Introduction
In this tutorial we shall guide you step-by-step through the setting up of basic advertising on a web site using Microsoft's Ad Server, and the production of reports relating to the performance of those ads. It is beyond the scope of this tutorial to detail all the possible options and configurations, and no attempt shall be made to do so, but rather, using the experience gained from setting up advertising on the DevGuru site, we shall show you the simplest way to get up and running.

Contents

1. Preparation and Configuration
2. Enabling Ad Display - The global.asa File
3. Ad Manager
4. Configuring A WebPage To Display Ads
5. Enabling Reports And Configuring Analysis
6. Configuring and Running Reports
7. Creating Custom Reports

Ad Server
Ad Server consists of three components that work together to furnish a site with ads. These consist of Ad Manager (an ASP-based application), the AdServer COM (Component Object Model) object, and last but not least, the database itself. Ad Manager is the tool which you will use to manage the advertising on your site. With it you can add and update customer and advertising information, set advertising schedules, and track the performance of every single ad. The AdServer object is called by an ASP page to place an ad on a particular web page. Using information stored in the database it selects the most appropriate ad to display, and also writes advertising information to IIS log files so that you can produce reports. The database stores information entered through Ad Manager, and is accessed by the AdServer Component. This SQL database consists of a number of tables (all beginning with 'as_') and is worth investigating as the information stored there can easily be used in customizing Ad Manager.

Preparation
Before installing Ad Server on your machine, you must already have Site Server installed. Ad Server comes as part of Microsoft Site Server 3.0, Commerce Edition, and is installable separately. During the installation process you will be prompted for a Data Source Name (DAN) and lagoon information for the Ad Server database, so have that to hand before you begin. (It is a good idea to create a separate advertising database as this improves performance. For more information on setting up an ODBC data source see our tutorial:

A Beginner's Guide To Data Access Using ADO And ASP

Configuring the Site
Once you have Ad Server installed, the next step is to configure your website to use advertising. The first thing you need to do is to define the root directory of your website as the root directory of an ASP application. You do this through IIS internet Service Manager which is accessed through Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack. Right click on the root directory of your web site and then click the Directory, Home Directory or Virtual Directory tab, where you'll see a section called Application Settings. If there is no Create button there, then the site is already configured, otherwise click the Create button and enter a meaningful name in the Name box.

Click OK and close down Internet Service Manager

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