Getting the Most Out of Carefree Ad Manager
Carefree Ad Manager (CAM) rotates ads (or any other content), counts impressions, counts clicks, provides statistics, lets you update ads, lets you download records, and it is WordPress friendly.
More impressions can be awarded to ads with higher click-through rates. Or rotation can be 1:1. Your choice.
Set it up and let the software perform. Visit it occasionally to purge any under-performing ads and load it with new ones.
The Basic Premise
Originally, this software was written for myself. I wanted something that rotates ads and:
Gives higher click-through ads more impressions per rotation.
Gives lower click-through ads less impressions per rotation.
That's the basic reason and premise of the software. I thought others might find a use for it and CAM was released.
Rotation Methods
With the 2.0+ version, CAM can rotate content in two ways.
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Popularity Rotation. At the end of every rotation, CAM determines the click-through rates of each ad. It then calculates how many times each ad is to be displayed during the next rotation, favoring the higher click-through ads with relatively more impressions.
Both impressions and clicks are logged. The statistics page uses the logged information when calculating ratios and percentages for you.
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1:1 Rotation. Each ad is displayed once per rotation, regardless how often individual ads are, or are not, clicked.
Logging impressions and clicks is optional. If they are logged, the statistics page uses the information to calculate ratios and percentages.
Both rotation methods: Ads can be added, deleted, updated, disabled, and enabled at any time, even in the middle of rotations. The type of rotation may also be changed at any time.
Ways To Use CAM
Here are a few scenarios to illustrate how CAM can be used.
Different ads for one product —
Let's suppose you have 5 ads, each for Widget Deluxe Prime from WDP Inc.
Set up the various ads to be rotated. Let CAM run for a while.
When it has sufficient data, CAM automatically displays the best click-through ads more often. The impressions per rotation is calculated anew whenever a rotation has been completed.
Sometime later, get the statistics. If any of the ads are performing below your standard, delete them from the rotation. Optionally, insert additional ads into the rotation.
The result is the best ads get published most often.
If publishing the better ads more often provides 3 times more click-throughs, then your income probably is 3 times what it would otherwise be.
Different products, each with its own ad —
Let's suppose you have 5 ads, each for a different product. The products may be from the same or different companies.
Setup is like above. Load up a rotation and let CAM determine which ads should be published more often.
A consideration here is that not all click-throughs have the same value. One ad might average $5 income per click. Another ad $10 per click.
The value of the clicks needs to be considered when deciding which ads to keep in the rotation and which to delete or replace.
If another copy of the same ad is inserted, the effect is to publish it twice as often as is would otherwise be published.
If a different ad for the same product, the two ads can go head to head in competing for click-throughs – with you being the winner no matter which ad gets the most click-throughs. You win because CAM controls the number of impressions until you get around to deleting or replacing the poorest-performing one.
How much more money you make from the better ads being published more often and the worse ads less often depends on the ads' click-through rates and the income from the ads.
It's something you can calculate for the ads you run.
Ads for clients paying per impression —
In this scenario, you'll most likely want to display each ad once for every rotation. The 1:1 Rotation method is perfect for this.
Logging impressions and clicks is optional. Probably you'll want to log impressions for billing the client. If the client wants to know click-through rates, clicks can also be logged.
Multiple Rotations
Any number of rotations can be created with the CAM control panel. Each rotation has its own set of ads and rotation method.
Statistics and Data Export
Statistics for each type of rotation are separate. If a set of ads uses one type of rotation for a while, then later another type of rotation, the impressions and clicks for one will not be mixed in with the other.
The database export menu item downloads a CSV file of all ads, all impressions (regardless of rotation method), or all clicks (regardless of rotation method).
Running CAM with WordPress
The installation procedure and the CAM control panel are the same with and without WordPress.
The only difference is with inserting the rotated content into posts or pages. Only the JavaScript method can be used. Not the PHP method.
To insert ads with JavaScript: JavaScript in a WordPress post or page needs to be all one line. It's exactly the way the code is presented in the CAM control panel. Just copy and paste.
So, there is no difference there from using JavaScript in non-WordPress pages. Simply copy the JavaScript and paste it where you want the rotated ad to show up.
CAM
Carefree Ad Manager was made for rotating content with popular items published more often. Especially ads, where the number of impressions can make so much difference in income.
It is no longer necessary to manually rotate ads. CAM does it automatically. And even publishes the best ads more often than the less responsive ads.
Will Bontrager
