Add-on Ads Manager by Siropu (Paid) - Your Feedback Please

[Siropu]

I've created a XenForo advertisement management Add-on for my community and because I think it's awesome and you might love it, I'm thinking of selling it here so I need your feedback first.

My Ads Manager allows you to create and sell very easily 6 type of ads on your board: custom code, banner, text, link, post keyword and sticky threads. You can sell ads per day, week, month, year, CPM or CPC.

ACP Features:

1. Create/manage Ads
2. Create/manage Packages
3. Create/manage Positions (22 positions available and you can add more)
4. Manage Transactions
5. Options (Enable user Ads Manager, IPN Debug, IPN Sandbox, Your PayPal Account Email Address, Ad Title Max Length, Ad Description Max Length, Max Stickies Per Forum, Max Stickies Per User Per Forum, Allowed Sticky Forums, Max Words in a Keyword, Display keyword ads in conversations, Transaction Time Limit (Hours), Admin Email Notifications)
6. Permissions (Create Ads, View Ads)

Ads Features

• Set name
• Select package (if any)
• Choose to inherit or not package settings
• Select positions (you can select multiple positions)
• Code (for custom ads - JavaScript, HTML, Flash)
• Upload banner
• Title (for text and link ads)
• Description (for text ads)
• Keywords (for keywords ads - you can set multiple keywords)
• Target URL
• Set start date
• Set end date
• Set to count views and the view limit
• Set to count clicks and the click limit
• Set if the link will be nofollow
• Set if the link will open in new window
• Set display order
• Page criteria (nodes)
• User criteria (groups and gender)
• Set status (Active, Inactive, Pending, Approved, Queued, Rejected)

Packages Features

• Set name
• Set description (for buyers)
• Select type
• Select positions (you can select multiple positions)
• Set cost and cost per
• Set a different cost based on keywords or based on forums
  
• Set minimum purchase
• Set maximum purchase
  
• Set discount based on the purchase length (you can set multiple discounts)
• Set maximum ads allowed
  
• Set maximum ads display
  
• Set ads display order (Ad order asc/desc, Ad creation date asc/desc or random)
• Set to rotate ads using JavaScript (No AJAX requests)
• Set to count views
• Set to count clicks
• Set if the links will be nofollow
• Set if the links will open in new window
• Page criteria (nodes)
  
• Guidelines (for buyers)
• Enable/disable package

The ad views are counted only if the ad is visible on the visitor's screen and if the ad is set to multiple positions, the view will be counted only once. Also only the first click is counted.

If the ads are set to rotate using JavaScript, the view will be counted only when the ad is displayed and only when is on the user's view and only once, same for clicks.

You and the buyer can view the CTR (Click-Through Rate) live.

If you sell ads, all you have to do is approve the ads created by users and the rest is automated (including Ad activation after payment).

If the package ad limit is reached, users can still be able to create ads but when you approve them, they will be queued, and when a slot becomes available, the next ad in queue will get processed (A pending transaction gets generated for the user and once the payment is completed, the ad becomes active).

If the transaction doesn't get completed within the specified time frame (there is an option for that), that transaction will be cancelled, the ad will be rejected and then the next ad in queue gets processed.

UCP Features (Has it's own tab and page):

• Create Ads
• Transactions

The user can upload banners, set title, description, url, etc based on ad type. The user can also choose if he/she want to receive email notifications when the ad is about to expire and when has expired.

When users create keyword ads, the system will check if the keyword(s) already exists in other ads (if they exists but the ads are inactive for at least 7 days, the users are allowed to choose those keywords).

When users create sticky ads, they will see a drop down with a list of forums (there is an option in ACP to select in which forums you want to sell sticky ads) and when they select a forum, a list with their threads will be displayed so they can select which thread to make sticky.

Once the ad is created, you will receive an email notification with a link to that ad (you can choose not to if you want from ACP) so that you can approve/reject the ad.

When you approve an ad, a transaction will be generated and the user will receive an email notification (also they will see an alert on the page).

If user has created multiple ads and multiple transactions have been generated, he/she can select all of them and pay for all at once.

When an ad is about to expire, the user will see a warning message and will be able to use the extend function to continue.

Current Add-on version: 1.5.6 (many bugs have been fixed and many features have been added during the almost 2 moths I have been working on it).

Screenshots: https://xenforo.com/community/media/albums/ads-manager-by-siropu.100/

 

[tajhay]

What kind of logs do you provide? CTR, page views etc?

This sounds interesting compared to the newly created one by Audentio Designs. Looking forward to release and screenshots.

 

[Siropu]

Currently only simple statistics: views, clicks, CTR but I'm planning to add detailed statistics with the option to enable/disable them.
I'm taking screenshots now and will upload soon.

 

[Siropu]

I'm uploading them here: https://xenforo.com/community/media/albums/ads-manager-by-siropu.100/

 

[oman]

What kind of logs do you provide? CTR, page views etc?

This sounds interesting compared to the newly created one by Audentio Designs. Looking forward to release and screenshots.

Looks more feature rich as well.

 

[denam]

It would be great to see alternative payment methods (cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) supported since paypal's best days seem to dim out and I would like to give discounts for advertisers who choose to pay using bitcoin.

 

[Siropu]

Well, I've built the add-on in such a way that I can easily add more payment methods. I'm not familiar with bitcoin and its payment interface but we'll see...

 

[Siropu]

The easiest and cleanest way to add ads after any posts you want using my Ads Manager:

1. Add a new hook after thread_view > message template: <xen:hook name="ads_manager_after_post_{$message.position_on_page}" />
2. Create new positions with hook name ads_manager_after_post_x (where x is the post number)

Unfortunately this can't be added to the Add-on's core because there is no clean way of doing this (at least I couldn't find one). The only way doing that is by using preg_replace on the whole thread_view template which is very ugly and unprofessional.

If XenForo devs could add a new hook, "after_message_container", that would be great.

 

[3rd AnGle]

@Siropu Does this have the option to inset ad in first post (with float right) option? What does it take to be able to make them float....?

 

[Siropu]

@3rd AnGle, it doesn't have this option at the moment but I might implement it.

 

[drastic]

impressive list of useful features for sure.

if I upload 3 image ads to the same zone, will it rotate them and then begin showing the one that has the highest CTR and eventually stop showing the ones with the lowest CTR?

can we see it live in action on a demo site?

 

[Siropu]

Not at this point but I could add a "order by CTR" option so that the one with the highest CTR gets displayed first. Also I can add the option to disable ads with CTR lower than x% after x days. Does that sounds good?

There is no demo site for now as I would need an extra XenForo licence for that.

 

[Mouth]

Does it have weighting and fall back?
For example ...
I can define an ad zone and have Google Adsense running in it, but if a direct purchased campaign is purchased the latter will be weighted much higher than adsense and display more often (eg. 75%/25%)

 

[Siropu]

It doesn't have that but what you can do instead is to set the display order to "Ad Date Desc" and use the JS rotator function so that the newest Ad gets displayed first. This way both ads gets displayed but the advertiser's ad is displayed first each time.

 

[tajhay]

Siropu...enough teasing..release this already!

Seems far far superior to any ad management add-on on here. Looking forward to its release.

 

[Siropu]

I want to implement the "order by CTR" feature tomorrow and maybe add the option to add ads in the first post (if there is a clean way of doing that).

If you want to add ads inside any post, you can do that using the same approach as in my post here: https://xenforo.com/community/threa...-paid-your-feedback-please.93900/#post-905767

1. Add a new hook in ad_message_body template: <xen:hook name="ads_manager_inside_post_{$message.position_on_page}" />
2. Create new positions with hook name ads_manager_inside_post_x (where x is the post number).

 

[Siropu]

I've decided to release my Add-on today. I'm currenlty working on adding new features so stay tuned!

 

[Siropu]

I'm proud to announce a new set of features:

1. Package settings: Order ads by CTR/Asc or CTR/Desc
2. New Option: Disable low CTR ads after x days.
3. Ads and Package settings: Hide Ads from robots
4. Admin Permissions: Manage Ads Manager

I still have a list of features that I want to implement today and then I will release it.

 

[drastic]

i'll gladly test it for you!

 

[Siropu]

New features have been added to the ACP Ads Manager first page. Now you can also see expiring soon Ads and pending transactions.

There are a few more things that I want to implement and will release it.