With the new Ad Sprocket for Broadstreet, you can easily insert custom ad zones throughout your section pages. As explained at the bottom of this article, we implement lazy loading on all Sprockets.
NOTE: This Sprocket ONLY works with Broadstreet and the NEW v4.0 Layout Section Editor.
1. Getting Started
The first step is to decide what type of ad you want to insert into your page. For my example, I am going to insert a standard medium rectangle (MPU) ad into the right rail.
Above, you'll see that I set up a section page with a 2/3 - 1/3 layout. On the right I have an empty container. That is where I want to put my ad. In this space, the mpu (300x250) is the only ad that will fit.
2. Create a New Ad Zone in Broadstreet
Now that you know what size ad you want, you must create the ad zone first in Broadstreet.
- Create a new ad zone in Broadstreet and name it something indicative of how you will use it or where it goes on your site. Try to be as general as you can so you can re-use the same ad slot. It is a good idea to name them sequentially, as you may have more than one on a page.
- Add an "alias" to the ad zone. This should be the same as the name you gave to the ad zone. There are no blank spaces, so use dash or underscore.
- Copy the alias.
3. Create a New Ad Sprocket in Metro Publisher
Now that you've created a new ad zone in Broadstreet, you'll create the ad sprocket in Metro Publisher and connect Broadstreet to it with your alias.
- Go back to the section edit page and click "Add Sprocket"
- Select the "Broadstreet Ad Sprocket."
- Paste in the alias from Broadstreet for that ad zone.
- Give the sprocket a title. It is a good idea to use the alias as your title.
- Hit save.
Once your section page will contain the ad slot like this:
Now that you have the sprocket inserted into your section page, you can target this ad zone from within Broadstreet.
Lazy Loading
In Metro Publisher all Sprockets are lazy loaded in order to optimize load times.
We recently added the lazy loading for Broadstreet Ad Zone Sprockets after receiving multiple requests from clients who were concerned about viewability of their ads. We will also be rolling out that same feature for GAM ad units.
If you were previously using GAM and have switched to Broadstreet (in 2022) then the numbers you were seeing for impressions without lazy loading would have been inflated for ad units below the fold.
An impression measures that an ad loaded. Without lazy loading, all the ads load with the initial page load, even the ones below the fold. As a result, you can show impressions for ads the user never actually saw. Lazy loading only loads the ads if the user scrolls to the area of the page where the ad would actually be viewable.
A page may be loaded 1000 times but only half the time does a user scroll to the bottom, for example. Those two numbers for the ads below the fold would be very different. It's not perfect, but more accurately reflects how many times the ad was loaded and was actionable.
To stop that behavior, we can implement custom JavaScript code via our custom support service. That script could be removed again should you wanted to go back to the default lazy loading behavior.
Please note that the current trend is to move towards measuring viewability over ad unit impressions.
Find out more:
For any questions about setting up your ads, please refer to Broadstreet's help documentation.
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