Ad Tags are the HTML code a browser uses to fetch an advertisement from an Ad Server.
At the basic level, Ad Tags are used for a few main purposes:
Publishers place ad tags on a website to sell ad space
Advertiser use ad tags to direct the browser to a particular image or flash creative
These tags are essentially the same in structure: they are all requests for content of a certain size and type from a certain URL. The content is either a creative or another ad tag, and it may be returned immediately in one step or after multiple steps (an auction, redirects, etc.) each with its own tag.
Please note: Sulvo's ad server requires ad tags in both the header and the body of the page the ads show. When creating a new ad, please be sure to copy and place both tags.
How Ad Tags work
Below is a description of how the ad tag process works. This is a general example and does not explain the Sulvo methodology:
When a user visits a publisher web site, the browser sends an ad tag to the ad server. This ad tag contains information about the user and the ad itself.
The ad server may add data from a third-party data provider to retrieve information about user segmenting or contextual targeting.
The ad server passes an ad tag to the advertisers. This may mean directly requesting ads for guaranteed buys, or it may involve requesting bids from multiple advertisers and carrying out an auction to determine the most profitable result for the publisher.
The ad server delivers the ad to the browser. Typically, this means returning an ad tag with a creative URL, with the creative itself hosted on an independent content server.
For problematic implementations, please see our help center article about the topic by searching "problematic implementations".