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Ad Juggler allows you to rotate several banner ads in the same space, keeping track of impressions and clickthroughs for each. You can set it to deliver a given number of impressions over a given time period. Advertisers like to see impressions delivered right on schedule. AJ also allows you to select which ads appear on which pages, by using a function called "Pools." Theoretically, by placing each ad on only the pages that are most appropriate to the type of audience it's aimed at, the clickthrough rate can be maximized.
Ad Juggler runs on your Unix or NT server, and is accessed remotely via a password-protected Web page. Insert a couple of lines of code in each page that is to have ads, and AJ handles the rest. The ads pop up randomly according to the rotation schedule that you specify. For sites that simply run one banner at the top of a page, there's no problem. If you are a little more creative about the placement of your ads, however, you may run up against one of AJ's limitations. You can put 2 ads on the same page by simply putting the AJ code in 2 places. However, the 2 spots will occasionally show the same ad, and there is no way to avoid this. Also, AJ does not distinguish between ads of different sizes. If you have smaller ads that fit into a particular space on your page, you will have to use the Pools feature to exclude any larger banners from those pages.
Ad Juggler Main Screen
Each advertiser can have several banners, each with its own destination URL, size information, and ALT text. For each advertiser, you can specify a starting date, an ending date, and how many impressions to deliver. When the ending date is reached, or the maximum number of impressions is delivered, that particular advertiser is taken out of rotation (of course, you can also make it open-ended). The schedule on which each banner is delivered can also be specified. If "asap" delivery is selected, then impressions are delivered as soon as possible, regardless of the end date. If "even" delivery is selected, AJ delivers just enough impressions daily to fulfill the contract right on the end date.
Each individual banner can be set to display only at certain dates and times. This feature can also be used to take banners in and out of rotation without removing them from the system. To take a banner out of rotation, simply set its time to "never."
Ad Juggler tracks impressions and clickthroughs for each banner in the system. This information is available from a Web page. The system administrator can access the stats page at any time from the main program. Each client can be given a password that allows them to view only the stats for their banners. The stats page is more powerful than it looks at first. You can generate a detailed report for the start and end dates that you specify, grouped by day, week, or month, with separate figures for each banner. You can have a report for the month of June, the entire campaign, last week, whatever.
An impression and clickthrough report is also automatically emailed to whomever you specify. The client can change the frequency of the report from their page. Alas, the automated email reports are without a doubt Ad Juggler's greatest weakness. They show only cumulative impressions and clicks (not broken down by banner). There is no clear indication as to the exact dates that the report covers. Also, when you set up the email report, you can choose to have it go out every "x days", but does that mean "24 hours from now" or "tomorrow at midnight" or when, exactly? In our opinion, any traffic report should state right at the top the date and time that it was generated, and the precise date and time period that it covers.
The Stats Screen
A Sample Email Report
Of course, as mentioned above, the stats page has all the info that you need, but a lot of clients are likely to be too lazy or too obtuse to figure out how to use the stats page properly. What you can do is to whip up a nice report, copy the HTML code into your own template, and email it to the client. Unfortunately, there is no way to automate this process, and there is no way to generate the report in anything other than HTML format. It's very puzzling why a package that has so many features and can do so much is so lacking in this department. You can generate the reports all right, you just can't get them to your clients automatically. If you need to send automatic email reports to your client, I cannot recommend Ad Juggler to you.
Despite this major drawback, which will surely be addressed in a future upgrade, Ad Juggler is a good ad management package overall. In fact, for a long time, we used it to run our ads here at The Web Developer's Journal (we've since graduated to Open Ad Stream. With AJ, changing banners or other client info is a snap, and the stats you need are always available.
For a complete listing of available ad management packages, in all price ranges from free to six figures, see our Banner Ad Software Roundup.
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