Getting Probability 0.00% in Contract campaigns

[Faton Sopa]

Hi,

I've been using openx/Revive server for a while, and now I have started to have issues with contract campaigns.

I have crated a contract campaign (just like in the past) and limit its impressions to 450000 in total. I have linked 2 banners to this campaign and those banners to 2 different zones (see below attached link images). When I go to zones, the zones's icon linked to these banners are red and the probability in both of them shows 0.00%. There is no frequency capping, there are enough impressions to spend, expire date is not passed and there is no other banner/campaign linked to these zones.

I'm using Revive Adserver v4.0.1 running on nginx and "Scheduled maintenance is running correctly." Just changed it from automatic to schedules and the schedule log is attached.

Screenshots
https://ibb.co/c7jcXv
https://ibb.co/fiRPCv
https://ibb.co/cit4Cv
https://ibb.co/h1YRQF

Any idea on what the issue may be?

Thank you in advance,

Faton

[andrewatfornax]

Hi @Faton Sopa,

Does that value persist after an hour or so?

It may be that you have the setting in place that means that banner probabilities are not calculated on UI change, in which case, I would expect the numbers to update after the next time maintenance runs.

[Faton Sopa]

Hi @andrewatfornax, 

Thanks for finding time to reply.

The value is the same since 17 hours (which is when I recreated the campaign) and the scheduled maintenance has also run 17 times. The same result :(

Edited July 13, 2017 by Faton Sopa

[andrewatfornax]

Hi @Faton Sopa,

Okay.

So, the campaign has a target of 450000 impressions. There are two banners - assuming equal weights, that means 225000 impressions each. Each banner is linked to two zones - so, that's 112500 impressions for each banner in each zone.

Your campaign is running from July 11th to July 31st, so that's 21 days. That means 5357 impressions per banner, per zone, per day - or 223 impressions per banner, per zone, per hour (on average).

How many impressions per hour are these zones getting?

Would 223 impressions per hour per zone be a very small percentage of the available inventory?

 

... and are you seeing any impressions at all for these banners in the statistics?

 

 

[Faton Sopa]

Hi @andrewatfornax

Question 1:

No stats at all for today, "There are currently no statistics available for the period 13-07-2017 to 13-07-2017".

Until yesterday, there were no other banners linked to these zones, yesterday we linked the same image banner to a new remnant campaign just to show the banner for our client. However, as the new created campaign is remnant, it should not have a priority over contract campaigns (which needs to spend a certain number of impressions per day)

Question 2:

Yeap, it may be, but as long as we tested yesterday, if there is no any other banner linked it, it should even show ~223 impressions per hour.

I increased impressions limit to contract campaign to 9,500.000.

Check below images:

https://ibb.co/geGjEa
https://ibb.co/mwOWua
https://ibb.co/bSxrua
https://ibb.co/j01ZEa

 

:(

[andrewatfornax]

Hi @Faton Sopa,

Okay. What about the zone? Where there any impressions recorded for the zone? We do record blank impressions, so if your zone was in place and delivering, then I would expect that this would show up? (I am assuming that maintenance is running, and you are getting stats for other banners/zones?)

Is your remnant campaign delivering in the zone?

[Faton Sopa]

Hi andrewatfornax,

The zones are getting impressions with Remnant campaigns linked to it. As seen in the one of previous attachment images, I have linked a Contract and a Remnant campaign in the same zones, but only remnant campaign is showing impressions. The maintenance is running (Scheduled maintenance is running correctly).

Do you suggest me to linked the Contract campaign to a zone that does not have other campaigns linked in order to test if any impression is served?

PS.
If it helps you,  I can send you login details (in PM) of the adserver account to investigate the issue further.

[andrewatfornax]

Hi @Faton Sopa,

No, I would recommend always having a Remnant campaign linked to a zone, so that there's always something there to display, if the inventory isn't required for other campaigns. The processing order in Revive Adserver always checks other, more important campaigns for delivery before Remnant campaigns, and delivers them first, if it can.

Any delivery limitations in place that might be preventing the banners from showing?

https://www.revive-adserver.com/faq/troubleshooting-banner-delivery/

[Faton Sopa]

Hi @andrewatfornax,

There is no limitation placed in the Contract campaign (check https://ibb.co/iOvzPk).

So, to summary it, the zone "Zone Ballina - Medium Rectangle 1" has 2 campaigns linked to it, one Remnant (which is showing) and the other Contract (which is not showing).

Check "Remnant" here: https://ibb.co/bSUXc5
Remnant ad: https://ibb.co/e5byjk

Check "Contract" here: https://ibb.co/kwznAQ
Contract ad: https://ibb.co/bu6sAQ

 

I'm just lost, no idea how to handle it and make it work :(

 

 

Edited July 25, 2017 by Faton Sopa

[andrewatfornax]

Hi @Faton Sopa,

Do you want to PM me some login details?

[Faton Sopa]

Hi @andrewatfornax,

 

Login details sent in PM.

 

Thanks :)

[andrewatfornax]

Thanks @Faton Sopa,

Funny how you don't see it staring you in the face, until you log in and look!

Take a look at https://ibb.co/kwznAQ

See how the "Delivery capping per visitor" is set to ZERO campaign views in total and per session?

That's setting the entire campaign to only show ZERO times to each unique visitor.

I've just unset that value (so that it's now uncapped at the campaign level) on both the remnant and contract campaigns. 

With luck, the banners will start to deliver after ~20 minutes, when the cache expires.

Let me know if that fixes it?

[Faton Sopa]

HI @andrewatfornax,

Well, I have already seen it! Removed delivery capping, saved, but when I refreshed the page, the 0 gets back. Even now that you have remove id, if you click on campaigns, you will see that "0" is still there.

I'm starting to have my doubts in MySQL version 5.7. It may no accept null values. I will check it now, and get back to you.

Hi @andrewatfornax,

How the value of capping (when is not set) should be saved in DB?

If you see the following screenshot, the field type is INT, it doesn't accept null values and its Default value is "0"

https://ibb.co/eG2qh5

[Faton Sopa]

Hi @andrewatfornax,

How the value of capping (when is not set) should be saved in DB?

If you see the following screenshot, the field type is INT, it doesn't accept null values and its Default value is "0"

https://ibb.co/eG2qh5

[andrewatfornax]

Hi @Faton Sopa,

Oh, okay - my mistake! I've just checked my local instance, and it turns out that's how it works - the zero actually means no capping. Unless of course, something has broken :-)

I will take another look.

[andrewatfornax]

Hi @Faton Sopa,

Well, I am still not really sure what's happening.

As of today, you have 9,488,402 impressions remaining, which need to happen over 5 days, which means about 1,897,680 impressions per day.

Now, across the 17 or so zones that the banners are linked to, there are nowhere near enough impressions to be able to deliver all of those impressions. So, you would therefore expect to see a very high % of the available impressions being allocated in the zones. However, that's not happening.

To figure out why (perhaps!), we need to increase the logging level to debug, and then see what the Maintenance Engine output is.

See https://documentation.revive-adserver.com/display/DOCS/Banners+Not+Delivering and could you send me the debug log once you have the details?

Thanks.

[Faton Sopa]

Hi @andrewatfornax,

Sorry, just came from vocation!

Just implemented "PEAR_LOG_DEBUG". The Contract campaign has already expired. But we got another campaign which I added as Contract & Remnant under the same advertiser (Vala 35 Contract & Vala 35 Remnant)

Should we now wait for PEAR_LOG_DEBUG to collect data for a week or so?
Thanks.

[andrewatfornax]

Hi @Faton Sopa,

No, after just one maintenance run, you should see something in the logs telling you about what's happening re: the campaign and how the MPE is calculating the priority for delivery.

[Faton Sopa]

Hi @andrewatfornax,

I investigated the log file and found this error: https://ibb.co/bzP8XF

I checked 'local_infile' in my db configuration and its ON. I just gave the user 'all privileges' to its database and I'm waiting for the next maintenance to check if the error is gone. I also gave this user "Privilege" permissions on the global level as found on this thread (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1014724/mysql-permission-errors-with-load-data)

Keep you informed!

Thanks :) 

 

Edited August 7, 2017 by Faton Sopa

[Faton Sopa]

Found the problem and solved it :)

The problem was that the database user revive was working with did just have read, update, insert & delete,. I gave it all privileges on its database and FILE privilege on global level. 

Thank you very much for your time & help .

Cheers,
Faton

[andrewatfornax]

Fantastic, glad to hear its fixed now @Faton Sopa!

[SaulTJ]

@andrewatfornax I'm experiencing a very similar problem on my end. I've enabled the extensive debugging but I'm not seeing the same errors to suggest a permissions issue. Wondering if there are any other steps to reconcile this issue? Happy to pass along a debug log or login credentials. 

[andrewatfornax]

Hi @SaulTJ,

So, what you should see in the debug log are details of the decisions that are being made for each banner/zone pairing. For the zone where you're getting a 0% probability for a banner, what are you seeing in the logs?

[SaulTJ]

My issue is with contract campaigns getting 0% probability. Here is what I see in the log for one of the banners that should be serving: 

 

Creative ID 1332 in zone ID 35 had required impressions of 1, but no delivered impressions:
Aug 23 03:05:57 +0000 OX-maintenance-599cf1119ce39 [    debug]      - Calculating remaining operation intervals for ad ID: 1332
Aug 23 03:05:58 +0000 OX-maintenance-599cf1119ce39 [    debug]       - Calculating required impressions for ad ID: 1332
Aug 23 03:05:58 +0000 OX-maintenance-599cf1119ce39 [    debug]         - Calculating next OI required impressions for ad ID: 1332
Aug 23 03:05:59 +0000 OX-maintenance-599cf1119ce39 [    debug]      - Requesting sum of impressions for ad ID 1332 for 5 zones 
Aug 23 03:05:59 +0000 OX-maintenance-599cf1119ce39 [    debug]      - Creative ID 1332 in zone ID 34 had required impressions of 1, but no delivered impressions:

[andrewatfornax]

Hi @SaulTJ,

Okay, that doesn't look like the whole picture, but it should help you. The banner with ID 1332 is linked to 5 zones, yes?

So, do you get 0% probability in every zone?

Are there other campaigns in those zones as well that do have probabilities > 0%? 

Are these campaigns higher priority, and are taking up all of the available inventory?

Are there any remnant campaigns that are seeing any impressions in the zones?