SimpleAds: A new advertisement module for Drupal 7

A few months ago I had to develop a Drupal 7 website that was supported by advertising.
After some research I realized that there were no current advertising modules for Drupal 7.
The Advertisement module is the de facto advertisement module for Drupal but a Drupal 7
version wasn't even under development.
So I decided to develop a new contrib module for featuring advertisements on Drupal 7 that was easy-to-use and provided
some some basic statistics. I called it SimpleAds

SimpleAds provides a way to manage advertisements on a Drupal 7 website. It displays graphical, text and flash ads in configurable blocks. It records and reports useful statistics. It is easy to configure and does not depend on other contrib modules.

Features

• Customizable groups for different ad types
• Automatically generates ad blocks for different ad types
• Many configuration options for individual ad blocks including ad size and number of ads to display in a block
• Convenient dashboard for quick review of active ads
• User-friendly ad scheduler makes it easy to schedule ad activation and expiration. (Enter Activation or Expiration Date by typing Now, +1 week, +1 year, etc..)
• Capture useful statistics including ad impressions, clicks for 1 hours, one day, one week, one month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and all time.
• Option to count clicks/impressions only for certain user roles
• Generates live ad statistics report
• Ad blocks can be themed
• Dynamic Ad rotation (configurable on block configuration screen)
• Integration with WYSIWYG module (supports TinyMCE, CKEditor, FCKEditor). Plugin allows to inject Ads into content.
• Integration with Nodequeue module. Display manually ordered ads in blocks.
• Integration with Domain Access module.
• Integration with Views.
• Text Ads allows to advertise any text. If you would like to advertise videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.TV or other sites, simply install Video Filter module and enable WYSIWYG plugin.
• Support Flash Ads. Upload SWF file and it will automatically show up in your block.

Configuration

Image ads

Themable template: simpleads_img_element.tpl.php

Flash ads

Themable template: simpleads_flash_element.tpl.php

Design your flash SWF with the clickTAG standard. Do NOT place a URL in the getURL of your SWF or it will not work correctly in all browsers and you will not get any click-statistics in the SimpleAds module in Drupal. The destination URL should not be located in an SWF's code.

Text/HTML ads

Themable template: simpleads_text_element.tpl.php

This ad type allows to advertise embedded content (via Video module + WYSIWYG plugin), also if you'd like to display plain linked text ads, select Text format Plain text

Integration with Views

By default the SimpleAds module comes with one example block. In order to see it you will need to enable
"SimpleAds Block Example" in admin/structure/views.

Place an ad into multiple blocks

By default Ad Group field supports only 1 value and this is very easy to fix to support multiple values. In order to do that you will need to modify Simple Ad content type here admin/structure/types/manage/simpleads/fields. Click Edit Ad Group field, then change Number of values from 1 to Unlimited.

Blocks

The SimpleAds support dynamic random ads rotation. To enable this feature please configure one of you SimpleAds blocks (see admin/structure/block). By default there are two blocks "Advertisement Block: Sidebar Ads" and "Advertisement Block: Content Ads".

Number of ads to display - set to 2 or more.

Ads order - set the order.

Ads auto rotation type - set rotation type and hit "Save".

New Ad Groups/Ad Blocks

To create new Ad blocks you will need to create a new taxonomy term in the Ad Groups vocabulary.

Statistics

Statistics page: admin/content/simpleads

SimpleAds module allows to control clicks and impressions. For example you may set permission to count anonymous clicks/impressions (restrict/allow clicks/impressions counter for certain user roles).

Also to simplify editing process I decided to redirect editors/admins to actual node instead of ads destination. In order to check redirection you will need to be anonymous user or user that doesn't have permission to edit ads.

Roadmap

The SimpleAds module is currently being used on 434 websites according to Drupal.org. In the two months since first releasing the module in December 2011 I have released seven updates to date.

I am using this module on active websites and continue to develop it. If you find any bugs or have suggestions for improvement please send me your feedback via SimpleAds.