It can be helpful to understand how the SAS Intelligent Advertising for Publishers ad engine selects a creative for delivery. Before the selection process begins, the engine is provided with criteria related to the visitor and the ad request received.

Definitions

• Targeting string –- This consists of the key=value pairs from the ad call (that is, AREA=HOME/SIZE=300X250).
• Geotargeting tag data -– If the visitor's IP address could be geolocated, the corresponding geotargeting tags are populated and passed in as part of the targeting string (that is, COUNTRY=USA).
• Viewid –- The viewid is a shared value across all ad calls on a page that is uniquely generated per page view and passed in via the ad call. Every time the page is refreshed, the viewid should change but should be shared across all ad calls on the page. See the "Creating Ad Calls" document for more information.
• Cookie data -– A cookie provided from the visitor's browser helps the engine determine which ads the visitor has recently seen, as well as any controlled exposure or action tracking data associated with that visitor.

Ad Selection Steps

Outlined below are the criteria that the engine steps through when an ad request is received.

1. Check to see whether a companion flight is in progress for this visitor and viewid combination. If this is a new visitor or they have not received a companion flight for this viewid, skip to step 2.
   If this visitor has received a companion flight for this viewid, check the previously served companion flight to see whether it is eligible to serve to this ad request.
2. Check to see whether the tier target (if one is applied) matches the ad request.
3. Ignore and do not serve the flights and creatives where:
   • The start date has not been reached
   • The end date has already been reached
   • The goal has been met
   • The flight's daily revenue cap has been met
   • The targeting does not match
   • The category is the same as the category of any other advertisers that have served to the same viewid
   • If the visitor is anonymous (their browser did not supply a cookie), do not serve flights with controlled exposure, companion ads, or sequential creatives enabled.
4. Check the visitor’s controlled exposure history to see whether it would violate the controlled exposure settings for the campaign, flight, or creative being evaluated.
5. Obey all tier options (such as Eliminate Duplicate Flights).
6. If the tier uses the Weighted prioritization method, select a flight according to the flight’s weight, skip to step 9.
7. Apply the Recent Ad Queue (RAQ) to see whether the flight being evaluated has been seen too recently. The RAQ is a list of 10 ads (by default) that this visitor has seen recently. The higher the priority of the flight being evaluated, the less RAQ depth the engine uses. In other words, if a flight has a priority of 0.5, the engine will look at only the last 5 entries in the RAQ rather than all 10.
8. Select the highest priority matching flight.
9. If the selected flight has sequential creatives, apply sequence. If the flight has weighted creatives, apply weight. Serve the ad.
10. If no eligible flight is found in the current tier, and "Serve Soft Match At Tier End" is enabled for the current tier, go back to see whether a flight was disqualified because it was in the RAQ. If it was, serve it anyway.
11. If no eligible flight is found in the current tier, and no flights were disqualified because of the RAQ, drop down to the next tier and repeat steps 2-11.
12. If no eligible flight is found in the entire ad queue, serve the default ad.

Operating System and Release Information