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Email Display Ads

Applies to: Publishers · needs the matching permission on your account

An Email Display zone puts banner ads into your newsletter. You paste a small piece of HTML into your email template once; every time a reader opens the email, the ad server picks a current ad for each slot and shows it as an image. The link around it always leads to the ad that reader saw.

What this is#

Email Display is an ad zone type for banner ads. It serves the same banner campaigns as a banner zone of the same size, but only their image banners: email programs don't run HTML, iframes or video, so those banners are skipped.

  • The ad is picked on open, not when you send. A newsletter read a week later still shows a running campaign.
  • Each reader gets their own ad. Your email tool replaces a merge tag in the code with a per-recipient id, so the ad server knows which ad a reader saw and sends their click to that ad.
  • The open is the impression. Opening the same email again shows the same ad and is not counted twice.

If Email Display is not in the Type list when you create a zone, it has not been switched on for your network yet. Ask your account manager.

When you'll use this#

  • You send a newsletter and want to earn from it without selling each issue by hand.
  • You want the ads in an email to stay current, whenever it is opened.

Set it up#

  1. Create a zone of type Email Display under Ad Zones and choose the ad size, for example 600x200 to fill the width of a typical email.
  2. On the zone's Settings tab, fill in:
    • Ad slots in the email: how many ads, 1 to 6. Each slot is its own image and link that you can place anywhere in the email.
    • Recipient merge tag: the tag your email tool replaces with an id per reader. Use an id, not the email address, so no address reaches the ad server.
    • Ad label: the small text shown above each ad, Advertisement by default.
    • Remember the ad for (days): how long a reader who opens the email again sees the same ad, 7 days by default.
    • Link when there is no ad: where a click goes on the rare open with no ad to show. Leave it empty and that click does nothing.
  3. Open the Code tab and copy the HTML. Paste each slot where it should appear in your email template.
  4. Send a test email to yourself and open it.

Tips#

  • Pick an ad size your advertisers already have banners in. 600 pixels wide fills most email layouts; 300x250 sits well next to text.
  • Keep the label. Readers trust a newsletter that marks its ads.
  • The ad server sees the open through the reader's email program. Gmail and Apple Mail fetch images through their own servers, so the country of an open is often the country of those servers, and Apple Mail may load the images before the reader opens the email.

Troubleshooting#

  • The image stays empty: the zone has no running image banner of its size, or the merge tag was not replaced. Check that your email tool fills the tag, and that the zone serves on a normal banner test.
  • Every reader counts as one: the merge tag is still in the code as typed. Use your email tool's exact tag for a per-recipient id.