=== Advertwhirl Advertising Manager and Ad Rotator ===
Contributors: mobilesentience
Donate link: http://www.mobilesentience.com/software/oss/advertwhirl/
Tags: advertising, advertisement, ad, ad rotator, ads, rotate, whirl, campaign, manager, allocation, adsense, analytics, google analytics, commission junction, cj, affiliate, banner, guest blogging, geo location, location, geoip, virtual theme, branding
Requires at least: 2.2
Tested up to: 3.1
Stable tag: 1.0.6
Advertwhirl the ultimate WordPress advertising campaign manager WordPress. Control exactly which ads are displayed and how.
== Description ==
Advertwhirl(pronounced Adver-Twirl) is the ultimate WordPress plugin to manage advertising campaigns for your site. Advertwhirl not only allows you to manage exactly how and when ads are displayed on your site but allows you to serve your ads to external sites and smartphone apps. Manage ads for your guest posts and get a return on your hard work. Incentivize your guest bloggers to create great content by giving them a share of their posts ad slots. Advertwhirl is being actively developed and supported by Mobile Sentience. Already the most comprehensive advertising manager for WordPress with true integration with Adsense, Groupon and others Advertwhirl is updated frequently with many exciting and new features to come. If Advertwhirl is missing something that you think is a must have, it is likely already on our todo list but give us a shout anyway and see if we can move it up on our release schedule. Advertwhirl development and support are ad sponsored.
Advertwhirl's advertisement manager allows even the most complex ad rotation scenarios to be realized. Providing total control of how and when your advertisements are displayed. At the moment Advertwhirl can import all of your Adsense ad units automatically(along with your Adsense reports), creates Groupon ads based on your criteria(advertisement size and geographic location), and it's custom ad code feature allows you to create an ad for ad broker, affiliate, direct advertiser, or guest blogger along with your own local banner or text ads. Advertwhirl is quite flexible and lets you manage your advertising campaigns as simply or complexly as you require, if there is an ad management scenario which you can't figure out how to accomplish with Advertwhirl ask about it on the [Advertwhirl support forum](http://www.mobilesentience.com/support/?mingleforumaction=viewforum&f=12.0 "Advertwhirl Support Forum"), we can help you configure your ad campaign. Or if there is a rule that you think is missing let us know, we may just add it.
Advertwhirl ad campaigns can now be accessed in five ways.
1. Automatically insert advertisements in your posts and pages
1. In posts and pages via short code ie… advertisement for campaign your_campaign
1. In theme template files via php function ie… advertwhirl_get_ad($campaign);
1. On external sites and none-Wordpress pages via permalink ie… http://www.yoursite.com/ads/yourcampaign
1. Through a widget in the side bar
= Roadmap =
= Version 1.0.6 (Scheduled for release May 16th) =
* Keyword advertising, automatically insert affiliate links that match keywords in your post.
* Formating for iframe wrapped advertisements
* Automatically insert code before and after advertisements
= Version 1.0.7 (Scheduled for release May 25th) =
* Add TinyMCE ad widget to automate insertion of advertisements in posts
* New Banner Ad Source for speedy code free creation of local banner advertisements
* New Post Ad Source create your own advertisements using the post editor
* Finish Groupon API integration to automatically pull down Groupon's newest advertisements
* Add Ad Source Groups to allow several advertisements to share a single weight(as in they total served ads of all advertisements in the ad group are counted together when determining weights for ad rotation)
= And soon your advertising campaigns will be easily available in smartphone apps. =
* Advertwhirl advertisement panel for Android Apps (coming May 25th, 2011)
* Advertwhirl advertisement panel for iOS Apps (coming June, 2011)
= Features =
* Ads can be allocated based on weight, percent or a mix.
* Fill empty ad slots with a default ad
* Define your own rules for which an advertisement is picked
* Advertwhirl Adsense integration imports both your reports and your ad units.
= Coming Soon =
* Insert Google Analytics tracking code
* View Google Analytics statistics
* Commission Junction integration to download affiliate ads and commission reports
== Installation ==
Through WordPress plugin gallery using built-in installer (preferred)
1. Login as an admin
1. Go to “Plugins” and click “Add New”
1. Enter “Advertwhirl” in the search terms and click “Search”
1. Click “Install Now”
1. When prompted “Are you sure you want to install this plugin” click “Ok”
1. Fill out your “Connection Information” and click “Proceed”
1. When WordPress is finished installing the plugin click “Activate”
1. Go to the Advertwhirl settings menu setup your campaigns
Through WordPress built-in installer if you already have the file downloaded
1. After plugin zip file is downloaded Login as an admin
1. Go to “Plugins” and click “Add New”
1. Click “Upload”
1. Click “Choose File” and find the downloaded plugin zip file
1. Click “Install Now”
1. Fill out your “Connection Information” and click “Proceed”
1. When WordPress is finished installing the plugin click “Activate”
1. Go to the Advertwhirl settings menu setup your campaigns
Manual method
1. Download plugin zip file from WordPress directory or the [Mobile Sentience Advertwhirl page](http://www.mobilesentience.com/software/oss/advertwhirl/)
1. Unzip plugin file
1. Upload the ‘advertwhirl’ directory and all of its files to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory of your WordPress site
1. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
1. Go to the Advertwhirl settings menu to setup your campaigns
== Frequently Asked Questions ==
= What ads can I display with Advertwhirl? =
Any you want. At the moment Advertwhirl can import all of your Adsense ad units automatically(along with your Adsense reports), creates Groupon ads based on your criteria(advertisement size and geographic location), and it's custom ad code feature allows you to create an ad for ad broker, affiliate, direct advertiser, or guest blogger along with your own local banner or text ads.
= How much control do I have over which ads are served? =
Total control. Advertwhirl's advertisement manager allows even the most complex ad rotation scenarios to be realized. If there is an ad management scenario which you can't figure out how to accomplish with Advertwhirl ask about it on the [Advertwhirl support forum](http://www.mobilesentience.com/support/?mingleforumaction=viewforum&f=12.0 "Advertwhirl Support Forum"), we can help you configure your ad campaign. Or ff there is a rule that you think is missing let us know, we may just add it.
= Advertwhirl seems complex, can it do simple ad sharing with a guest blogger? =
Yes. Advertwhirl is quite flexible and lets you manage your advertising campaigns as simply or complexly as you require. Ad sharing for guest bloggers is one of the easiest configurations you can do with Advertwhirl.
1. Set up your ads and your guest bloggers under Ad Sources.
1. Create a new campaign.
1. Add an ad source to the default allocation(Allocation 1).
1. Select your ad unit for one of the ad sources and your guest bloggers for the other.
1. Set the weights or percents to whatever the agreed upon share is.
1. Add a single rule set and a single author rule.
1. Select the author is and the author you wish to use this allocation for.
1. Add another allocation(Allocation 2)
1. Select your ad unit as the single ad source
Thats it. Any posts written by the guest blogger will rotate ads based on the wieghts you configured. Any other post will serve only your ad unit. If you have multiple guest bloggers the process is the same. Just add an allocation for each that is configured the same as Allocation 1, just change the weights, the authors ad unit and who the author is. Make sure to leave the Allocation with no rules and only your Ad Unit as the last allocation.
= How focused can I target my ads to a particular visitor? =
The degree to which an Advertwhirl advertisement can be targeted to a particular visitor is dependent on the type of Ad unit served. Adsense and Groupon both do their own user tracking and can pretty accurately target ads based on visitor. Local banners, direct advertisers, and other affiliate ads can be selected based on the visitors location or the value of a cookie or get argument for external ads.
= How does Advertwhirl determine a visitor's location? =
Advertwhirl uses ipinfodb.com and the visitors ip address to determine location. Geo location/GeoIP lookups from ipinfodb.com are free but require that you get a unique api key. [Requesting an API Key](http://www.ipinfodb.com/register.php "IP Info DB Key Registration") is a simple and quick process, it should take less then 2 minutes of your time. With the GeoIP data your ads can be targeted to visitors based on their country, state/region, postal code(or partial postal code) and city. Great for focusing direct advertisements that are location specific.
ipinfodb.com GeoIP lookups also can provide location information for a visitors longitude, latitude and time zone. Currently Advertwhirl doesn't allow you to target ads based on this, but it is a feature that may be added if users of Advertwhirl require it for managing their advertising campaigns.
= Where can I place my ads with Advertwhirl? =
With the Advertwhirl ad campaign manager you can place your ads anywhere in your blog you choose.
Without any modifications to your template you can place advertisements in posts and pages with a short code with the built-in editor ie... [advertwhirl campaign=your_campaign].
You can use the Advertwhirl widget to place an advertisement anywhere you can place a WordPress sidebar widget.
Advertwhirl provides php function you can call in any of your themes php template files for more direct management over where your advertisements are placed. For instance mobile Sentience has replaced the_content() its theme's single.php file with the following code to automatically place ads in all of its blog posts.
post_content); //get the post content store in $content
$paragraphs = explode("", $content); //Separate the content into blocks
$tcount = 0; //this is count for number of
blocks
$adsEvery = 4; // How many
blocks between each of your ads. The smaller the number the more ads, the larger the fewer
$maxAds = 2; // The maximum number of ads to put in a post. There is no maximum if $maxAds is -1
$adon = 0; //this is a variable to keep track of how many ads have been put in the post
echo '
';
foreach($paragraphs as $paragraph) {
if(preg_match('/
/',$paragraph) == 0 && $tcount % $adsEvery == 0 && ($adon < $maxAds || $maxAds == -1)){
$float = $adon % 2 == 0?"float:left":"float:right";
echo '
';
advertwhirl_get_ad('Manifesto'); // This is what places the Advertwhirl advertisement
echo '
';
$adon++;
}
echo $paragraph; //print the
block
echo "
";
$tcount++;
}
echo '