Wow! Thank you.

You may be interested two articles I have available on the original web site. The first is an overview, which you can read here, http://coyotesdesigns.com/sponsor-ad-management/. The second is the original User Guide, http://coyotesdesigns.com/sponsor-ad-user-guide/, from which I ported to this site. Please note that I am updating the documentation on this site to reflect the new 2.0 version that I hope to have available for release soon. That means that not all topics discussed on this site are available in the 1.3.0 version that may be downloaded from the WordPress Codex site, or from this site.

I'll try to give you a brief explanation.

We have two sources for Ads we display, a Customer and a Sponsor, collectively called, Sponsors. The Customer is a company/organization/person that wants to place an Ad on our site in exchange for payment. A Sponsor is an organization that offers "programs" in which we wish to participate by presenting products or services in exchange for payment. It is from these two Sponsor types that we have a Program Type and a Revenue Type.

We can participate in one or more Program Types offered by a particular Sponsor. For example, one Sponsor may offer a PPS (Pay Per Signup) where we are paid based on the product or service that is sold to a referred visitor. A Sponsor frequently has more than one Program Type, such as a REV (Revenue Sharing). That same Sponsor may further divide each Program Type into specific conditions such as, with or without a coupon. The plug-in allows us to assign one or more Program Types to a specific Sponsor.

For the Customer who wants to present their Ad on our web site, we can define a Revenue Type to indicate the source of the revenue. For example, we may charge a client a specific amount in exchange for displaying their Ad for a certain duration, or CPD (Cost Per Day). Another Customer, however, may want to pay only for visitor clicks, CPC (Cost Per Click), on their Ad.

We can define any number of Program Types and Revenue Types as necessary. The two are linked together simply for accounting purposes. A Sponsor must have a Program Type defined, but often uses the Revenue Type OPEN. A Customer Must have a Revenue Type defined, but often uses a generic "Customer" Program Type Name. It is entirely up to you how to name these elements. I did provide some common defaults as a starting point.

I hope this helps. Please feel free to continue this discussion in the Forum.
Coyote

There is no 'official' Program Type specification that I know of. The Program Types have been accumulated over the years from different sponsors. I included these as a starting point.

OK, I'm still not sure what to tell the journalists the purpose of this field is. I'll say "This field is used for setting the Program Type" and they'll ask "What do you mean by Program Type?" and I'll say "I have no idea what a Program Type is. Just put in one of the three examples it shows there." And they'll say "OK it shows three examples: PPS, REV, REF - what do these mean and why would I choose one over the others?

So basically I'm looking for a definition. What do you mean by "Program Type" and what happens if someone chooses one or another? And to be crystal clear, are Program Types the same as "Revenue Types" or different?

The Program Type examples are provided as additional hints as to what can be defined. Each plug-in user may have specific Program Types unique to their purpose.

The default types I included with the plug-in install are the most common used by sponsors. But for special circumstances, other types may be defined. For example, CPC (Cost Per Click) is common with Google AdSense, while REV (Revenue Sharing) is common in adult-oriented web sites.

Personally, I have added a CTY (Courtesy) type to denote that an ad display is a courtesy to a client.

I hope this helps.
Coyote

There is no 'official' Program Type specification that I know of. The Program Types have been accumulated over the years from different sponsors. I included these as a starting point.

I wouldn't change the existing items as they are used in the upcoming reporting system. You are free to make up your own that fit your requirements and add to the list.

I hope this helps.
Coyote

Ex., PPS, REV, REF, etc.

But those examples don't match any of the built-in revenue types in the Manage Revenue view. Are they the same and we can pick them free-form? Or should the example types match the built-in revenue types?