Last tutorial for ExoClick advertisers was about 4 months ago and since then, we added a lot of new features. So I think it was time to update the original tutorial to include the different improvements and share them with you.

One of these improvements is the SSL certificate for the admin panel but there are much more and I'll detail them in this tutorial.

Account Funding

Note that ExoClick is only working with pre-payments. You decide what you want to pay and when you want to pay it. The minimum amount is $10
Today, we accept payments through Paypal, credit card, ePassporte and wire transfer. (Minimum amount for wire transfer is $500)

New Campaign

Once your account is funded, you can start creating campaigns. There is no limitation on the number of campaigns you can create. Click "New Campaign" in the left menu of the admin panel.



There are 3 main sections for the creation of a campaign.

1. The campaign information.

Campaign Name: This is just a name for you to remember what you are targeting in this campaign. Example: "MyProduct.com - Blogging Category - All countries"

CPC: Fixed "Cost Per Click" price you want to pay. If you want to bid $0.15 for this campaign, then you should enter 15. (Minimum bid is only $0.01)

Maximum number of Clicks: Number of clicks you want to receive for this campaign. You can just set a very high number if you don't want to have any limitation.

Ad type: Type of advertising you want to set. For now, you can choose between text or banner. This is a new feature and give you the possibility to restrict your ad only to the "Premium Network". By selecting this option, your ad will be displayed only on the sites we have selected as being high quality. So this would get you les traffic, but from better quality sites. However, the minimum CPC for this network is $0.05

2. The targeting

This section is very important as this is where you configure WHERE your ad will appear.

2.1 Categories: Selecting a category is an easy way of getting wide exposure as your ad will be shown for that full category!
If you select some sub-categories, your ad will be shown on the selected sub-categories only.

I strongly recommend to select a category, and no sub-categories.

2.2 Countries: By default, there is no countries selected, which means your ad will be shown EVERYWHERE. If you want to restrict the geo-localization of your ad, just select the countries where you want your ad to be shown. (For selecting multiple countries, just keep the key "CTRL" pressed and select the countries you want)

2.3 Keywords: Add here your list of keywords so your ad will be shown on these searches. Note that if you selected a category, you can leave the keywords field empty.

2.4 Sites: By default, there is no sites selected, which means your ad will be shown on the full network. If you want to display your ad only on specific sites, then enter here the list of hostnames.

Example:
blog.exoclick.com
loudsearch.com
loveseeking.net

CATCH-ALL traffic: You can buy traffic from the FULL Network by using the sign "%" in the keywords list. By doing so, you ad will appear for all keywords, all categories, all sites, as far as your bid is sufficient. This is the maximum exposure you can get.

Dynamic parameters: There are 3 tags that you can use when creating your campaign.

The first tag is {keyword}, which you can use in the title, description and URL of your ad to replace dynamically the tag by the search term. E.g. if you set the title of your ad as "The best {keyword} ringtones" and someone search for "Dido", the title of your ad will be "The best Dido ringtones".

You have 2 others tags, {src_hostname} and {campaign_id} that you can use in your ad URL to better track the traffic.

For example, if your campaign ID is 2007 and the click comes from this page: http://www.loudsearch.com/index.php?cat=1
If you have set your ad URL to be:
http://www.yoursite.com/?track=exotraffic&tag1={src_hostname}&tag2={campaign_id}
Then the user will be sent to:
http://www.yoursite.com/?track=exotraffic&tag1=loudsearch.com&tag2=2007

3. Advertisement data

This is what the surfers will see.

For a text ad:

Title: Enter the title of your ad. Try to make it as short and catchy as possible!

Text: Description of your ad.

URL: Where the surfer will be sent. Make sure your URL start by "http://"

URL to display: As your real URL can look complicate, with long parameters, etc... you can enter here a more friendly URL that the surfers will see. The real URL will not be shown. Image: We have a special ad format, which combine your text ad together with a 100x100 image. This gives a better look to the ads and usually improve the CTR. Uploading your own image for the campaign is always a good idea so you have an image related to your text.

For an image banner ad:

Title: Title of the image.
Upload Image: Select the image you want to upload from your computer. Currently, we accept GIF and JPEG in the following formats: 468x60, 728x90, 260x340, 120x600, 250x250 and 300x250 pixels.
URL: Where the surfer will be sent. Make sure your URL start by "http://"

I hope this tutorial was helpful and shed some light on the campaigns creation. If you still have some problems, then you know where to reach us.