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Behind the scenes

Sponsor manager

Every ad position on TimeshareBook, what is running in each one, how it is performing, and the controls to change any of it. The rotation, the flight dates, the frequency caps and the impression counting all run on their own — this page is where you look at them and where you change what they serve.

Read this before you quote a number to anybody. These counts are this browser's counts, not the whole site's. TimeshareBook has no server keeping score yet, so every impression and click below was recorded by the copy of the site running on this machine. That makes this a real and honest measuring instrument for testing, and it is not yet a circulation figure. The day there is a backend, one function changes and these same tables start showing everybody.

Every position on the site

One row per place an ad can appear. Eligible is how many ads could fill that position right now under the rules — a position with fewer than two cannot rotate, and the build refuses to ship one that way. In flight counts only the ones whose start and end dates include today.

Position Page Format Eligible In flight Impressions Clicks Click rate

Every ad in rotation

Click any row to open it in the editor below. Ads marked House are TimeshareBook's own products, and their headline, description, button and destination are read out of the store itself — so they are shown here and locked, because a second copy typed on this page could contradict the product page. Ads marked are somebody else's and every word of them is yours to write.

Ad Who Weight Formats Positions Status Flight Impressions Clicks Click rate

Edit

Change anything on the left and watch it redraw on the right in all three shapes before you save it. Saving checks the same rules the build checks: no position may be left with nothing to show, and none may be left with only one ad, because one ad in a rotating position is a static banner.

Nothing selected

Pick a row from the table above, or add a paid sponsor.

The name behind the ad. It is not printed on the unit — it is how you find it in this table and in your own records.
The one-word chip above the headline, such as Course, Free or Tool. Leave it empty for no chip.
A headline written for a wide strip clips when it is stuffed into a narrow card, so the engine will never serve an ad into a shape it does not claim here.
Leave every box unchecked to let it run in any position whose shape it carries. Check some to pin it to those and nowhere else.
How often it is drawn against the others in the same position. Relative, not a percentage.
Empty means it is running already.
Empty means it never stops on its own.
Zero means no limit. This is the setting that keeps a reader from meeting the same unit sixty times.
Pausing takes it out of every position at once. Use this rather than a weight of zero.

What a reader sees

Drawn by the same function the live pages use, so what is in these boxes is exactly what ships. These are previews and nothing here counts as an impression.

Wide strip — top of a page

Card — beside other cards

Block — inside an article

What runs by itself

Six behaviors, all of them already live on every page carrying a position. Nobody has to log in on the first of the month or the thirty-first.

Weighted rotation, not round robin Every draw is proportional to weight. Round robin looks fairer and gives a small item the same exposure as the membership, which is fair to the inventory and wrong for the business.
Never the same ad twice in a row A position redrawing the unit it just showed reads as broken. The draw excludes whatever is currently on screen, unless it is the only thing that can fill that position — a repeat is dull, an empty box looks broken.
Flight dates An ad starts and stops on its own dates. Book a sponsor for October in August and it appears on the first and is gone on the first of November with nobody touching it.
Frequency capping A ceiling on how many times one reader is shown the same unit. This is the single most common reason people install ad blockers, and it costs one number in the field above to not do it.
Impressions are counted only when the ad was really seen Half the unit on screen for a full second. Counting the moment it is drawn instead would make every number here bigger and every one of them worthless. A position at the bottom of a long page honestly earns a small number, and the small honest number is the one worth pricing from.
Clicks are tied to the position, not just the ad Every click records which ad, which position and which page. That is what makes "the strip does better on the blog than on the directory" a question with an answer, which is the question that sets a rate card.

Back it up, move it, or put it back

Your edits live in this browser. This box is how you carry them to another machine, keep a copy before a big change, or throw everything away and go back to the inventory the site was built with.