How to set up DFP Small Business for serving Ads on your sites

Hello

When I started using Google's DFP Small Business I first had some
troubles to understand how it worked. To spare you the learning
curve here is a step by step guide on how to use DFP Small Business
as AdServer to serve your Ads (including AdSense Ads) on your websites.

Table of contents:•Introduction into DFP Small Business
•How to setup Ad Units so that you can serve Ads via DFP Small Business
•How to setup a campaign for an Advertiser that booked Advertising on your website
•How to set up Google AdSense using DFP Small Business
•How to run Split Tests with DFP Small Business
•How to create a Basic Cascade with DFP Small Business
•DFP Small Business Line Item Settings Explained
•Passing Information by using Patterns

Introduction into DFP Small Business
First you need to register with DFP Small Business.
Because you have a Google Account already it is as simple as logging
in to DFP Small Business and linking your Google Account to DFP.

After you have logged in you see three Tabs:

1.Orders
2.Inventory
3.Reportings

Orders

In the orders tab there are two major categories:

1.Orders
2.Line Items
Orders are the Advertisers that buy/bought Advertising on your site.
For each new customer you can create a separate Order including
contact details for the specific Advertiser.

Each Order/Customer can contain as many Line Items as you like.
Line Items are the campaigns the Advertiser wants to run on your site.
Each Line Item/Campaign can contain as many Creatives (Ads/Banners)
as you like.

Bare with me, I'll explain everything later with an example.

But before we can add Customers and Campaigns we have to add our
Ad Inventory to DFP Small Business. So go to the Tab Inventory.

Inventory

In the Inventory Tab you have two options:

1.Ad Units
2.Placements

Ad Units are the actual Ad Units on your website. For example the
leaderboard below your header or the large rectangle within your
articles.

Placements are your booking options for your Ad Units. You can
select a single Ad Unit as Placement or you can combine as many
Ad Units as you like into one Placement. This is useful if you want
to offer your Advertisers different options like a Run of site campaign
that includes all your Ad Units or a more grained down approach
with the Advertiser only targeting one individual Ad Unit of your site.
Another example would be to combine all 'Above The Fold' Ad Units into
one Placement.

You don't need to set up Placements in order to run Ad Campaigns on
your site but the more complex your Ad Inventory becomes the more
useful Placements will be.

Also you can make Placements available to AdWords Advertisers and
offer them on your DoubleClick Ad Planner for sale. Both make your
websites Ad inventory more visible to possible new Advertisers for
placement targeting.

For more information about DoubleClick Ad Planer read:
Market your site with DoubleClick Ad Planner

Reports

I'll think you'll figure out the reports tab options on your own

How to setup Ad Units so that you can serve Ads via DFP Small Business
Ok now that we know what each option is let us set up your Ad Unit
Inventory. Go to the Inventory Tab and select Ad Units on the left.
Then click on '+ New Ad Unit".

Give your Ad Unit a descriptive name so that you know where it is located
exactly. The name can only contain letters, numbers, underscore and minus.
No spaces allowed.

As an example for a descriptive naming of Ad Units this is one Ad Unit I use:

PatFra-LR-1P-Threads-First_Aid

PatFra = Acronym for my website Patientenfragen.net
LR = Large Rectangle
1P-Threads = Ad is located inside the first post of a thread in my forum
First_Aid = The Ad Unit only shows in my subforum with threads about "First Aid"

This way you have all the important information about your Ad Unit combined
in the Ad Unit name so you know exactly what kind of Ad Unit it is and where
it is located.

Now you can also enter a description for your Ad Unit.
Then select the size of your Ad Unit e.g. 336x280px if it is a large rectangle.

The target window option defines the behavior of the Ad after a user clicked on it.
_top = the advertised website opens in the same window
_blank = the advertised website opens in a new window

Ok let's continue.
Below the Target Window option you find the placement option.
If you already have placements and want your Ad Unit to be part
of one or more placements you can select them now.
But don't worry, you can always add them later too.

The option below for AdSense inventory settings can be ignored
(should be turned off) because it only offers a very limited functionality
to customize and we are going to set up our AdSense Campaign later.
You'll most likely lose money if you use this option and not set up
an AdSense campaign like I will describe later.

Now click on save and you created your first Ad Unit.
Continue to create as many Ad Units as you have on your website(s).

After you have finished creating all Ad Units for your website you need
to implement them into your website.

Click on the Inventory Tab and then on Generate tags on the left

Select all the Ad Units that appear on your website for which you want
to implement the Ad Units. After you selected all Ad Units for your website
click on Generate tags at the bottom.

You then get a HTML implementation example where to put your DFP AdServer Tags
into your websites HTML. There are two parts of code you need to implement.
The first javascript part goes into your websites header and contains all the
Ad Units and your Publisher ID for that page.

The second part (Document body) are the actual Ad Units which you place into
the spots of your Ad Units. Because of your descriptive naming for your
Ad Units you know where to put each Ad Units javascript into your HTML Body.

Now your website is set up to serve Ads via your new DFP Small Business AdServer.

How to setup a campaign for an Advertiser that booked Advertising on your website
But wait, we don't have set up Ads yet so nothing is served right now.
Let's go back to the Orders Tab which I explained above.

To make it easier to explain how Orders and Line Items work I do this
with an example:

Let's say you have an electronics company that wants to Advertise on your site
which is called 'ISellElectronics AG'

So you create an Order called 'ISellElectronics AG' with the contact details
for this Advertiser like the name of the person responsible and his email.

ISellElectronics AG wants to run 2 different campaigns on your website.
One campaign is about their '52" Flat screen TV' and the other campaign is
about their "Deluxe Washing Machine".

So you create 2 Line Items for this Advertiser. You do that by defining the first
Line Item when creating the Order for ISellElectronics AG and the second Line Item
by clicking on the newly created Order 'ISellElectronics AG' and then click on
'+ New Line Item'.

The names for our Example Line Items are:


•52" Flat screen TV
•Deluxe Washing Machine


For each campaign the Advertiser provided you with Banners (Image, Flash, HTML, etc.)
of different sizes for your different Ad Units (depending on where the Advertiser wants
its Ads to show in your Inventory).

If you click on Inventory sizes below the Line Item Name you get a drop down with
all available sizes for Ad Units in your inventory. Select the appropriate sizes that
match the campaign the Advertiser wants to run on your site.

Below you'll find the Settings for this campaign. You can find a detailed explanation of
the Line Item settings here: DFP Small Business Line Item Settings Explained

Under the option Ad Targeting you can now select the Ad Units or Placements on which
you want to display the Ads from this campaign. Because of the Ad Sizes you defined
above you will only see Ad Units with the specified Ad Size to chose from.

After you have selected all the Ad Units you want the Ad to display in click on Save and
you have set up your Line Item/Campaign for this Advertiser.

What you need to do now is to add Creatives (the actual advertising banners) to your
Line Items. You do that by selecting the Line Item you just created and then click on
'Add Creatives'.
In the drop down select the Ad Size for which you want to add a new Creative and click
on "new creative" and chose which kind of creative you want to add.

Let's say you got banner images (jpg files) from your Advertiser so you select Image.

Select the image from your hard drive by clicking on browse, give it a descriptive name
e.g. 'Flat screen TV Leaderboard', define the target URL your Advertiser provided you
with for this campaign and click on Save.

You now created your first Creative that will be served according to your Line Item
specifications. It can take up to 30 Minutes before a creative is going to be delivered
after you have created it so be patient.

Repeat the process for all Creatives you got for the Advertisers campaigns and you are done.
Now DFP Small Business is serving your first Ads on your websites.

How to set up Google AdSense using DFP Small Business
Create a new Order and name it like "YourWebsite - Google AdSense"
Now click on Company > Add a new company
As Name use 'Google AdSense' and as Type select 'Ad Network' and click save.

Now create a Line Item for each Ad Unit you have on your website.
Here it is important to create a separate Line Item for each Ad Unit
which serves an AdSense Ad Unit that has its own unique channel.
Check your AdSense Ad Units which Line Items you need to create.

For more information on AdSense Channels read this:
Different strategies to use AdSense Channels

Name the Line Item to describe the placement on your website and
define the Inventory Size for this Line Item like we did above in the example.

Now to the settings.

For Type select 'Network', for Start Time select 'immediately' and for End Time select 'Unlimited'.
For Rotate creatives select 'Evenly' and leave the rest of the settings as they are.

Now select the Ad Unit you want this Line Item to be served on and click save.

Repeat this step for each of your AdSense Ad Units that you track with a separate channel
so that you have a separate Line Item for each AdSense Ad Unit.

Now select the first Line Item you just created, click on Add Creatives and select 'Third party »'
Switch to your AdSense Account and get the Code for the AdSense Ad Unit that you want to display in this Line Item and past the code into the Code snippet box.
DFP will recognize AdSense code.
Give it a descriptive Name and click Save.
Now DFP is telling you that this Order has not yet been approved which means
it will not be delivered until you do. Approve it by clicking on the 'Approve" Button.

Repeat the above step of adding your AdSense Code to each Line Item you just created
until all Line Items have their AdSense Code as Creative assigned to them.

After you added a new Creative to a Line Item the status of the creative says 'Ready'.
It can take up to 60 Minutes before a creative starts to be delivered. Once it starts
the Status will change to 'Delivering'.

Now your AdSense Ads are delivered on your websites via DFP Small Business.

If you are serving AdSense via DFP Small Business please read this:
Using DFP Small Business for opening AdSense in a new window

How to run Split Tests with DFP Small Business
But why should you deliver your AdSense Ads via DFP Small Business instead of simply
pasting the AdSense Code into your website?

It is easy because with an AdServer like DFP you can easily run tests like a 50:50 Split test to see which Ad performs best for your website.

I for one did several split test just this week.

I ran Large Rectangles inside my first posts of each thread of my forums and I wanted to
see if a medium rectangle performs better. I first created a new AdSense Channel for the medium rectangle to track the results and a medium rectangle AdSense Ad Unit to which I assigned the newly created AdSense Channel. Then I created a second creative for my medium rectangle inside the Line Item which serves the Ads inside my first posts.
So now this Line Items contains 2 creatives one for my large rectangle and one for my medium rectangle. Both creatives are served evenly (Line Item Setting: Rotate creatives > Evenly) which means in a 50:50 manner (that is why it is called a 50:50 Split Test).

Now you let both Ads run for let's say 4-7days and then compare their performance
in your AdSense Reports interface by comparing both channels of the Ads.
If you see that one Ad Unit outperforms the other Ad Unit simply disable displaying the
corresponding creative in DFP and you just increased your income for that Ad Spot.

Do this with all changes and over time you will optimize your Ad Inventory to maximize
your revenue.

 

WOW, a copy&past job of the early version of my Tutorial and not even a credit to me.

Proof: How to set up DFP Small Business for serving Ads on your sites

 

hahahhaha Wonderful Proof...

 

Hi, thanks for posting this very useful guide. Question: Can I set an order up to display my own creatives by default (i.e., ads that promote my own services), for cases where no advertisers have purchased ad space from me?