Companion Positioning Options

[domainarchitect]

I think I learned exactly how companion positioning works, but I can't seem to find a way to do what I want.

I have 4 zones with 3 different ad sizes:
728x90 (zone 1)
300x250 (zones 2 and 4)
125x125 (zone 3)

There are 12 instances of Zone 3 running on the site and I am taking advantage of the single page call feature of openX.

I ONLY want to show banners from the same campaign for Zones 1 and 2. I DON'T want to run an ad more than once on the same page.

I created two REMNANT campaigns for each advertiser, one for companion ads and one for non companion ads. I selected the 'Companion Positioning' option for the Companion Ad Campaign. I linked the Companion Ads Campaign to Zone 1 and Zone 2. I linked the Non Companion Ad Campaign to Zone 3 and Zone 4.

Unfortunately, I cannot get Zones 3 and 4 to display ads when the 'Companion Positioning' is selected for the Compainion Ads Campaigns so can anybody shed some light on how to accomplish this:

I ONLY want to show banners from the same campaign for Zones 1 and 2. I don't care that Zones 3 and 4 display ads from different campaigns.

[The Guru]

Hi domainarchitect,

Ultimately, you cannot do exactly what you are asking. You can either run the non-companion campaign banners in the first two zones on the page, and then run the companion campaign banners in the second two zones, and it should work fine. However, if you want the companion campaign banners in the first two zones on your page, and the non-companion campaign banners in the second two zones, then you can't do it.

You could have it work if you don't care about the second two (non-companion) zones potentially showing duplicate banners, though -- or if you can link the banners to second two zones so that duplicate banner display can never occur anyway...

Sincerely,

[domainarchitect]

You can either run the non-companion campaign banners in the first two zones on the page, and then run the companion campaign banners in the second two zones, and it should work fine. However, if you want the companion campaign banners in the first two zones on your page, and the non-companion campaign banners in the second two zones, then you can't do it.

If I understand what you wrote, then I can run random banners from non companion campaigns in Zones 1 and 2 and Zones 3 and 4 would be able to display the companion campaign banners without problem but I can't do the opposite? If so, is that because once a companion campaign runs in a zone then all later zones must comply with that but its not required of all previous zones?

Or did I misunderstand?

[The Guru]

Hi domainarchitect,

You are spot on in your understanding.

The other thing you can do is run the "non-companion" zones using the iframe zone tag, which does not support companion positioning, which would get around the issue -- but then, you would not be able to apply the "Don't show the same banner again on the same page" option for the iframe zones!

Sincerely,