I am looking for some information about Advertisement servers.
I work for such a company, and I'm afraid this kind of proprietary information is considered extremely sensitive. AFAIK there are no public standards, and the bulk of the documentation available is as required for user implementation only.
There may be some white papers out there, probably from academia, but it's possible google may have benevolently published something.
Check out the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau)
They have specs on some commonly agreed-upon things like ad-banner formats. They seem to deal mostly in business issues and less on the technical/implementation specifics.
The simplest implementation is simply pointing to an image from another server. That server will identify on which site the advertisement is being displayed (from the 'Referer' header, or from an id or token passed with the image request). Then the image is returned and the pageview is recorded. If the viewer clicks on the add, a link also pointing back to the ad server will record a 'clickthrough' and then forward the request on to the advertiser.
The database might look like this (drasticly oversimplified, for example only):
Pages +---------+----------------+ | page_id | name | +---------+----------------+ | 1 | mycoolsite.com | +---------+----------------+ Advertisements +-----------------+------------------+--------------------------------+ |advertisement_id | image_name | target_url | +-----------------+------------------+--------------------------------+ | 1 | banner1_468.png | http://new-amazing-product.com | +-----------------+------------------+--------------------------------+ Actvity +--------------+--------------------+--------+--------+ | page_id | advertisement_id | views | clicks | +--------------+--------------------+--------+--------+ | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | +--------------+--------------------+--------+--------+
In the page which will display the add you'd put this in the html:
<iframe src="http://your-ad-server.com/ads/image?site=1" />
When a user viewed the page, the request for the image would go to the ad-server. The ad-server would look up the request, select an advertisement to show (many proprietary algorithms here), record the request, and finally return the response.
Actvity +--------------+--------------------+--------+--------+ | page_id | advertisement_id | views | clicks | +--------------+--------------------+--------+--------+ | 1 | 1 | * 1 * | 0 | +--------------+--------------------+--------+--------+
The response could contain the following (retreived from the database):
<a href="http://your-ad-server.com/ads/click?id=1">
<img src="http://your-ad-server.com/ads/banner1_468.png" />
</a>
Now the image is loaded and shown on the page. If the user decides to click on it, again the request goes to the ad server which records the click and finally redirects the request to the page being advertised.
GET /ads/click?id=1 301 Moved Permanently Location: http://mycoolsite.com
Actvity +--------------+--------------------+--------+--------+ | page_id | advertisement_id | views | clicks | +--------------+--------------------+--------+--------+ | 1 | 1 | 1 | * 1 * | +--------------+--------------------+--------+--------+
Hello,
There are actually some very specific guidelines for how to measure things like impressions, clicks, conversions, Rich Media Events, etc. These guidelines can be found at the following url: http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/508676/guidelines
If you conform to these guidelines, you can ask IAB to approve your ad server. Once approved, advertisers and publishers should trust the numbers being generated through your reports.