By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
October 31st, 1998

See Also   The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet   Alternative Payment Solutions   Fraud Prevention Tools   Top Tools to Help You Boost Customer Service   iV-Caller Verification Service   Make Your Price Sell!   FindWhat.com   Make Your Knowledge Sell!   HumanClick   Netship   iFulfill.com   Nexchange   Nothing But 'Net   Netwhistle.com   Bigstep.com   Make Your Site Sell!   AWeber   GoTo.com   Constant Contact   WebAdverts   PersonalStore   SiteInspector   LinkExchange   ClickTrade   Safe   eCHARGE   MilliCent

Product	WebAdverts
Description	Web site ad management solution
Available	Now
Pricing	Shareware, $50 to register.

On smaller Web sites it is perfectly feasible to manage adverts manually. However, as a site gets bigger the tasks of adding, deleting and rotating adverts can become a major chore. In addition, most paying advertisers will look for their host sites to provide them with features such as the capability to rotate adverts across all or part of the site and the ability to access reports on the performance their adverts.

There are several software packages or scripts currently available that will ease the burden of Web site advert management. One of the best - and cheapest - is WebAdverts. Written by Darryl C. Burgdorf, WebAdverts is distributed as shareware so you can try it before you buy it. If you do decide to use it the registration fee is a modest $50.

The installation of WebAdverts is straightforward. The package consists of three CGI scripts, two of which require to be configured with some details of the Web site on which they are to be used. The configuration process is simple and can easily be completed within ten minutes. Once configured the three scripts are then installed in the Web server's CGI-BIN directory.

Obviously to be able to use WebAdverts you need to be able to run CGI scripts on your server. Most ISPs allow this but you should check with them if in any doubt. In addition it should be noted that WebAdverts is written in the Perl programming language. Whilst this has many benefits there are some performance issues. However this should not be an issue on sites serving less than 100,000 ad impressions per day, according to the FAQ on the WebAdverts' Web site.

The most onerous part of setting up WebAdverts is the editing of each Web page to add code at every position where an advert is to appear. This can be quite a headache for larger sites but using a search-and-replace tool can simplify things. Of course this is a one-off task that never needs to be repeated. All you need to remember is to add the code in each time you create a new page.

The program can manage adverts either through IMG tags or via Server Side Includes (SSI). SSI should be used wherever possible as it is the easier of the two solutions to implement and allows access to additional program features. WebAdverts can also be used to manage adverts that are served by a third parties, for example LinkExchange or Imigis. However, although it can track and manage the number of exposures third party ads receive, WebAdverts is unable to measure the number of click-throughs.

Once set up the program is managed through a simple administration interface that is used for adding, deleting or editing adverts as well as reporting on each adverts performance.

It is possible - and usually desirable - to set up WebAdverts to work with different zones for example one zone for the home page and one zone for the rest of the site. It is then possible to specify which zone or zones each advert is permitted to appear in.

It is also possible to control the frequency of exposure for a particular advert by setting a weighting factor for it. And adverts can be automatically taken out of circulation after a specific time period, a certain number of exposures or a number of click-throughs.

The main administration interface also contains a summary report on the performance of all adverts. This provides statistics for each advert on the total number of exposures, the number of exposures per day, number of clicks per day, and the CTR. Detailed daily reports are also available for each advert.

WebAdverts can also be configured to allow advertisers to log in at any time and view the performance of their adverts.

Verdict: An excellent, low cost solution for managing adverts on Web sites serving up to 100,000 ad impressions per day.