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Smart Zones

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

A smart zone sends part of an ad zone's traffic to an outside ad network instead of filling it from this platform. Point several networks at the same placement, let them compete on eCPM, and the best-paying one wins each request — so a zone that used to sell to one buyer now sells to whoever pays most.

What this is#

Smart zones sit inside an existing ad zone. When an ad request arrives and the parent zone has active smart zones, the serve path may pick one and deliver that network's creative — a banner, an iframe URL, an XML/VAST tag or raw HTML — instead of a local campaign. If no smart zone is picked, the zone falls through to normal serving exactly as before.

The page has four tabs:

Tab What it's for
Smart Zones Your zones: create, edit, switch on and off, import in bulk.
Networks The outside networks you've connected, and their API credentials.
Stats Views, clicks and earnings per smart zone over a date range.
Distribution How traffic and revenue split between networks, with eCPM and share over time.

When you'll use this#

  • You already sell inventory to an outside network and want it competing rather than taking a fixed share.
  • A placement has unsold or low-paying fill you'd rather monetise elsewhere.
  • You want to compare two or three networks on the same placement honestly.
  • You want to cap how much of a placement goes outside.

Step by step#

Connect a network#

  1. Open Smart Zones and go to the Networks tab.
  2. Click Add Network.
  3. Give it a name, and enter the credentials the network gave you — API key, username / password, or user ID, depending on the network.
  4. Switch on Pull Stats via API if the network supports it. We then fetch their earnings figures automatically, which is what makes eCPM-based selection accurate.
  5. Save. The network can now be selected when you create a zone.

Create a smart zone#

  1. On the Smart Zones tab, click Add Zone.
  2. Adzone tab — choose the website, then the ad zone this smart zone lives inside.
  3. General tab — set the name, the network, the Selection Type and its percentage (see below), and any serving controls you want (bots, capping, daily cap, stopwords, keywords).
  4. Creative tab — pick the creative type and paste what the network gave you:
    • URL — an iframe/tag URL.
    • HTML Code — a raw HTML/JS snippet.
    • XML / VAST URL — a video tag.
      Protocol-relative tags (//network.example/tag) are fine and are what most networks hand out.
  5. Targeting tab — optionally restrict the zone to certain countries and device types. Leave both empty for all traffic.
  6. Save, and switch the zone Active.

Import zones in bulk#

  1. On the Smart Zones tab, click Import.
  2. Upload a CSV with the columns the dialog lists — zone ID, zone name and zone URL from your network's own zone export, plus optional device types.
  3. Smart zones are unique on site / ad zone / name — importing a duplicate overwrites the existing zone.

Read the numbers#

  • The Stats tab gives daily earnings, views, clicks and eCPM per zone, filterable by website, ad zone, network and date.
  • The Distribution tab shows each network's share of the traffic, revenue by network, weighted eCPM, and a lead timeline marking the days the best-paying network changed.
  • The zone list carries a Health column — healthy, attention, warning, or no traffic — so a zone that stopped earning is visible without opening it.

Smart Zone Reports#

Smart Zone Reports (publisher menu) puts all your smart-zone earnings in one place. Choose the date range, optionally pick a Website and an Ad Zone, and drill down through the tabs: Overview (totals and a daily earnings chart), Websites, Ad Zones, Smart Zones and GEO.

Each row shows two kinds of numbers side by side:

  • Views, Clicks, CTR, RPM and Earned — what the network reports through its API;
  • Served Views and Served Clicks — what this platform logged when it showed the network's code.

They differ for a reason: the network filters its own traffic and its figures arrive later, and they only appear at all once you have entered the network's API key and switched the stats pull on. If Served Views has numbers but Views is empty, the zone is serving and only the network's report is missing — check API Errors. Networks report aggregate figures, so there is no device breakdown.

Options reference#

Selection types#

This is the single most important setting: it decides how a smart zone competes.

Type How it wins What the percentage means
Percentage An independent random roll per request. Fires on roughly that share of requests regardless of what else is eligible. The share of requests to take.
eCPM Ranked against every other eCPM zone on the placement by live eCPM. The highest earner wins. A bootstrap aid only — while the zone has no eCPM yet it also gets occasional random exposure so it can gather data. Not a throttle.
eCPM + Limit % Competes on eCPM exactly like the above, but even when it ranks top it only serves on that percentage of requests. The rest fall through to the next-ranked zone, or to normal serving. A genuine serve limit, 0–100.
RTB Bids through an SSP campaign rather than a fixed tag. Not used.

Which one to pick. Use Percentage when you've agreed a fixed share with a network. Use eCPM when you want the best payer to win outright. Use eCPM + Limit % when you want the best payer to win but only want to send, say, 40% of the placement outside. A brand-new eCPM + Limit zone starts with no data, so if you want it pre-warmed, run it as plain eCPM first and switch once it has real stats.

Serving controls (General tab)#

Option What it does
Active Whether the zone is eligible to serve at all.
Skip bots Skip the zone when the visitor is flagged as a bot or suspicious. Keeps outside networks from being fed junk.
Use capping Limit how often one visitor sees this zone — set capping hours and visits.
Use daily cap / Max A hard daily event cap. The zone pauses for the rest of the day when it's hit.
Skip when stats For eCPM zones: once a real eCPM is known, stop taking the random bootstrap exposure and compete purely on rank.
Optimise by Country and SubID Compute eCPM per country and sub-ID rather than per country alone — finer optimisation on mixed traffic.
Adblock enabled Allow the zone to serve on requests flagged as ad-blocked.
Referrer stopwords Skip the zone when the URL of the requesting page contains any of these words. Case-insensitive substring match over the whole URL, including path and query string.
Use keyword targeting Turns the two keyword lists on. With both lists empty nothing is filtered.
Keywords — include Serve only when the request carries at least one of these keywords. A request with no keywords at all never matches.
Keywords — exclude Never serve when the request carries any of these. Exclude wins over include.
Email rules For email-click formats: use all traffic, only traffic with an address, or only traffic without one.
Show about Banner formats only — display the "About" info chip.
Scanning Whether the Ad Scanner checks what this network actually serves.
Notes Free text for yourself.

Targeting#

Option What it does
Countries Serve the zone only to these countries. Empty = all.
Device Types Serve only on these device types (computer, tablet, phone, TV, console, wearable). Empty = all.

Network fields#

Field What it's for
Name Your label for the network.
API key / Username / Password / User ID Credentials, as the network requires them.
Pull Stats via API Fetch the network's earnings automatically — required for accurate eCPM ranking.
Network Site ID / Zone ID The network's own identifiers for the placement, where they differ from ours.
Active Whether zones on this network may serve.

Example#

Letting two networks compete. Karel has a 300×250 placement that a single network fills at a mediocre rate.

  1. On Networks he adds both networks with their API keys and switches Pull Stats via API on for each.
  2. He creates two smart zones inside the same ad zone — "Network A — 300x250" and "Network B — 300x250" — pasting each network's tag on the Creative tab.
  3. He sets both to eCPM so they compete head to head, and leaves Skip when stats on so each drops out of random exposure once it has real data.
  4. He switches Skip bots on for both, so neither network is sent traffic that will hurt its measured eCPM.
  5. After a week the Distribution tab shows Network B taking 70% of the requests at a clearly higher weighted eCPM — and the lead timeline shows the lead changing twice before settling.
  6. He decides he still wants a third of the placement filled locally, so he switches both zones to eCPM + Limit % at 35% each.

Tips#

  • Turn on Pull Stats via API wherever you can. Without the network's real earnings, eCPM ranking has nothing to rank on and effectively degrades to random.
  • Switch Skip bots on. Sending bot traffic to an outside network depresses their measured eCPM and can get your account flagged with them.
  • Don't start a new network on eCPM + Limit %. It has no data and no bootstrap, so it will sit cold. Run it on plain eCPM first.
  • Check the Health column weekly. A zone quietly serving nothing is the most common smart-zone failure and it doesn't announce itself.
  • Name zones after network + placement, not "zone 1" — the Stats and Distribution tables become unreadable otherwise.
  • Use the daily cap when a network pays well but you've agreed a volume limit.
  • Keyword include lists are strict. A request carrying no keywords at all is treated as a miss, so an include list silently switches the zone off for untargeted traffic.

Troubleshooting#

Symptom Likely cause Fix
A smart zone gets no traffic Inactive, its network is inactive, or targeting/keyword filters exclude everything Check the Active toggles first, then narrow-down settings: countries, device types, keyword include lists
"This smart zone has no ad zone" The parent ad zone was deleted Open the zone's Adzone tab and pick a new website and ad zone
eCPM zones never win No stats are being pulled, so eCPM is unknown Enable Pull Stats via API on the network, or fall back to Percentage selection
The zone serves far more than its percentage It's an eCPM zone — the percentage there is a bootstrap aid, not a limit Switch to eCPM + Limit % if you want a real cap
Earnings look low against the network's own dashboard Stats lag, or bot traffic was counted differently on each side Compare a settled period rather than today; switch Skip bots on
Save is blocked Missing name, ad zone, or creative The dialog names which one — "Choose a website and ad zone", "Add a zone name", "Add a valid ad URL or code"
Import overwrote existing zones Zones are unique on site / ad zone / name Rename before importing, or accept the overwrite
I can't delete a network It still has active zones Delete or reassign those zones first