What is a Campaign?
A campaign is a marketing program that represents one or more contracts or orders from a customer. For example, you might have a campaign to introduce new products, retain existing users, or increase market share. You manage your campaigns to maximize the effect of ads, discounts, and direct mail.
You use Commerce Server 2009 campaigns to do the following:
Target advertisements or discounts to users who have a specific profile. You set up user profiles, and then integrate the profiles into a campaign. For each advertisement page, you can specify whether the profile for the user browsing that page should be considered for targeted content, or ignored.
Run campaigns for customers who compete in the same industry. The competing advertisements never appear on the same page.
Charge your advertisers based on the number of advertisement requests they want their advertisements to receive.
Campaign Goaling
Campaign goaling is the process of specifying the number of paid advertisements to deliver (the goal) in a specified period. You can goal your campaign by clicks on an advertisement or by requests for an advertisement. You can also goal your campaigns at the campaign-level or at the advertising item-level.
Campaign-Level Goaling
Campaign-level goaling applies the goals to all the advertisements in the campaign by using a weighted distribution of the total number of requests. For example, you decide to perform goaling at the campaign-level for an advertiser. The advertiser gives you two advertisements, and orders 25,000 advertisement requests. At the campaign-level, you assign a weight of 80 to one advertisement and a weight of 20 to the other advertisement. This equals 100 percent of the total number of advertisements specified for the campaign. If the advertiser changes the number of advertisement requests, for example, to 40,000, you do not have to manually change the number of times the advertisements will display—they are still weighted at 80 and 20, respectively. The first advertisement will display 32,000 times and the second advertisement will display 8,000 times, for a total of 40,000 advertisements.
You do not have to goal your advertisements strictly as a weighted percentage. For example, you can weight your advertisements at 800 and 20 respectively, which will display the first advertisement 39,024 times, and the second advertisement 976 times, for a total of 40,000 advertisements.
Advertising Item-Level Goaling
Advertising item-level goaling applies the goals at the advertisement level. The total requests for the campaign are equal to the total number of ordered requests for each advertisement. For example, an advertiser might order 50,000 requests to be delivered in one month; therefore the advertisement must be delivered 50,000 times.
Changing Between Campaign-level Goaling and Advertising Item-level Goaling
Campaigns are scheduled using campaign goaling. You can schedule at the campaign-level or advertising item-level. In a campaign, weight applies to ads that are goaled at the campaign-level. For house ads the weight is relative to all other house ads for all customers and all campaigns. For paid ads, the weight is relative to other paid ads in the same campaign. After you schedule a campaign, you can change between campaign-level goaling and advertising item-level goaling, which determines how the weights for the ads will be calculated.
The following describes three scenarios for goaling paid ads. In the first scenario, the customer orders two ads goaled at the campaign-level. In the second scenario, the customer wants to add requests for the first of the two ads, and so switches to advertising item-level goaling. In the third scenario, the customer wants the first ad displayed at a three-to-one ratio over the second ad, and therefore switches back to campaign-level goaling.
Scenario 1: A customer orders two paid ads for their fall season sale to be run in even proportion for a total quantity ordered of 1000 requests. The quantity ordered for each ad is 500. The campaign is goaled at the campaign-level.
Scenario 2: The customer now wants 500 additional requests for the first ad. The campaign is changed to advertising item-level goaling, and 500 additional requests are added to the quantity ordered for the first ad for a total of 1000 requests. The second ad remains at 500 requests.
Scenario 3: The customer decides to redistribute the order so that the first ad is run at a weight of 3 to 1 against the second ad. The campaign is changed back to campaign-level goaling with a total quantity ordered of 1500. After the ad campaign item weights are changed to 3 and 1 (for the first and second ads, respectively), the new paid weights for the campaign are 1125 for the first ad and 375 for the second.
Warning
In the second scenario, if the customer decides to redistribute the order, and then also adds a third ad with a weight of 1, all the ads must be reweighted. Because the ad has been changed from an ad-goaled campaign to a campaign-goaled campaign, the paid weight of all the ads must be changed, or the delivery of the ads will be skewed.
See Also
Other Resources
How to Change the Status of a Campaign
How to Restore a Deleted Campaign Item
Managing Tasks Common to All Business Management Applications