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SQL and web banners

Owned by Matteo Beccati
Last updated: Dec 16, 2024 by Erik Geurts

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Use a SQL or web banner whenever the creative is a static image or Flash file you can upload.

Both SQL banners and web banners have their pros & cons - see the Creating a Banner page for a discussion of the differences between the two.



This page discusses the options that are specific to creating banners of type "sql" and of type "web" (as they have identical options). Please see the Creating a Banner page for details on the overall process on creating banners. 

Basic information

There is a single Basic information field for SQL and web banners, which is required:

  • Name: The name of the banner. It is recommended that you use a name that uniquely identifies the banner, and will allow you to recognise the banner quickly and easily.

There is a single Upload a local banner to the webserver - banner creative field for SQL and web banners, which is the file that should be uploaded as the banner creative.

Note that if you upload a Flash file as the banner creative, then you will be presented with two additional options.

The first is the option. When selected, Revive Adserver will inspect the Flash file uploaded, and converts any hard-coded links found in the Flash file so that clicks on the Flash banner creative will be able to be tracked by Revive Adserver.

The second additional option is the ability to upload a second creative file, which should be a static image creative, of the same dimensions as the Flash file. This allows Revive Adserver to serve the static image creative when the user being shown the banner creative does not have support for viewing Flash files.

There are two Banner link fields for SQL and web banners:

  • Destination URL: The URL that the user viewing the banner should be sent to when they click on the banner. Although this is not a required field, you do need to enter the destination URL if you want anything to happen when users click the banner if the banner creative is an image. (That is, if the banner creative is a Flash file, and it contains hard-coded links, this field will not be required to be filled in; otherwise, you will generally want to provide a URL for this field.)
  • Target: An optional HTML link target. Valid options are _blank, _self, _parent and _top. By default, Revive Adserver will use _blank.

Banner display

There are three optional Banner display fields for SQL and web banners:

  • Alt text: Optional HTML alt value for the banner creative.
  • Status text: Optional text that will be displayed in the browser's status bar whenever the user's mouse is hovering over the banner.
    • Please note: This is only supported for image based web banners, when setting the browser's status bar also supported by the user's browser.
  • Text below image: Optional text that Revive Adserver will display below the banner creative. This is a quick and easy way to add additional text to a banner without editing the banner creative to include the text.
    • Please note: Only some invocation tags support the text below image option, and you may need to enable the "show text below banner" setting when generating the tag for the text to appear.

Additional data

Finally, there are three optional Additional data fields for SQL and web banners:

  • Keywords: A free-form field for storing space-separated keywords related to the banner. Keywords are used by Revive Adserver's direction selection mechanism to select banners for display. Unless you are using direct selection (which is not the most common way of delivering banners), you do not need to add keywords.  
  • Weight: By default, all banners in a campaign have a weight of 1, which means that the inventory allocated to the campaign will be shared equally between the different banners. As with campaigns, it is possible to configure different weights, so that different banners receive different ratios of the available inventory allocated to the campaign. See the discussion of campaign weights for Remnant and Override campaigns on the Creating a Campaign page. 
  • Comments: A free-form text area to record notes that may be relevant about the banner.

Delivering SQL and web Banners

SQL and web banners can be delivered via the following mechanisms: