Product Review: Banner Manager Pro 1.03 SQL Server Version

by Manohar Kamath
November 27, 1999

When I first heard about this new ad server for ASP I was curious to know what it offers. Despite ASP being around for more than three years now, there are not many ASP based ad servers out there. There are two of them I know that are inexpensive - AdShark from Oceantek (which is free) and Banager from ASPHole which costs about $350 per license. I have seen the AdShark online demo, but wasn't impressed by it. Banager is a widely used software program but I feel a better version would be most welcome in this age when the banner advertising is in high demand. If you are looking for a high-end system, there is the Site Server ad component, but you will be paying a lot more (in thousands of dollars).

Ban Man Pro from Brookfield Consultants is more recent, the first version coming out only a few months ago. They have an online demo which you may want to try and see the features before you buy it. In the past week or so, I have played with the SQL Server version of this ad server and my opinions are as follows.

Best Features

The first thing I look for in any software is the set of features it provides AND the features that can be tagged on to the existing features. The program provides a stepped approach to advertising - Advertisers, Banners, Campaigns, Zones. Campaigns are one or more banners of an advertiser and this makes it very flexible to have one banner participate in multiple campaigns. Zones represent slots or even themes. For example, the whole site can be one zone or only the bottom banners could be one zone. This is highly useful if you have a large site with different set of prices for slots or even multiple sites.

Reporting is another tool that makes an ad server a worthwhile buy. If you are not looking to provide your advertisers with reports, you are better off using the ad rotator component. The program provides four sets of campaign reports - by banner, by day, by banner by day and by clicks. Then there is a summary of all campaigns that an advertiser is running.

Also, there are two modes the program works in - HTML and SSI. SSI is more flexible providing ways of including not just banners but multimedia files like Flash, AVI, MPEG, etc. But then you have to have the software on the same domain as your web site. This will cause the loss of having zones on multiple domains unless you can share the directory across domains or buy a separate license for each domain. The HTML mode is flexible in creating zones across domains, but have a limitation of serving only images. This limitation can be overcome in Internet Explorer 3 or higher and Netscape 4 or higher with the use of client-side JavaScript, which is provided with the product.

The campaigns can be either flat-rate (per month, per year, etc.), CPM (per thousand impressions) or per click. For each of this, you can set up the ads to run on particular days at particular times. You can weigh the ads within a campaign and also weigh the campaigns within a zone.

Then there is the default campaign concept. If all the campaigns within a site run out, you can run a campaign which will run until another campaign is inserted. This way you will be sure the ads are displayed all the time.

Installation

This part was pretty easy. The install files came in two parts - the asp files and the SQL database. The database is provided as a backup copy and hence has to be restored by the database admin. This was the part I thought could be a little problem if the database administrators were picky about what they could do. Had they provided the database scripts, you could have connected through the enterprise manager and could have easily constructed the database.

Once the database is created and the asp files installed, you need to construct the system DSN and that's pretty much the installation.

Ease of use

Once you have installed the product, its ready to go almost immediately. However, I thought the program was not very intuitive to use for the first-timers. The help that comes with it is not that detailed and I had some tough time in setting up the campaigns and zones. However, after you have used it for some hours it becomes clear and the setup is easy.

Note to beginners: Install this on a development server and get used to various concepts before you setup any campaigns or zones.

Open source

The product is ASP page based. So if you are an ASP developer and wish to customize the ad server, you can do so easily. In fact, I have customized the product to a vast degree without having to sacrifice on any functionality. Besides, you can add any number of features that you may want; both the source code and the database are available to you.

Reporting

For the set of features the product has, the reporting is quite complete. You can break down the reports by banners, days and even clickthroughs. Also since the product is open, you can add your own reports. An administrator can create reports across campaigns. What I would like to see is reporting across zones. Currently the product does not have tracking for clicks on HTML-based ads.

Other small points

The banner impressions are logged to the database on a per banner per campaign per zone per day basis. This cuts down on database space. Considering that you could use this for a large amount of banners, this is a very good feature.

On the other hand

• The program uses a lot of SQL code within the pages and does not take advantage of the stored procedures in SQL Server. I would imagine that people buy this version for high volume sites and using stored procedures would make it faster and more efficient. Also, the code within ASP pages need to be trimmed to make it more efficient.

• The concept of campaigns and zones takes some time to understand, and some help in the form of a better user guide would be greatly welcome.

• The price is a little steep if you are planning to use this on a small traffic site.

• Need for a more intuitive interface. The present interface is good but not all that friendly. I was looking for the source code for including banners, and it took me some time to find it. A better documentation can really make a difference in the ratings.

Wish list for the next version

• Better documentation

• Better interface

• Keyword driven ad rotation

• A component/stored procedure based server - this should make it much faster

• Additional reports for zones and reporting on HTML-based ad clickthroughs.

In summary

The software is worth the buy if you have multiple sites and/or a large volume site. Despite its shortcomings, the product has performed well for me. The price can be a factor in your decision, but the software will pay off for itself when you have a large number of advertisers. Another thing you have to consider is that you will be adding to your hosting costs by adding the SQL database, and this can run anywhere between $10/month to about $100/month.

Full disclosure: I own a copy of this product and intend to use it on this web site.

Highlights
- Easy to install
- Good reporting system
- Easy to modify code

Drawbacks
- Does not use stored procedures
- Poor documentation

Pricing: $649 per license

Contact:
Brookfield Consultants
107 Longhurst Court
Apex, NC 27502

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