AdRotator for Windows Phone Silverlight

<AdRotator:AdRotatorControl Name="AdRotatorSilverlight"
	Grid.Row="1"
	Height="100"
	VerticalAlignment="Bottom"
	DefaultSettingsFileUri="/BlankSilverlightProject-LocationAware;component/defaultAdSettings.xml"
	SettingsUrl="http://adrotator.apphb.com/defaultAdSettingsSilverlightLoc.xml"
	Margin="1"/>

// Constructor
public MainPage()
{
	InitializeComponent();
	Loaded += new System.Windows.RoutedEventHandler(MainPage_Loaded);
}

void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs e)
{
	AdRotatorSilverlight.Invalidate();
}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<AdSettings xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
	<CultureDescriptors>
    <AdCultureDescriptor CultureName="en-US">
      <Probabilities Probability="16" AdType="Smaato" AppID="65754722" SecondaryID="923855310"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="16" AdType="AdMob" AppID="a14e5b8669ef367"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="15" AdType="InnerActive" AppID="DavideCleopadre_ClockAlarmNightLight_WP7" />
      <Probabilities Probability="15" AdType="MobFox" AppID="1d59fb0a677336d8cd4cbd5c7c117f9d" IsTest="false"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="40" AdType="PubCenter" AppID="test_client" SecondaryID="Image480_80" />
      <Probabilities Probability="10" AdType="AdDuplex" AppID="2859"/>
      <Probabilities AdType="DefaultHouseAd" AppID="http://xna-uk.net/AdRotator/SampleRemoteHouseAd.xaml"/>
    </AdCultureDescriptor>
    <AdCultureDescriptor CultureName="en-GB">
      <Probabilities Probability="20" AdType="Smaato" AppID="65754722" SecondaryID="923855310"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="10" AdType="InnerActive" AppID="DavideCleopadre_ClockAlarmNightLight_WP7" />
      <Probabilities Probability="10" AdType="MobFox" AppID="1d59fb0a677336d8cd4cbd5c7c117f9d" IsTest="false"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="10" AdType="AdDuplex" AppID="2859"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="20" AdType="AdMob" AppID="a14e5b8669ef367"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="20" AdType="PubCenter" AppID="test_client" SecondaryID="Image480_80" />
      <Probabilities AdType="DefaultHouseAd" AppID="http://xna-uk.net/AdRotator/SampleRemoteHouseAd.xaml"/>
    </AdCultureDescriptor>
    <AdCultureDescriptor CultureName="de-DE">
      <Probabilities Probability="25" AdType="Smaato" AppID="65754722" SecondaryID="923855310"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="25" AdType="PubCenter" AppID="test_client" SecondaryID="Image480_80" />
      <Probabilities Probability="25" AdType="AdMob" AppID="a14e5b8669ef367"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="25" AdType="AdDuplex" AppID="2859"/>
      <Probabilities AdType="DefaultHouseAd" AppID="http://xna-uk.net/AdRotator/SampleRemoteHouseAd.xaml"/>
    </AdCultureDescriptor>
		<AdCultureDescriptor CultureName="default">
      <Probabilities Probability="16" AdType="Smaato" AppID="65754722" SecondaryID="923855310"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="16" AdType="AdMob" AppID="a14e5b8669ef367"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="16" AdType="InnerActive" AppID="DavideCleopadre_ClockAlarmNightLight_WP7" />
      <Probabilities Probability="16" AdType="MobFox" AppID="1d59fb0a677336d8cd4cbd5c7c117f9d" IsTest="false"/>
      <Probabilities Probability="16" AdType="PubCenter" AppID="test_client" SecondaryID="Image480_80" />
      <Probabilities Probability="16" AdType="AdDuplex" AppID="2859"/>
      <Probabilities AdType="DefaultHouseAd" AppID="http://xna-uk.net/AdRotator/SampleRemoteHouseAd.xaml"/>
    </AdCultureDescriptor>
	</CultureDescriptors>
</AdSettings>

Configuring it is easy enough, just remove the Ad Providers you don’t use or want (we recommend you actually delete the lines, not set the Probability to 0, you can always add them again later) and then configure the probabilities as you see fit for which ever markets you want.  The whole process goes something like this:

• First we test which country the device is in and look for a configuration for that country or region (we only support full codes in this release – sorry)
• If we find a configuration then we load up all the ad providers and select / cycle them according to the probability of selection you choose, if an Ad Provider does not deliver an Ad we ignore that provider while the app is running and move on to the next probable.  if no providers have Ads the control is disabled
• If we DONT find a configuration for the handsets country we drop to the default configuration

You can of course just supply a “Default” configuration and that will work fine but some Ad Providers don’t perform well or even work in some regions so this is just something to keep in mind.

And that will get you started, if nothing else we recommend you install at least “AdDuplex” as an ad provider no matter what you do, you don’t get paid for the Ad’s but your app gets exposure on all other platforms and devices and works in just about every region, food for thought!

The Local Default House Ad

Now I’ve promised this documentation since 1.1 but haven’t found the time but were rounding up 1.2 here it is.

You should notice the “DefaultHouseAd” line in the configuration above, this comes in two flavours, the first is the Default LOCAL house ad, this simply is a User Control you have generated locally in your project which we can use to display in place of an AD, think of it as your own advert.

Creating your own Ad is extremely simple, just create a new User Control, in the examples it’s called “MyDefaultAd”.  If you want to keep it in a separate folder like we have in the examples then I suggest you create it in the root of your project and then move it there, this saves any namespace confusions later on.

Just make sure it’s dimensions are set to default (auto) and put whatever you want in there, just keep in mind the size of your ads on your page and you’ll be fine.  Ours is a very basic control as shown below:

<UserControl x:Class="BlankSilverlightProject_LocationAware.MyDefaultAd"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    Width="Auto" Tap="UserControl_Tap">

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
        <Grid.Background>
            <ImageBrush Stretch="Fill" ImageSource="AdRotator.png"/>
        </Grid.Background>
        <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Right"
			TextWrapping="Wrap"
			Text="Click here to see more from AdRotator"
			VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Margin="0,10,10,0"
			Foreground="#FFFD0000" FontWeight="Bold"/>
    </Grid>
</UserControl>

Just a very simple image with some text, but go wild.  As for interaction you can either wire up the “Tap” event on one of the controls inside your user control as we have done above, or just configure it later by hooking up to AdRotators “AdClicked” event, completely up to you.

To activate your local House Ad, just instantiate it in the Page’s “Loaded” event before you call “Invalidate” and set it to the “DefaultHouseAdBody” property like this:

// Constructor
public MainPage()
{
	InitializeComponent();
	Loaded += new System.Windows.RoutedEventHandler(MainPage_Loaded);
}

void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs e)
{
	AdRotatorSilverlight.DefaultHouseAdBody = new MyDefaultAd();
	AdRotatorSilverlight.Invalidate();
}

Then either when there is no network or (if you assign a probability to your House Ad) it will cycle in with the probability preference you set.  Only the “DefaultHouseAd” supports having no Ad Probability which simply means it will be the default case if NO ads can be sourced from your other Ad Providers.

The Remote Default House AD

One of the other capabilities we included with V1.1 was the ability to add your own updatable remote Ad, this is purely a piece of XAML on your own server that you can change and it will be updated in your App without rebuilding it again. (if you’re interested in how this is done simply look in the “DefaultHouseAd.XAML.CS” file in source we won’t be offended since we had to learn it from someone else anyway )

There are a few restrictions with the remote ad which should come as no surprise:

• No code behind (since there isn’t one!)
• Images and other assets must come from the web, cannot reference local project assets
• No namespaces that cannot be sourced externally, no internal libraries!
• Absolutely no cats or mice allowed

Ok I made the last one up but you get the picture, the sample we provide on our service looks like this:

<UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
             xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006">

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
    	<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
    		<ColumnDefinition Width="90"/>
    		<ColumnDefinition/>
    	</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
        <StackPanel HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                    VerticalAlignment="Top" Grid.Column="1" Margin="5">
            <TextBlock Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextNormalStyle}"
                       TextWrapping="Wrap"
                       Text="An Example Default House Ad"
                       Margin="5"/>

            <HyperlinkButton NavigateUri="http://wp7adrotator.codeplex.com/"
                             TargetName="_blank"
                             HorizontalAlignment="Center"
                             Padding="0"
                             Content="http://wp7adrotator.codeplex.com/"
                             Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneAccentBrush}" Margin="0,10,0,0" />

        </StackPanel>
        <Image Source="http://adrotator.apphb.com/XNADefaultHouseAdRemote.jpg"
			Stretch="UniformToFill" Margin="0" />
    </Grid>
</UserControl>

Just a basic control with an image and a hyperlink button for clicking, but I can change this frequently to push users to the marketplace for my other apps or even another page on my own website.

With that in place you just need to configure the “APPID” property of the Ad Provider configuration as shown in the main Config XML sample above.

You can of course just use a remote ad and not provide a local one, it’s completely up to you (but if your app has No network available at the time of running, it won’t show Ads and AdRotator will be disabled)

So there’s V1 of AdRotator for Silverlight complete

Were now focusing on working a V2 of AdRotator which will be a breaking change version because we want to mainly rip apart the config XML, up to now all the changes have been FULLY backwards compatible with older versions of the config XML, the main reason we want to do this is to allow for multiple configurations of each Ad Provider, then you can cycle between different AdUnits or even provider more than one concurrent House Ad (which will be good for the XBOX version since there is no internet )

Don’t forget were not completely done with V1 as yet, there are still versions being done for:

• Mono / Monogame
• Windows 8
• Windows Desktop
• XBOX360

These will just be feature ports and we’re not adding any more new functionality in, that’ll be for V2 (of course if there is a bug raised we’ll still fix it if appropriate)

For questions, feedback or to let us know how you’re using AdRotator then drop us a line in the discussions on the codeplex site or even log an issue!