If you want to have a better control over the ads on your website or sell ad spots directly to the buyer, Smart Spots is a solution you should take a closer look at. It’s a simple ad rotation script from the guys of Smart Scripts, who also created Smart Thumbs, Smart Tube & Text and Smart Tube Pro. While other free or even paid ad server solutions work fine until there’s a lot of traffic on the website(s) the ads are placed on, Smart Spots uses memcache to cache ads and keep the server fast. In addition, impressions and clicks stats are saved in flat files or real time cache to keep the server load low. These features make it a perfect ad server for high traffic tubes, TGPs or babeblogs.
Lets have a look at the main features of this nifty online script:
- There is a e-mail notification system informing you about automated campaigns and banners changes
- Easy management of advertising positions with the help of groups
- You can choose between selling advertisement time or clicks
- You can display ads based on countries, browser languages or a keyword defined in advertisement code
- You can let the script display a random campaign banner
- Memcache is supported (advertisements can be cached)
- You can easily integrate the ad code via PHP or Javascript
- There is a message system, so you can communicate with your Advertisers
- You can create an unlimited amount of campaigns
- Advertisers can order campaigns and pay via Paxum or Paypal
- You can display your ads on an unlimited amount of websites, while having only one base installation
- You can view clicks and impressions for your advertisement
I didn’t try out each and every function of this script but everything I used so far worked like a charm. There’s a detailed manual explaining step by step how to use the script but instructions are not really needed because this ad server is really easy to understand and not overloaded with features most people don’t need anyway.
It’s basically adding an advert place, creating a campaign, adding banners and finally copying the advert code and inserting it into your desired ad spot on your website. You can also assign groups to your ads, which makes ad management easier if you place ads on more than one domain.
