Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-172.250.84.222-20160112010434/@comment-80.145.249.110-20160114152630

Chriscar2 wrote: What explains the reasoning behind showing the same ad over and over again? You'd think they'd track which ones are being shown, but I often get the same ad multiple times.

C If you see the same ad over and over again is based on a few things.

To fully understand the mechanic behind this fact we will have to take a deepdive into adserver technology. Specially into the ad selection process and the available campaingn inventory.

Here I try to give an overview on some of the basics here.

The amount of different ads is limited by the amount of campaigns trafficked and the number of creatives per campaign. A limiting factor is a well geo targeting so we all get ads displayed that are in our language and and fit into our culture so they don't abuse us serving unapropriate ads to us. This might explain why some of us never got free GC ads at all.

Now we have a number of campaigns that fit all limiting factors, Geo location, language, frequency cap and so on. The next limit is the amount of impressions and the time frame the campaign has to serve this amount. This number will define the amount of ads avail per day and hour per creative for all users in this region.

Given this we are set to request an ad from the adserver.

Now the adserver is looking for all the signals he can collect from us and make his selection from the list of ads avail in this one split second. Usually this task takes 3 to 5 ms to complete and we get the ad served. The ad the server selects usually the best fitting ad he can find and this is as well the ad that is the one most behind it's shedule so it can catch up on it's goals. In case all ads have an equaly good or bad "on shedule indicator" it will take a random selection. As soon as an campaign has reached it hourly goal it will stop and wait for the next hour to serve again, same in case the daily goal is reached.

So if we see one ad over and over again it is simply that it has enough impressions left in time, has a high or no frequency cap  against so we can get it served over and over again.

This does not say this is the aim of the advertiser / agency that we get the same creative 100 times in a row but this is dynamic adserving against impression goals. The advertiser has simply scheduled a campaign with a high impression volume over a relative short time frame so the adserver must fire it fast as possible. It will get even more when the goal is not impression based and the adserver has to collect clicks. In this case the server will calculate a click rate per creative along the way the campaing runs and this will drive the amount of impressions he needs to serve to collect one click and I think our click rate is very poor. ;-)

If you need more I can continue on this topic...