Ad Dropper 2.0 is here

Ad Dropper 2.0 is here

If you sell ads on your site, Ad Dropper 2.0 gives you the numbers and campaign tools advertisers ask for.

It started with a publisher running a campaign for a national advertiser. The campaign came with agency tracking codes, a start time, and an end date. Doing it properly meant manually editing ad files and remembering to take the ads down on time.

So we built all of it into Ad Dropper.

Reports you can send to an advertiser

Ad Dropper now counts ads the way advertisers expect:

• Real impressions: Ad Dropper counts an ad only when it appears in a reader’s browser.
• Viewable impressions: at least half the ad was on screen for one second. This is the standard advertisers ask about.
• Bots are filtered out: search crawlers, uptime monitors, and link previews don’t count toward your numbers.
• Reliable clicks: Ad Dropper records every click before the reader leaves your site.

We also rebuilt the Reports screen. Pick a date range (today, last 7 days, last month, and more) and compare it with the previous period. Break results down by ad, zone, or device, with viewability and click-through rate.

Today’s numbers update live. Export the report table or the daily numbers to CSV and send them straight to an advertiser.

In your ads list, you can now sort the Impressions and Clicks columns and switch them to show the last 30 days.

Run campaigns without the busywork

• Start and end dates: schedule an ad to start at 5 pm Monday and end December 31. It comes down on its own, in your site’s time zone.
• Advertiser tracking codes: paste the click URL and impression tags from Google Campaign Manager 360 or any other ad server. Ad Dropper fires them correctly on every view.
• Mismatch warning: Ad Dropper warns you when the click and impression tags belong to different creatives. Tracked ads also show their Campaign Manager creative IDs so you can check.
• Desktop and mobile versions: show an ad on desktop only, mobile only, or both. A leaderboard and a mobile banner can share the same spot.
• Duplicate: set up one ad, copy it for each size or position, and swap only the creative.

Works with page caching

If your site caches pages for speed, your ads have probably been stuck showing the same ad to everyone. Scheduled changes have also had to wait for the cache to clear.

The new Load Ads After Page Load setting fixes both: ads rotate, start, stop, and get counted for every reader. A new Reserve Height setting on each ad zone keeps space open so the page doesn’t jump while ads load.

Heads up: your numbers will drop

After you update, your impression counts will go down (possibly by a lot). That’s expected.

Earlier versions counted a view every time an ad loaded on a page, including bots and crawlers. Version 2.0 counts only ads that actually appear for real readers.

The new numbers are smaller but accurate, and they’re the ones to quote to advertisers. When a date range includes older numbers, the report flags it, so you won’t mix the two.

How to get it

Update Ad Dropper from your WordPress dashboard under Plugins or under Leaky Paywall > Extensions. Your license key must be active for the update to appear.

After updating:

1. Under Ad Dropper > Settings, make sure Enable Reporting is turned on.
2. If your site uses page caching, turn on Load Ads After Page Load and set a Reserve Height on each ad zone so the page doesn’t jump while ads load.
3. Open the new Reports screen and choose “Last 7 days.” New numbers start building as soon as you update.

If advertisers have asked you for viewability or third-party tracking, now is a good time to tell them you can provide it.

Questions about the update? Reply to this email

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