There is no banner management system within the Geo Software. There are just too many good banner management systems several of which are free for us to keep pace so we have decided to point you to some of them and focus on creating a classified and auction system.

You have complete control of the the HTML used within the page template. Because of this you can use any external banner management system you can find. We have seen the use of free OpenX banner management system found here:

http://www.openx.org/

which is free to anyone. You can also use a system like that found at:

http://www.adpeeps.com

which is a banner management that has been slightly modified for user with the Geo system. There will be a cost to purchase their software.

Adpeeps.com has taken the extra step to allow the configuration of category specific ad campaigns within their software. The banner code their software produces is placed within the html of the design you have in the Geo system and will retrieve the category id used within the url displayed within the address bar of your browser. This category id information is passed to the adpeeps software where a banner is chosen that was set to display within that category. Within the adpeeps software you will create campaigns for each category id you wish to customize the banner choices for. The adpeeps.com software does not require that you create a category specific template for each category to have category specific banner display. But you need to have a campaign for each category you wish to have category specific banners display. So for a subcategory to have the same banners as a parent a campaign with the same banners within it may need to be created for each subcategory.

If you are using the OpenX software less than v2.6 the only way category specific ad campaigns can happen is with the use of category specific page templates. To do so each ad campaign will have its own html/javascript code generated by the OpenX software. You will then need to place this generated code within a category specific page template where you wish that banner to display within the html design. Label the category specific page template accordingly in the template admin tool. You can then set this category specific page template for the appropriate category within the category admin tool. Not all editions of the Geo software have the category template configuration so check your edition for this feature to see if you can do it. When you set a category specific template that template will be used for the category it is set for while browsing as well as any subcategories that have not been configured with their own category specific templates. The page template will also work for that categories subcategories unless you set category specific templates for those categories. So for lots of categories this may be the better solution.

If you are using the Openx software v2.6 or greater we are told you can create conditional statements via Open X's Targeting Channels to have specific banners be delivered on specific pages or urls. If you don't want to go through the extra steps of creating category specific templates and have OpenX 2.6 or greater this is certainly the easier way to go.

As you may know, the default design uses RWD for the layout. But this can be a problem if you want to show "wide" banners. The solution is to show a "wide" banner for larger (desktop) screens, and use a different banner that is much smaller in width, for use on smaller (mobile / tablet) screens.

We have a complete write-up for how to accomplish this on the page Creating RWD Banners (or other RWD content).