ARW: Ad Placement Reports Show "Unknown placement location"

ID: Q189752

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Analysis - Report Writer
Microsoft Site Server version 3.0

SYMPTOMS

Usage Analysis Ad Placement reports show "Unknown placement location" for all ad requests and clicks.

CAUSE

NOTE: Site Server misspells the referrer field as "referer."

Adlogconvert transforms the Internet Information Server (IIS) log file into an advertising log file. In the process, it moves the target (uri-stem) field into the referrer field. But the target is not in the format expected by Usage Import, because it does not have the <http://server> prefix. Usage Import therefore ignores the referrer, and the Ad Placement report shows "Unknown placement location" in the Ad Placement reports.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, do the following:

Step 1

Open \Microsoft Site Server\bin\AdLogConvert.vbs in a text editor.

Edit line #337 in the OutputLine subroutine.

Change:


        fields("cs(Referer)") = fields("cs-uri-stem")

to:


       fields("cs(Referer)") = "http://" & fields("s-computername") &
       fields("cs-uri-stem")

It is also a good idea at this time (but not required; see the note at the end of this article) to comment out or delete lines 426-430 in the FixClickReferer subroutine:


    ' Remove any http://machinename prefix

    if Ucase(left(strTempReferer, 7)) = "HTTP://" then
        p = instr(8, strTempReferer, "/")
        if p > 0 then strTempReferer = mid(strTempReferer, p)
    end if

Step 2

Ensure that IIS logs the Server Name field in the IIS log files with ad requests in them.

Open the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in for IIS. Select the Web site running ads.

Right-click the Web site and select Properties in the Active Log Format drop-down list.

Make sure that either W3C format (recommended) or IIS log format is selected. If you select W3C format, click Properties and then click the Extended Properties tab. If the Server Name check box is not selected, select it and click OK.

See the "Configuring the IIS Log File" topic in the AdServer chapter of the Site Server Commerce Edition documentation for information about the minimum set of other fields that should be logged.

Step 3

Be sure that Usage Import is configured with your local (LAN) server names in the list of Home Page URLs. This step does not apply to servers on a LAN that do not have a DNS address.

Start Usage Import. On the View menu, select the Server Manager window.

Right-click the Site or Sites that are configured for importing advertising log files. If the local server name is not already in the "Home Page URLs" field, add it to the list (separate entries in the list with spaces). For example, if the site name is example.microsoft.com, but the server name is Onyx, then the list should contain <http://example.microsoft.com> and <http://Onyx>.

If this step is not completed, Usage Import does not recognize the referrers in the log file as belonging to the server and ignores them, causing the Ad Placement report to continue to show "Unknown placement location" for each advertisement.

NOTE: The standard ad placement report shipped with Analysis Report Writer has a section for the top 25 locations by ad click rate and columns for the number of clicks and click rate by page. However, Usage Import currently does not import referrer information with ad click records, so the ad clicks and ad click rate columns will always be zero.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Site Server version 3.0.

Additional query words: referrers


Keywords          : prodsitesrv3 prodARW 
Version           : WINNT:3.0
Platform          : winnt 
Issue type        : kbbug

Last Reviewed: July 19, 1999