Targeting Channels Or Something Else?

[ajotadmin]

I have a site that has multple topics and I need to start targeting ads to the topics. I think the targeting channels would be the way to go, but I'm a little confused on how to work with them and can't find docs or tutorials on it.

 

The site in question is built with ExpressionEngine, and would be based on "category".

 

I would rather not create a ton of Zones if I can avoid it, so any suggestions on best way to handle this would be welcome.

[andrewatfornax]

Targeting channels are just a way of setting up a pre-defined set of target(s) that you can use over and over when doing delivery targeting for banners. However, it certainly sounds like this is a good idea for you - you want to set up a channel for each of the "topics" that you want to target.

 

However, exactly how you define a "topic" depends on how you think you can define where the content is. If each topic lives in a section of your site that is well defined by the URL, then "Site - Page URL" might be a good choice. If you can modify your site's generated content, so that you dynamically insert a variable into the page depending on what the topic is, then the "Site - Variable" option could be what you need.

 

Does that help?

[ajotadmin]

Yes I think that helps - is there any documentation on using site-variable somewhere? i think that would be the easiest because the url isn't always the best for instance:

 

www.site.com/news/[category-name]

 

would be good but, when you click on an article it directs you to 

 

www.site.com/news/[article-name]

 

But it uses the same news/index page, I would just need to grab the category name and make it the variable for either case and every category. (if that makes sense)

[ajotadmin]

I am testing targeting channels using the variable: banner_channel = [dynamic-category-name] and I can't seem to see any difference, the ads are still showing up everywhere.

 

I've gone into delivery of a few ads, and set by channel and selected the channels I want.

 

The iFrame code shows the &banner_channel=category-name at the end of the URL correctly.

 

Any ideas on making this work? Docs would be so handy right now! haha!

 

Thanks!