The basics of AMS are easy to understand and to utilize. There are three quick steps to displaying a banner on, for example, your index page. First you will add an SSI tag to the html file for the index page. Next, upload that file and the ad to your server. Then, using your admin panel, tell AMS you want to display that ad on your index page for x amount of exposures (or click-thrus). That's it, you're done. You can check in on the banner's performance with the reports panel.
The Details
Because AMS was designed to be flexible and meet a variety of needs, there are a few concepts that will help you get the most out of your ad management system.
Server-Side Include Tags
AMS makes use of server-side includes (SSI) to allow ad-bars to be inserted directly in your html page. To get the full functionality from your AMS, you will need to be able to use the following SSI tags (the actual location of your AMS installation may differ):
<!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/ams/ams_ssi.cgi" -->
<!--#exec cmd="/cgi-bin/ams/ams_ssi.cgi" -->
Essentially, SSI #exec tags allow CGI scripts to be invoked from an html tag contained in your web document. Because of the sensitive nature of CGI scripts, it is always a good idea to speak with your website's system administrator before attempting to use these tags. In fact, most website providers turn this feature off unless specifically requested; before attempting to use these tags make sure your site allows this and that SSI #exec tags are configured. Turning on this feature may be as simple as placing a .htaccess file in the root directory of your web site.
There's More to Know About SSI:
Loading the Ads
In order to keep load times down, we highly recommend you keep the banners you are displaying on the same server as your copy of AMS. One easy way to keep track of your ads is to create a directory for your advertisers and ftp their ads to that directory. When activating the ad via the administration panel you will be prompted for the location of the ads.
The Administration Panel
Once you've accessed the Administration panel (located at the base cgi location you defined with a /ams_admin.cgi extension) you will notice three distinct fields, Advertisers, Groups and Relations. You have the ability to either display, edit or remove the entries in each field. You also have the ability to add a new entry to each field.
Advertisers
Each banner is loaded into the system from the "Advertiser Control", where you can set the information specific to that adbar (including image size, alternative text, border size, frame targets, etc.). AMS also supports "HTML fragments" as advertiser entries, allowing you to mix a banner network with individual clients or to display complex multi-element ads. You can also control the billing style for each adbar, limiting the run by start and end dates, maximum number of exposures and/or maximum number of click thrus.
Groups
Adbars can be organized into groups with the "Groups Control", allowing you to easily place collections of adbars rather than selecting each advertiser individually. Through creative assignment to groups, adbars can even be "weighted" to appear more often in a group than average.
Relations
The "Relations Control" allows you to associate advertisers and groups of advertisers to particular pages in your website. Relations can include rules that assign entire directories at a time, or utilize "NOT" constructs to exclude particular pages from those rules. The result is a flexible assignment strategy minimizing the amount of configuration necessary.
Learn More about using the Administration Panel:
