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How to Display Targeted Advertisements

For the latest version of Commerce Server 2007 Help, see the Microsoft Web site.

You can target advertisements through page group or user profiles. This topic demonstrates how to target users based on a page group.

To display targeted advertisements

  1. Create a TargetingContextProfile. Specify the PageGroup ad that you want.

  2. Create a ContentSelector object and set its properties.

  3. Set the ad Size.

  4. Use GetContent to retrieve ad content.

  5. Bind the results to a repeater.

  6. Dump out trace messages.

Example

The following code creates a targeting profile, a user profile, runs the ContentSelector object, and displays targeted advertisements on an ASP.NET Web form.

TargetedAd.aspx

<%@ Page Language="C#" Trace="false" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="TargetedAd.aspx.cs" Inherits="TargetedAd" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head >
    <title>Code to Display Targeted Advertisements</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="Targeting" method="post" >
        <h3 id="H31" >
            Display an advertisement targeting the UserObject and TargetingContext. 
            profiles.</h3>
        <h4 class="dtH4">You must create an ad within a "<b>Sports</b>" page group
            before running this example.&nbsp;Otherwise no ads will be returned.
            You can also change the page group within the code to work with other page groups.</h4>
        <p class="dtH4">
            <asp:Button id="ButtonShowAds" Text="Show Sports Ads"  OnClick="ShowAds_OnClick" /></p>
        <p class="dtH4">
            <asp:Repeater id="repeaterShowAds" >
                <HeaderTemplate>
                    <table border="1">
                        <tr>
                            <td><b>Sports Ads</b></td>
                        </tr>
                </HeaderTemplate>
                <ItemTemplate>
                    <tr>
                        <td>
                            <%# Container.DataItem %>
                        </td>
                    </tr>
                </ItemTemplate>
                <FooterTemplate>
                    </TABLE>
                </FooterTemplate>
            </asp:Repeater></p>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

TargetedAd.aspx.cs

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime;
using Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.Profiles;
using Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.Caching;
using Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.Targeting;
using Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.Pipelines;
using Microsoft.CommerceServer.Runtime.Diagnostics;

public partial class TargetedAd : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    }

    public void ShowAds_OnClick(Object sender, EventArgs args)
    {
        CommerceContext csContext = CommerceContext.Current;
        //
        // Create a targeting profile. Specify the ad page group that you want here.
        //
        csContext.TargetingSystem.TargetingContextProfile["PageGroup"].Value = "Boots";

        //
        // Create a ContentSelector object and set its properties.
        //
        ContentSelector cso = CommerceContext.Current.TargetingSystem.SelectionContexts["advertising"].GetSelector();
        cso.Profiles.Add("targetingContext", csContext.TargetingSystem.TargetingContextProfile);
        
        cso.TraceMode = false;   //to view debug information.
        cso.ItemsRequested = 1;

        //Set the ad size.
        //Available tags are stored in the Content Sizes reference table.
        cso.Size = "Banner";   
        
        //
        // Get some content.
        //
        StringCollection content = cso.GetContent();
        //
        // Bind the results to a repeater.
        //
        if (content.Count > 0)
        {
            repeaterShowAds.DataSource = content;
            repeaterShowAds.DataBind();
        }

        //
        // Dump out trace messages.
        //
        if (cso.TraceMessages != null)
        {
            DebugMessage("<table>", "");
            DebugMessage("Targeting Sample", "Trace Messages");
            int index = 0;
            foreach (StringCollection messages in cso.TraceMessages)
            {
                DebugMessage("Targeting Sample", "Content item row index=" + index++);
                foreach (string message in messages)
                {
                    DebugMessage("Targeting Sample", message);
                }
            }
            if (index == 0)
            {
                DebugMessage("Targeting Sample", "It looks like there were no ads on schedule.");
            }
        }
        else
        {
            DebugMessage("Targeting Sample", "ContentSelection tracing is unavailable.");
        }
        DebugMessage("Targeting Sample", "Dumping out contents of selectionContext...");
        ContentSelectionContext selectionContext = csContext.TargetingSystem.SelectionContexts["advertising"];
        foreach (string key in selectionContext)
        {
            DebugMessage("Targeting Sample", "key=" + key + " value=" + selectionContext[key].ToString());
        }
        DebugMessage("</table>", "");
    }

    void DebugMessage(string Category, string Message)
    {
        //csContext.DebugContext.Trace("Targeting Sample", "Trace Messages");
        Response.Write("<tr><td>" + Category + "</td><td>" + Message + " </td></tr>");
    }
}

See Also

Other Resources

What Are Page Groups?

Marketing Run-time Scenarios