Because of our mission at Brightspot, integrations within Brightspot always entail research and thought. We don’t simply add for the sake of adding, instead we work to determine what new features our customers, present and future, will benefit from. Some of the questions we ask ourselves before implementing an integration include:
- Which integrations do we make available “out-of-the-box”?
- What requirements are specific to one customer’s needs and will only bring clutter to the“out-of-the-box” Brightspot experience?
Google Ads was a clear-cut case of the need for an out-of-the-box integration. Historically speaking, 75-80% of our customers have needed an integration with Google Ads (formerly called Google Adsense and Google DFP), so we made it a default integration offered within Brightspot. Let’s talk about what the Brightspot ads integration means to our customers.
First, it’s important to understand the distinctions between what Google Ads does, and what Brightspot does. Integration with Google Ads first requires that you have an account within Google (or you’re working to get one). Once you have that, the DFP console will control the advertisement slot names and frequency of calls; Brightspot allows the display of the ad slots on the page of your site.
How does Brightspot deliver ads?
Once you add your provider ID in the Integrations area of Sites and Settings, Brightspot then has permission to speak to your ads console, and start showing the ads. Next comes the fun part, which is setting up your ad slot modules.
Advertising creatives within Brightspot are delivered to your front end through ad modules. These ad modules provide the control for the placement of the ads around your site—this can include a header or footer ad, ads within your individual page content (such as a right rail ad unit on articles), and ads for assets tagged to a specific Section.
How do you set up ads in Brightspot?
Ads are set up within the Sites & Settings area of the admin menu. That’s because configuring ads is considered an administrative level task, and most editorial team members will probably not be editing and adding ads.
There are two clusters inside Front End that drive your ads configuration: the Ads cluster and the Google DFP cluster. (Side note: In Brightspot, clusters are a group of fields that live under a collapsible heading. These clusters are in alphabetical order in sites & settings, so the ads cluster is near the top.)
The Ads cluster:
And the Google DFP cluster:
Brightspot also will provide you a place to control which ads display per window size. Since the bulk of Brightspot’s websites are built with responsive front ends, we focus more on the window size of the end-user, and not the device. This feature is great because you can serve multiple sizes to a certain window, but the third-party console controls the percentage of time that specific slots are delivered, so it’s all managed in one place.
After the ad and window sizes are saved, you can create either an Adsense or DFP module to use across your site and on the appropriate window sizes. Once you put the slot name from your provider in the ads cluster, you’re all set to add the ad modules to your pages. These can be treated just like any other module and can be placed in the above, aside, below, or even within the content well of your pages.
