Hey Robert, I think the main thing right now is that we still serve the first three fixed ads (top, middle and bottom) before we serve the automatic ad spot. We did this just so that people didn't accidentally lose assigned ads when they added an automatic ad.

Also, remember that with a interval of 5 paragraphs before each ad, you're going to have 5 paragraphs, then fixed top asset, then 5 paragraphs, then middle, etc. So, if you want ads every 5 paragraphs, I would recommend assigning ads to the fixed top, middle and bottom spots in addition to the automatic ads. 

Do you know what you want to have in these spots? Sounds like you were thinking Ad Sense? Do you have that set up as a block or an ad now?

Okay one sec... the block widget iframe is working now (I see the "Sample 3" ad) so that's good.

One thing to note, for any block ad (or for any block for that matter) you can go to:

https://www.example.com/tncms/block/xxxxxxxx/

So, if you are troubleshooting why an ad block isn't showing up... one thing would be to see if that ad shows up with you go directly to it as described above.

Hey Robert, Would you mind putting back the ad the way you want it and then we can take a quick look? It looks like the settings are set up right now, but the ad itself doesn't have anything assigned to it.

Hi Nick!

So happy you're trying this!

A few things:

1. You'll need to make sure to choose the new ad layout option... it's under the Advertising property group (in URL properties) and is called "ads on article pages." Choose "automatic ad placement."

2. The fixed big ad spot will show up on all stories (even one paragraph ones). The middle and bottom only show up if you can "afford" them in terms of paragraphs. After that, we have a new position that you can define that will repeat for every X paragraphs after that. I am not 100% sure about this, but I think it is possible that you can create an Ad Manager ad block that has the "region" set as fixed-big-ad-top-asset and that might work. Ad Manager will not show the same ad more than once, so you'd have to have multiple ads in rotation... but if you do, I think that would work. 

3. The "automatic block ID" is the numeric ID of the block itself, not the region name. So you'll need to change that as well. Just create an ad block, make the region "fixed-big-ad-top-asset," get the block ID (which is in the title of the block when you're editing it), and then enter the block here. The ID will be a six or seven digit number.

One last thing... so in this case, you're going to lose some impressions for your middle and bottom asset, because they won't run on short stories (contrary to how they do on the default ad layout behavior). Because you can't "afford" them in terms of paragraphs on those short stories.

But, in general, we see that when you have longer stories, you gain some impressions because of the new automatic ad spot. In your proposal, you'll be taking impressions from middle and bottom, and giving all of the new impressions to top. So top will be a lot more impressions than middle and bottom, whereas they should have been somewhat equal before.

Many times the top slot is your local ads and you WANT them to get as much traffic as possible, and if so, this is will be great for you. Or, if you have all local ads rotating equally in all three positions - which, looking briefly at your set up, is the case for you. So, this should work great.

But, perhaps for other people reading this, if you have different advertisers sold in all three spots, just note that the middle and bottom will likely lose a good percentage of their previous impressions, and the new automatic spot (whatever region you assign to that) will gain impressions.

Does that make sense?

Here is a step-by-step guide that goes through this process in detail: https://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/applications/marketplace/banner_ads/article_e2f13ee6-db5a-11e7-9fbe-d3d198e52b03.html 

The new automatic ad placement provides what we spoke about in this ticket... it has automatic ads but also has a better layout for short stories. Let me know what you think!

https://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/releases/software_releases/article_cbd40150-fb0e-52bc-aa8b-0caf7cd183bf.html

I posted this on another thread too, but just to give you all the updated as well:

Just FYI... unfortunately Comment Mirroring is being deprecated at Facebook, per this post: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2017/11/07/changes-developer-offerings/

I think we had basically figured out that this wasn't working because Facebook wasn't fully following our redirects (though they do for "likes") but I assume that will not be fixed now.

Let me know if you have any questions or if you have any updated information.

Just FYI... unfortunately Comment Mirroring is being deprecated at Facebook, per this post: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2017/11/07/changes-developer-offerings/

I think we had basically figured out that this wasn't working because Facebook wasn't fully following our redirects (though they do for "likes") but I assume that will not be fixed now.

Let me know if you have any questions or if you have any updated information.