DFP For Local Media Apps

Challenge

All of Worldnow apps for local news channels show banner ads. These were always an important part of the apps, and it was Redwerk’s task to modernize their implementation and make them even smoother in order to have a solid foundation for future app upgrades. The banner ads were displayed via UIWebView and web snipplets, which meant that the apps needed a browser component to be able to display banners.

We decided to implement an even more efficient advertising solution using Google DFP. DFP (Doubleclick For Publishers) is a SaaS-based advertising software by Google. It is used to display banners anywhere: on websites, in mobile applications, etc. It has a flexible selection of banners: e.g. they can be sorted by tags or by the location of a banner on a page. DFP users can easily configure the list of banners via a web interface.

After the migration to DFP was completed successfully, the next step was to configure the banners view properly. Ads had to be resized and configured for individual apps, and the user’s location info had to be taken into account.

This process required migrating all advertisement data (more than 300 affiliates, around 10,000 advertising campaigns, 100,000 banners) from the old platform to the new system.

Solution

As an experienced .NET development company, Redwerk had a clear and highly effective strategy: Complete migration of all banner ads and apps to the Google DFP system. This process, which as usual sounds much easier than it is, included the following steps:

• Migration
  All data had to be imported from the existing platform into the Google DFP system. Standard mechanisms were limited and didn’t allow to migrate the huge amount of data, so being a skilled C# development company we used C# technology to copewith the task. We developed an affiliate and campaigns export system with fully automatic JAVA technology, and a separate banner export system. Due to the lack of API features available, we had to create and automate export system via the web interface using .NET. Then, this information had to be imported into the new platform. In close collaboration with the staff of Worldnow, we implemented all the necessary DFP elements (affiliates, orders, line items etc.).
• Integration of DFP framework into the existing apps.
• Removing the old mechanism for viewing ads, where each banner was a WebView object, which was loaded with the corresponding HTML code. This included the necessary requests to ad servers. Banners were also displayed as WebView objects.
• After the integration of the new framework was completed, each ad was configured to be shown by adding a DFP object to each WebView. After that, each DFP object received identifiers of the required banner as well as the address of the advertiser’s account. Subsequently the banner was loaded automatically via the Google DFP library.