Topic: RadioSparx - Custom Features (Stations, Schedules, Ads, and Auto-DJ)
Article ID: KB3837
Last Reviewed: Oct 17, 2016
| Custom Ads Help Info With this option, you can upload MP3 audio files that you have created externally from this site, to intersperse with your live music stream. To control the rotation of each file you upload, configure each ad to have a specific repeat interval (e.g. every 30 minutes, for example), with a specific start and stop time each day. Audio Ad Format When you create your audio ad files, please make sure to format them as stereo (not mono!) MP3 files encoded at 128Kbps. If your ad files are not created in stereo, this can cause timing problems when interspersed with the stereo music tracks that play at this website. Configuration Recommendation for Multiple Ads As a general strategy for configuring multiple ads, stagger the start of each different ad by whatever interval you want the ads to play at, and set a repeat interval that matches the number of ads you have. For instance, say you have exactly 4 ads, and you want a different ad to play every 15 minutes. So you would configure it like this for instance: Ad Start time Interval 1 6:00 a.m. 60 minutes 2 6:15 a.m. 60 minutes 3 6:30 a.m. 60 minutes 4 6:45 a.m. 60 minutes This will make Ad #1 play at 6:00 a.m., 7:00 a.m., 8:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., etc., whereas Ad #2 will play at 6:15 a.m., 7:15 a.m., 8:15 a.m., etc. If you have more ads than this, you can either increase the interval or adjust the start time, or both. Play Ads Between Tracks or Interrupt Tracks By default, each scheduled ad will play either just before or just after the song that would normally be playing around the ad’s next scheduled play time, rather than interrupting a song in the middle. If desired, however, you can override this default behavior by configuring the "Timing Urgency" option to use the "Exact" option, which will then cause the ad to play at exactly the pre-configured time interval, stopping any currently playing music track in the middle of the track, if necessary. Deploying Custom Ads for Specific Users or User Groups You can choose exactly who each custom ad should play for. At the bottom of the Audio Ad Settings screen, choose the desired user groups or individual users that the ad will play for. Preventing Multiple Ads from Playing Back-to-Back If you have configured multiple ads with different schedules and want to ensure that a situation does not arise where two ads play back-to-back, you can force there to be a minimum spacing between any two ads by settings the Inter-Ad Spacing Interval under the Player Settings screen. Ads Are Disabled Automatically After End Date/Time Has Passed After the configured end date and time for an ad has passed, the ad's status will automatically be changed from active to inactive. You can always re-activate an ad that has been disabled, to make it play again as desired. Additional Examples Suppose
you have one ad that you want to have play 4 times per hour, all day long. So, the start time could be, for example, 7:00
a.m. with a repetition of 15 minutes. With
this, the ad will play at the following times:
And so on. Sometimes a problem can occur if you configure too many ads (say 30 ads, for example) to play at the same time (i.e. say all of them have a start time of 7:00 a.m.) and they all have the same repeat interval of 15 minutes. This means that at 7:00 a.m. the player will try to play all the ads scheduled for 7:00 a.m. until there are no more ads left to play. If all of the ads end up taking up more than 15 minutes to play, by then you’re at 7:15 and so the cycle starts all over again, playing only ads. To ensure that there is music between ads, configure only one ad spot for each 5-minute interval. This way, the ad plays and then whatever time is left within that 5-minute period, music will play. So, for example, you could set the start time for a set of 12 different ads each as follows:
This will ensure that all 12 ads will play during the 7:00 hour, with music between each ad. So, in this scenario, if you have up to 36 ads to play throughout the day, you would need around 3 hours total to play them all (12 per hour X 3 hours = 36 ads can be accommodated with this timing technique). As a result, the repeat interval for each ad would be 3 hours. |
