ASP in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Chapter 13. Ad Rotator Component

The Internet, though begun in an attempt to efficiently share information, is quickly evolving into a powerful avenue for business. One result of this evolution is the rapidly growing tendency for web sites to incorporate advertising into their content pages.

Unfortunately, these ads must be changed often to maintain efficacy, since clients quickly bore of advertising. The manner by which a webmaster changed the advertisements on her site used to involve a time-consuming three-step process. This process involved modifying the content, uploading the file to the server, and changing the links, if necessary, every time an old ad was to be saved and a new one displayed. Though several CGI applications became available to make this process simpler, none of them were less clunky than the original method.

With the advent of the Ad Rotator component, the process by which ads are displayed has become much simpler. This component allows content providers to rapidly change ads without relying on webmasters to change links repeatedly or maintain obtuse naming conventions of ad files for storage until the next time the same ad is used.

The Ad Rotator component allows you to change the advertisements on your web site in an automated fashion using a schedule file that you create. This schedule file contains a list of advertisements, their details (URL, text, etc.), and a weight factor that instructs the web server how often to display that particular ad. Each time ...