Incorporating advertisements ("ads") into your Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional) messages is a great way to partner with another organization in order to further develop your business and professional relationships.
This article describes how to manage (edit, delete, copy, export) your account's ads in the Admin interface.
To learn about and go through the three-step process (create an ad, configure a template, insert an ad) for using ads in a message, see Image-based Advertisements.
Access your Advertisements
To access and manage your advertisements:
- Navigate to Messages > Advertisements.
The Advertising page lists your account-specific image-based advertisements.
NOTE: Long-standing accounts might also have HTML-based ads. These are no longer offered but they will display in those accounts and they can be used but only in the legacy designer, Mailing Designer 1 (MD1).
This article describes how, on the Advertising page, you can:
- manage the list of ads (e.g., which ads and which columns display) and
- manage the advertisements, individually and several together.
Ad names and folder names
When you are creating and editing ads and the folders in which they're stored, you should consider the following naming behaviors.
Ad and folder names can contain:
- letters,
- numerals, and
- special characters (such as !, _, *, and #).
Further, the top-to-bottom display order of ads and folders is based on the first character in the name, in the following order:
- names that start with a special character,
- names that start with a numeral, and
- then an alphabetized list.
This ordering applies equally to Active and Inactive ads, and deleted ads and folders.
Manage the list of ads
The Advertisements list has several functions and options that enable you to customize which ads display, and which columns display and in what order.
The list defaults to displaying the ads in alphabetical order (A – Z) sorted on the Name column.
- Click any column header (except Image) to sort on that column; click the same column header again to reverse the current sort order (e.g., Z – A; least – most; newest – oldest).
TIP: The current sort column displays an up-down arrow indicator.
You might want to customize what the list displays before you start managing the advertisements. Configuring the list to display a limited of ads might simplify your work. For example, you could:
- "unhide" the deleted ads to more easily locate one or two that you want to re-activate.
- search by Name for ads that have a specific year or date in the name.
- sort on the Total Clicks column and then reverse the sort in order to surface the ads with fewer clicks.
NOTE: Any column-based sorting and/or re-arranging that you perform on the list persists on the list display; it remains intact if you choose a different folder and if you navigate away and return.
Management options
Several management options are situated above the list of ads. Use these to manage what the list displays and how, and to export the list (refer to Export file notes, below).
Delete and Move to Folder options
The Delete and Move to Folder options are ad-management actions, as opposed to list-management actions. As such, they are not enabled unless an ad is selected.
- You can select multiple (left-column) checkboxes to perform either of these actions on multiple ads simultaneously.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Search | Click to display a dialog where you can set your search criteria. Click the plus sign (+) to add criteria, use the dropdowns to add conditions, and specify a search term in the text field; then, click Find to initiate the search. The list refreshes and displays the filtered results, and the search criteria display above the options. |
| Reset | Click to restore the complete list of ads (for the selected folder) in its default configuration. For example, if you remove and/or re-order any columns, Reset essentially "undoes" those changes. |
| Columns | Click to open the column chooser to manage: which columns display in the list and their left-to-right order. |
| Export | Click to export the list as a Microsoft Excel (.xls) file. The export file reflects the current list view, including any search-based filtering. Refer to Export file notes, below, for useful information. |
| Show Deleted | Check to display any ads that have been deleted; the names of deleted ads display in red text.
|
| Delete and Move to Folder | Select one or more ads (checkboxes) and click:
|
Export file notes
Exporting the list of ads is a great way to share it with your colleagues. However, there are a few things to note.
The name of the exported-list file is InformzReport_xxxxxx, where the xxxxxx represents a unique and random series of digits. We recommend that you rename the file to something that is suited to your organization's (or your own) practices and conventions.
In the export file:
- The list columns are presented in their default order, regardless of any left-to-right re-ordering done on the list page.
- Hidden columns are honored; they are not included in the export file.
- The Show Deleted setting is honored. If this box is unchecked, deleted ads are not included in the export file.
You can customize the file (e.g., delete and/or move columns and/or rows) to suit your needs, as in the following example in which the Status column was moved left, some cells were centered, and bold was applied to the column headers.
The title of the report, Advertising, displays in the left uppermost cell.
NOTE: The title of the report that is generated from an ad's hover menu (described in the next section) is Advertising Report, and name of the exported file resembles that of the Advertising report: InformzReport_xxxxxx.
Manage your Ads
You can manage the ads individually by hovering on an ad's menu icon and making a selection from the hover menu that appears:
TIP: There are also two multi-select ad-management options which are described in the previous section.
Hover menu options
The following table describes the actions that are available via the hover menu.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| View | Click to open a preview of the image in a popup. |
| Edit | Click to edit the ad's properties (name, folder, image, and/or link) on the Edit Advertising popup; click Save. |
| Copy | Click to make a copy of the ad. On the popup, give the copy a different name (required) and click Copy. |
| Report | Click to display a popup with the click information for the ad. Click Export to export the information as a Microsoft Excel (.xls) file.
See Advertisement Reports to learn about the two reports that provide detailed ad-based and message-based metrics. |
| Delete | Click to delete the ad. Click Ok in the confirmation pop-up. The ad is immediately deleted and automatically set to Inactive.
NOTE: The ad is not actually deleted; it is hidden and can be undeleted. |
| Undelete | [Deleted ads only.] Click to undelete the ad. Verify that it displays in the list. |
Manage ad's Folders
All of your advertisements have to be stored in a folder. This simplifies your job of managing your ads because they are easier to locate when they are grouped.
You can manage the advertisements folders (create, rename, delete) and their contents (your ads) right on this page.
In the upper right of the page are:
- the folder-selection dropdown (which defaults to Main Folder) and
- the EDIT button.
NOTE: Use of these features is independent of the ads; an ad does not have to be selected.
Folder selection
The ads that display in the list at any given time are controlled by which folder is selected in the dropdown. Click the dropdown and select All Folders to display all your ads.
To refine the list of ads:
- Click the dropdown and select a folder.
The list refreshes and displays only the ads in the selected folder.
NOTE: The list does not have a Folder column. If the list doesn't display ads that you expect, check whether a folder selection is applied. If so, select All Folders.
Manage your advertisements Folders
You can manage your account's advertisements folders right on this page.
NOTE: You cannot manage Main Folder. This default system folder cannot be renamed or deleted.
To manage your folders:
- Click the EDIT button above the list.
The Folders popup opens.
- Refer to Folder names, below, for information on folder names and their display order.
- On the popup:
-
- click New Folder to add a folder; specify a folder name and click Submit.
- click Show Deleted to display your deleted folders.
- click Edit to rename a folder; change the folder name and click Submit.
- click Delete to delete a folder; click Ok at the confirmation prompt.
- click Undelete to undelete a folder; click Ok at the confirmation prompt.
Related articles
- To learn about the three steps (create an ad, configure a template, and insert an ad) that are necessary in order to insert ads into a message, see Image-based Advertisements.
- In Advertisement Reports, you can learn about the performance of your advertisements with the ad-specific metrics in the Summary report and the Mailings with Ads report.