Tag: geotargeting

AdRotate Pro 5.13 – Quality of life improvements

AdRotate Professional 5.13 improves and fixes a number of things in the Advertiser dashboard and improves management of advertiser created adverts. Color coding of ads now works more logical and the moderation dropdown menu when approving or rejecting ads works easier now.

AdRotate Pro has been tested to work on WordPress 6.3.1. A new version of MobileDetect has been bundled. MobileDetect handles on which device or operating system adverts are shown. And the AdRotate Geo database, on my server, has been updated to the latest GeoIP database from Maxmind. This is of-course important for Geo Targeting accuracy.

Setting up AdRotate Professional with Google Analytics 4 Earlier this year AdRotate Pro stats for Google Analytics 4 got overhauled. If you’re using GA4 you can read in the manuals below how to set it up. Several people have voiced concerns over missing data or events not being reported to Google Analytics. I have tested this and both the Universal Tag and Tag Manager implementation work as intended with all data being present. The dashboard from Google Analytics 4 is really terrible set up though, so it’s easy to miss where your data goes. I don’t use GA4 myself, if someone knowledgable with its event reporting has a better idea to send/receive data for stats then get in touch, perhaps we can improve the display of data withe a better manual or by sending events differently.

Changes in AdRotate Professional 5.13

  • [fix] Typo in DONOTCACHEOBJECT constant name
  • [fix] Wrong weight for advertiser created adverts
  • [fix] Advert status selector when moderating advertiser adverts
  • [update] Updated MobileDetect to version 3.74
  • [tweak] Description text for Advert Generator
  • [tweak] Added title to weekday ticks for schedules
  • [tweak] Added title to impression ticks for schedules
  • [new] Devices logic checks to advertiser dashboard
  • [new] Dashboard notification when ads are queued up
  • [removed] Experimental weight levels from advertiser dashboard
  • [api] Updated AdRotate Geo IP/country database

Download

The update is available now, you can update through automatic updates in your dashboard or via direct download in your dashboard. Or if you do not have AdRotate Pro yet, get your copy today through the product pages below.

AdRotate Pro 5.8.24 – Tweaks and fixes

AdRotate Pro header

More tweaks and little improvements to the plugin to further streamline the advertising experience. Stats checkboxes now work more intuitively and certain functions are excluded from running for WP CLI and wp-cron to optimize performance and prevent errors.

As you may have noticed, the clicks and impressions tracking checkboxes for adverts didn’t work for Matomo and Google Analytics – This has been fixed. You can now send either clicks, impressions or both to Matomo or Google Analytics. Also included are a few fixes for warnings or errors that may pop up in certain situations. AdRotate Pro now better deals with it or prevents the issue from cropping up in the first place.

And to improve support for WP CLI (WordPress through the Command Line Interface) certain functions related to Geo Targeting and Sessions are excluded from running. This saves you lookups keeps things fast, but also prevents a weird quirk that often generate a PHP Warning.

Blocks

Do you use the new AdRotate Pro Blocks? Did you notice they’re there? If not AdRotate Pro has support for blocks for WordPress its’ Gutenberg editor. This was added a few months ago. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below! If you look in the block editor you’ll find two blocks available, one for groups and one for single adverts that you can use in posts and pages as well as widget replacements. In the block editor simply search for ‘AdRotate’, ‘Banner’ or some other relevant keywords and you’ll find the blocks easily.

Of-course AdRotate Pro with blocks is still compatible with ClassicPress as well.

Update regularly!

Staying up-to-date with plugins is important and is almost never a bad thing. Updates are important for your website security. But more often updates also add new or improve features as well. Updates are available via your dashboard and require no special knowledge to install, this makes it extremely easy to keep your site secure and have the latest features.

Changes in AdRotate Professional 5.8.24

  • [fix] Better handling when group css is not loading
  • [fix] Stats tracking checkboxes now also work for Google Tracker
  • [fix] Stats tracking checkboxes now also work for Matomo Tracker
  • [fix] Missing variable $schedule_warning in some new setups
  • [tweak] Don’t do sessions and geo targeting for CLI
  • [tweak] Don’t do sessions and geo targeting for cron

Download

AdRotate Geo for AdRotate Pro updated

AdRotate Geo Service just a new database. Up-to-date everything. New IP ranges, improved accuracy and all the latest Geo information you’ll need to get your adverts to the right audience. Periodic updates of AdRotate Geo are necessary to keep things accurate and fast.

Accuracy

AdRotate Geo almost never uses the latest data, so over time the accuracy erodes a bit. 2 or 3 times a year the database gets refreshed with the latest data which fixes that. As you may know AdRotate Geo uses MaxMinds GeoLITE2 databases. Which are pretty good. They’re also pretty big. So updating them is a bit of a hassle. Anyway, as of today they are up-to-date again.

New data should trickle in as your caches and session data expires over the next few days. You can expect to see an improvement in accuracy within a few days.

What is AdRotate Geo

If you use AdRotate Pro you probably know what AdRotate Geo is. This is my self-hosted, or custom built, geo targeting service. Not everyone wants to or can afford external geo targeting services. So I’ve made my own. This is super useful if you want to target certain areas in the world like a city, state or country with your adverts.

Access to AdRotate Geo is included with your license for AdRotate Pro and you can easily enable it from your dashboard through Settings > Geo Targeting.

Geo Targeting is a useful tool for targeted adverts. If you’re selling or promoting something to people living in New York. It usually makes no sense to show that advert to someone in Tokyo. So to fix that you use Geo Targeting. Likewise if you have a product that applies to Spanish speaking people. Other languages probably don’t need to see that. So you can use Geo Targeting to target Spanish speaking countries.

Download

AdRotate Pro 5.8.17 – Maintenance release and several bug-fixes

AdRotate Pro header

A few quirks and bugs have been squashed. Small but important changes to the dashboard to no longer give errors when viewing a graph. Better handling of failing servers for Geo Location. And some other stuff.

PHP8

A number of compatibility issues with PHP8 have recently been resolved and AdRotate Pro should now work properly on it. Please if you find quirks or errors when using PHP8 let me know as soon as possible and include the error message so I can fix them in the next update.

Update slowdown

As you’ve probably noticed updates have slowed quite a bit over the last few months. This is mostly because I was on a road trip which turned out to be much more demanding than expected. Internet services along the way kinda sucked, too. That’s the official reason anyway. Really though, for the most part being on a large road trip is an intense experience and I didn’t feel like thinking or focussing about other things for a while.

Now, the adventure is over for the time being. I’ve rented an apartment without an end-date so I can focus and catch up on work again. This means, once I find my footing and figure some things out, updates should be more forthcoming.

AdRotate Swap

I’m still working on AdRotate Swap. The unique and new approach to website promotion. AdRotate Swap will be added to a future version of AdRotate and AdRotate Pro. AdRotate Swap is an easy way to promote your website for free on websites that use AdRotate or AdRotate Pro. Every AdRotate and AdRotate Pro user can participate.

If you have thoughts or comments about this new feature, let me know in the comments or through the contact form!

Update regularly!

Staying up-to-date with plugins is important and is almost never a bad thing. Updates are important for your website security. But more often updates also add new or improve features as well. Updates are available via your dashboard and require no special knowledge to install, this makes it extremely easy to keep your site secure and have the latest features.

Changes in AdRotate Professional 5.8.17

  • [fix] Notice about height on stats
  • [fix] Overall stats now only count active adverts
  • [fix] Archiving adverts deleted wrong stats in some cases
  • [fix] Uninstaller calling unused/broken functions
  • [fix] Geo Targeting now properly handles failed server responses

Download

AdRotate Pro 5.8.14 – Fixed advertisers, better Geo Targeting

AdRotate Pro header

A redesigned dashboards for all kinds of features. Revised settings for Advertiser management and update the advertiser dashboards. Geo Targeting prioritizes matching differently and the option to disable Dynamic groups for mobile is back.

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