What is a House Ad?

A default or house ad is a catchall set in Indie Ads Manager to display when no other ad item can be served. These can be very useful for selling the ad spot directly or when you are using programmatic sources and want to make sure failed auctions still receive an ad. House ads can also offset potential issues with Unique Delivery.

House ads are ads run on your publication to promote an internal initiative or key content. They are often used to backfill your ad inventory if it is not full. Some examples of house ads you could run are:

  • Subscribe to our newsletter
  • Become a paid subscriber
  • Advertise with us
  • Attend an event/ticket sales

How Do They Work?

House ads are set on a per zone basis, and can be either a campaign or an ad item added directly to the zone. A successfully set house ad will serve when no other placement can. Even if the house ad is paused, it will still show if nothing else can.

Setting a house ad does not cause the ad to ignore its schedule. Rather, a default ad can be thought of as having two schedules, its defined one and a second, last resort schedule. If you only want a default ad to show when no other ads can, it's best to disable the ad by clicking the Status button.

How to Set Up a House or Default Ad

  1. Create the default ad item. You can do this directly within the relevant zone or within a campaign.
  2. If you create the ad item within a campaign, assign the campaign to the relevant zone. When creating the ad item within the relevant zone or while assigning the campaign to the zone, select House [1] as the Priority.
  3. Go to the section of the zone where you assigned the default ad or campaign.
  4. Check the box beside the placement you will be using as the house ad.
  5. Click the Default button at the bottom of the table.
  6. The placement will be labeled default ad to indicate your changes.