How AVID Ad Server Delivers Rich Media Like a Pro

If you want to make money on the internet, you need to have control over your advertising. From the perspective of an advertiser, you want to make sure that the right ads are being displayed on the right web properties at the right time. And you also want those ads to be delivered as reliably and as quickly as possible.

There are many ways to set this up, but each of them come with their own pros and cons. In todays article we are going to take a look at the AVID Ad Server, which is meant to not only alleviate the frustrations of setting up your own ad server, but also how to scale and track every aspect of your advertising. AVID created their platform with the concept of making it “simple to use” and “cost efficient” while enabling advertisers to plan, build and deliver “eye-popping rich media ads” that can be integrated into your online ad campaigns.

What Is a Third Party Ad Server?

Before we can take a closer look at AVID in particular, we should first familiarize ourselves with third party ad servers in general. The idea here is that the ads are housed in a third party ad server rather than being sent directly from the agency to the publisher. This quick video from AVID illustrates the process quite succinctly.

These ads can be of nearly any type, including regular display banners, text ads and more. The key here is that the publisher doesn’t need to download and serve the ads directly, because that process is handled by the third party ad server. This provides the advertiser (or agency) with at least three key advantages:

• Control: Since the ads are not accessible directly by the publisher, the agency can update the ads stored on the server remotely. In doing so, the new ads are automatically displayed on the publisher’s site with no further intervention. This provides the agency with far greater control.
• Targeting: While publishers can attempt to do this on their own, using a third party ad server means that the most relevant or highest performing ad can be displayed to each visitor. This targeting can be based on a number of factors, including time of day and geographic location.
• Reporting: Rather than receiving separate reports from each individual publisher, the agency can review more comprehensive reports from the third party ad server, collecting all the data from all the publishers.

With each of these components it place, anyone should be able to effectively scale and track their ad campaigns with ease.

Using AVID as Your Own Ad Tracking Platform

With online tracking and management becoming more important for bloggers, online marketers and brands on a daily basis, many people are looking to bring this management in-house or through a trusted platform they can manage on their own. While there are a few options out there for doing this, AVID is attempting to make the process not only easier and more effective, but also better.

To turn your server into an ad tracking and link management platform, AVID has created their ‘Image & Text Container Ads’ and ‘Unique Link/Landing Page Tracker’ which both allow you to take full control of your campaigns, while also having the ability to scale them across all platforms and sites.

Image & Text Container Ads

With AVID as your ad tracking platform, you can purchase a single ad impression on any site, and use it to serve multiple ads. Each ad within the unit can be clicked, tracked and reported independently. There are no limits to how many ads you can serve within a single placement, and individual ads can be ordered and weighted to control exactly where, and how often, they appear.

Unique Link/Landing Page Tracker

While also serving a wide rotation of ads anywhere, you will also need to have a powerful tracking solution in place — AVID has you covered here as well. With advanced tracking, ad rotation capabilities and landing page optimization in place, your media buys across CPC Networks, content ad networks, pop/redirect networks can all be tracked under one powerful platform.

An AVID Fan of Serving Ads Better

As we move on, we can now turn our attention to the infrastructure of AVID Ad Server, which was built to compete with the best third party ad services on the internet today.

AVID is designed to be a comprehensive solution for marketers and agencies who want to have more control over their ads. You can use AVID to create your ads and take advantage of targeting, as well as deliver the ads through the fast, reliable cloud servers.

Indeed, reliability and performance are two of the biggest priorities here. This is powered through AVID’s global content delivery network. This means the ads load really quickly and reliably, anywhere in the world. You can also take advantage of container ads, which contain multiple ads in a single ad impression, and extensive real-time reporting.

Administrative Dashboard and Interface

Unsurprisingly, it can take a little time to familiarize yourself with how this system works and how you can access all the features. Thankfully, AVID provides a great 43-page user guide that can walk you through the entire process.

The default home screen for the dashboard lists all of the publishers you have added to your account. Here, you get at-a-glance information about clicks, click-thru rate, spend, eCPM, revenue and so on. Clicking on the publisher name allows you to create, import and review the ad placements associated with that publisher.

The exact process for uploading and creating new ad placements, plus associating them with the corresponding publishers, is relatively straightforward once you get the hang of it. You can have a huge range of placement sizes and there are no limits to the number of ads you can host and serve through AVID.

Try AVID Out for Free

To get a real sense of how the AVID Ad Server can improve your experience as an advertiser or agency, request a free demo today and they’ll show you what they have to offer.