Contents
Understanding Ad Structure in Adacado
Accessing the Editing Ad Size Page
Editing Ad Creative
Editing Ad Settings
Ad Preview
The easiest way to create ads in Adacado is to use one of the many pre-built templates available in the template library. Each template allows you to customize your ads with your own logo, text, image, and product data. For users that want to make additional changes to their ads, this page provides instructions on how to use Adacado’s powerful creative editor to do basic edits and customization.
Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can check out more advanced editing options here:
NOTE: While all the templates in the library can be customized with your logo and product data, there are some specific (“Multiview”) templates that cannot be edited further. Multiview ad templates are ones that visually display more than one product at a time, and these templates cannot be edited in the creative editor.
Understanding Ad Structure in Adacado
Before jumping into how to edit ads with the creative editor, it is helpful to understand how ads are structured in Adacado. The components that make up your ads are Templates, Storyboards, and Themes.
Templates
Templates define the creative look of an ad and what information will be used. A template has a defined size (e.g. 300×250 pixels) and typically includes text and image widgets.
Adacado offers a variety of pre-built templates for different business types, ad sizes, and ad types for use in your campaigns.
Example: Retail Templates
Dynamic Templates
Dynamic templates can be used with an inventory data feed to dynamically pull values (e.g. product image, product title, price, product URL) from your inventory data feed to create hundreds or thousands of ad variations.
Static Templates
Static templates can be customized by uploading assets like your company logo, text message, image, button text, and destination URL. However, static templates cannot be used to create dynamic ads from an inventory data feed.
Accessing the Editing Ad Size Page
To access the “Editing Ad Size” page, click the “Edit this Ad” icon in the individual ad header on the campaign’s CREATIVE page, or click the individual ad size icon in the gray bar.
Accessing this page opens the creative editor where you can add or remove templates, adjust ad settings, or modify the templates used in your ads.
In most cases where your ad (storyboard) contains multiple copies of the same pre-built Adacado template, editing one template will update the rest.
NOTE:
- To open the toolbox, first select a template from the storyboard.
- Save your changes by clicking the red save icon in the left navigation bar of the storyboard.
Editing Ad Creative
To change the style and layout of a template, you can edit individual widgets in the template with the creative editor.
What are Widgets?
Widgets are the individual creative elements that make up the content of a template/ad (e.g. Company Logo, CTA Button Text, Product Image, Product Title, etc.). The template on the storyboard displays the widgets currently in use, and to edit the widgets, click on the image or text in the template, and the widget settings panel of the selected widget opens on the right side of the storyboard page.
Click here to learn more about various widgets offered by Adacado that help you design ads more conveniently and creatively.
Editing Widgets
Reposition, Resize & Rotate Widgets
Click on a widget on the template to select it. When selected, a dashed box appears, showing the edges of the widget. Click and drag the widget to reposition it in the template and click any of the little squares shown on the dashed box to resize the widget.
You can also rotate the individual widget by using the rotation handle of the dashed box.
Right click (Control-click on Mac) on a widget to move a widget in front or behind other widgets.
Adjust Widget Alignment
To align widgets, adjust the horizontal and vertical alignment of individual widgets using the alignment options in the widget settings. You can also select multiple widgets together and arrange them at once.
Select and group multiple widgets by holding down the Shift + click, then right click and choose “Align Options” to align them all at once.
Edit Individual Widget Settings
To change the appearance (e.g. style, color, or alignment) or content (e.g. image or text) of individual widgets, click the image or text in the template to open and edit individual widget settings.
IMPORTANT: If there is no manually entered data or product data present, the default placeholder image and text used for individual widgets will be displayed in the ads.
Image Settings
To customize the template’s default image with your own image, select an image widget (e.g. Image, Image Library, Product Image, CTA Button Image, etc.) and upload your own image or choose one from the Free-to-use Image Library. The image added to the widget is used as a default image if there is no product data or manually input data provided.
NOTE: The maximum image file size that can be uploaded is 10 MB.
Free-to-Use Image/SVG Library
Adacado offers a free-to-use open-source image library with 1.9 million images and SVG (scalable vector graphic) files.
Text Settings
Click the text widget (e.g. product title, promotion text, product price, etc.) on the template to open the text widget settings where you can edit the font style, color, and text alignment.
Font Styles
You can set and adjust the font style, size, line height, and alignment in the text widget settings. To upload a new font, click the arrow in the “Font Family”, select “Custom” in the dropdown, and upload the font file. The font file format must be OpenType (OTF) or True Type (TTF).
Font Color
To change the font color, click the “Font” color box and select one from the color table or enter the hex code. You can also adjust the transparency of the font color.
Maximum Characters for Text
You can set the maximum number of characters to display in the text by adjusting the “Max Chars” settings. This feature is useful for the text widgets that display dynamic text from your product data (e.g. product title or product description) because you can’t always predict how long each text value will be. This can cause some undesired effects.
The value you set for “Max Chars” determines the point at which text will be truncated. Any text containing more than the max characters will be truncated and the text will end with three dots (ellipses). If you notice that text is still being cut off in your ads, lower the value for Max Chars.
Adding Navigation
If you use multiple templates to display multiple products, images, or messages, you can add navigation to the template by choosing one of the options between step and dot navigation. Navigation controls allow viewers to interact with your ads to manually navigate between the different templates in your ad. Learn more about how to add the navigation here.
Adjusting Template Settings
You can adjust the template settings by clicking the icons in the individual template headers.
The features of the template settings are as follows:
- Edit Template Name
- Change Template Border
- Change Template Background
- Edit Destination URL
- Adjust Dynamic Data Settings
The first three features are commonly used, and the last two features are for advanced users. Click here to learn more about the advanced features of the creative editor.
NOTE: We always suggest using a border color that is not white or black for your templates. This helps the ads to be easily distinguished from the background of any webpage where they are displayed. We find that a light grey color works well for most ads.
Editing Ad Settings
When you’re done editing the template, you can now adjust the ad settings on the storyboard page to determine how many products or messages to display in a single ad and in what order. You can also set the template transition style.
Setting the Number of Templates
The number of products or messages you want to show in a single ad will determine the number of templates to add to a storyboard. For example, if you select a pre-built dynamic template from the template library, the storyboard page will display 5 templates for each ad size, which means that 5 different products will be displayed in a single ad using the templates from the storyboard.
You can adjust the number of templates by clicking the “+” icon in the toolbox on the left side of the storyboard page to add templates or removing templates by clicking the trash can icon in the individual template footer.
Template Mix
It is possible to add a mix of different templates into a storyboard. For example, you can use one template that contains only basic elements such as image and text, and another that uses product data to create something like the example below. An ad like this could be used to first show a promotional message before transitioning to products.
You can also determine the order of ad creative by moving templates to different positions with the arrow icon in the template footer. Make sure to click the save icon in the toolbox after making changes.
Setting Template Transition
Using multiple templates in one storyboard will create an ad which content changes after a certain number of seconds. You can adjust how long each template will be shown before transitioning to the next, which ultimately sets the total play length of the ad.
Click “Adjust Template Timing Settings” in the template footer to adjust the template transition timing and style.
Each template will be shown for the set number of seconds seen in the template footer before transitioning to the next, for a maximum of 30 seconds, at which point the ad will stop rotating the templates. If the ad has been displayed for less than 30 seconds when the final template in the storyboard is shown, then the first template will be shown again, and so on, until 30 seconds has elapsed.
You can also adjust the transition style to determine how each template comes into or leaves the view.
Ad Preview
Once you’ve finished editing your ad creatives and settings, you have several options to preview your ad and see what the ad will look like in its final form.
Previewing a Specific Ad Size
Preview ads for a specific ad size by clicking the “Play this ad” icon in the toolbox on the left side of the storyboard page or in the individual ad header on the CREATIVE page.
Dynamic Templates with Product Data
If you’ve added multiple dynamic templates to the storyboard and you’ve already uploaded your inventory data feed to the Adacado system, switch the toggle at the bottom of the “Ad Preview” pop-up to “Show ad with product data”. You will then see an ad showing product data from your data feed.
NOTE: With these “Ad Preview” options, you can only check the visual of your ad. To test your campaign target, you’ll need to check your ads on the preview page.
Previewing All Ad Sizes in Your Campaign
To preview all ad sizes in your campaign on the same screen, please follow these steps:
- Turn on the campaign by switching the toggle to “ON” in the footer.
- Click the “PREVIEW” tab in the footer of the screen.
The Preview page is a custom and shareable link that displays your live ads.
IMPORTANT:
Before you turn on the campaign to preview your ads, make sure you’ve completed all the steps to properly set up your campaign.
If you’re still having trouble or have questions, feel free to reach out to us anytime at support@adacado.com
