depends on:

• The number of impressions the campaign receives daily.
  The more traffic it attracts, the more accurate the forecast.
• Traffic variations across placements.
  If the traffic is stable, the forecast accuracy increases.

Keep in mind that the information about potential impressions is just an estimate, and the actual number of impressions might be different. The forecast is only relevant for the current time.

Learn about how to analyze forecasts in Help.

Saving the campaign

Fill in all the parameters for your ad campaign and save it.

For a Guarantee campaign, you can:

• Save it as a guarantee to start impressions immediately after adding banners.
• Save it as a booking to create a booking and reserve the inventory for future use. This way, when you create forecasts for other campaigns, the system will take into account the inventory allocated to this campaign.

Now that you’ve created an ad campaign, add banners to it.

1. In the created ad campaign, go to the Banners tab and click Create.

2. Depending on the ad format, select the banner type and template.
   The ad format corresponds to the ad unit format in the Yandex Advertising Network interface.

3. Configure the basic settings of the banner

• Name: Specify a name for your banner. If left blank, the banner will be assigned a sequence number.
• Priority: Enter a numeric value that determines the banner’s priority.
  The higher the number, the higher the priority, and the more often the banner will be shown compared to other banners in the same campaign.
• Status:
  Choose the status:
  • Active: The banner is ready to be served.
  • Suspended or completed: The banner won’t be served.

4. Define the banner’s content.

Example for the Banner HTML5 banner template

The parameters in this section change based on the banner template used. When setting them up, check the requirements for the selected banner type.

5. Specify general restrictions on impressions and clicks.

6. Place the banner on your placements.
   Under Placements, select your app and placement from the list.
7. Save the changes.

Managing native ads

Create a native banner:

1. Determine which native elements you want the banner to include.
2. Prepare JSON code. Add customization parameters to it: an element and its value.
3. Write JSON in a single line and escape quotes using the \ character.
4. On the app side, support reading of JSON data so that native elements are correctly displayed in the app. Ensure that each native element mentioned in JSON is correctly implemented in the app code.
5. Add the banner.

• Specify:
  • Banner type App Mobile Native
  • Template Media Native

Set up the banner (as shown above). Be sure to fill in the parameters specific to this banner type:

• Image URL (URL) or Image URL (file). Upload an image.
• Width and height. Specify the banner width and height (integers in pixels, without units).
• Additional text. If you need to include custom elements in your ad or creative, add the JSON file you created previously.

For more information on Media Native banners and JSON examples, see Help.

You can track the statistics of impressions, clicks, and CTR in real time using tags.

Demo test units

We recommend using test ads to verify integration of your app open ads and to test your app.

Demo banners:

• demo-native-adfox (iOS and Android only): Banner with the App Mobile Native template.
• demo-banner-adfox-html: Banner with the Image App Mobile template.
• demo-banner-adfox-image: Banner with the Image App Mobile template.
• demo-interstitial-adfox-image: Banner with the HTML App Mobile Banner template.
• demo-interstitial-adfox-html: Banner with the HTML App Mobile Banner template.