Gossamer Forum
Quote Reply
AdCycle
I have been testing AdCycle to find out if it works for my needs. My big question is why do I get the banners so slowly? How much does AdCycle take resources from the server? I checked also other sites usign AdCycle and even www.adcycle.com and they all show the banners slowly and as a last picture on their pages with even many seconds delay.

Do you know any other banner rotation and statistcs application that would be quicker?

Lauri

Quote Reply
Re: AdCycle In reply to
Hi,

To speed up serving of ads, you may want to look at persistent environments like mod_perl. Or you may want to also look at AdvertPro: http://www.advertpro.com/, both of which support Links SQL.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
Quote Reply
Re: AdCycle In reply to
I'm wondering here, I hadn't looked at adcycle in a long time and I've been using advertpro. The problem I see is that advertpro doesn't support mod_perl, while adcycle not only supports that but now has their own daemon that can be run. (I know advertpro does support fast cgi, but it seems everytime I have gone to advertpro's site over the past six months, the date for the release of mod perl is two months away). In the past I've always heard that adcycle had lots of problems iwth memory leaks which from their board don't seem to be happening these days. Is advertpro still really the application for larger sites? Is anyone running adcycle in the 10-50 mil/month range? Is it performing okay? What is the consensus decision these days on the better of the two for higher volume?
Thx.


Quote Reply
Re: AdCycle In reply to
We have repeatedly delayed support for mod_perl, however it is really going to be done in a month. We had intended to have it done a month ago, but the person we contracted out to make it run under mod_perl ended up getting it done but then tried to get an outrageous amount of money out of us for their work. So, we're now working on doing it ourselves which is what we should have done from the start!

Anyhow, running AdvertPRO under mod_perl is going to yield some very desirable results. It's going to be capable of serving over 150-200 million ads per month.

I'm not sure how AdCycle performs in the 10-50 million ads per month range, but all of our customers that previously used AdCycle have said that AdvertPRO performs better. AdvertPRO is going to perform much better under mod_perl. We're able to cache data from queries and keep database connections open constantly. All in all, it's roughly 5-10 times faster than the current version running under FastCGI.

- Mike Cherichetti (AdvertPRO Programmer)

Quote Reply
Re: AdCycle In reply to
Hello,

I've tested out both programs, Adcycle and AdvertPro in several environments, but not under mod_perl. I'll be migrating my server over to mod_perl if I can ever get the current apache to compile properly under Solaris 7. <sigh>

I can safely say that there is absolutely no comparason between the two as far as speed and performance. AdvertPro has performed hands down as the winner. I get virtually no broken images, while I get a high number with Adcycle, even under fairly low load.

That is not to say (as I said in another message) that this is the right program for "your" needs. Adcycle is a full functioned, and nice program, and for smaller lower volume sites, might actually do a "better" job in filling a webmasters specific needs. But....

.... if you are using Links SQL, and you have a large, active site, or are already having to upgrade to mod_perl for performance, and you expect to grow .... I think you have no choice but to go with AdvertPro.

Can't wait to see the AdvertPro mod_perl rewrite :)




PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.
Quote Reply
Re: AdCycle In reply to
Thanks pugdog, yes I need mod_perl on my banners for performance - I'm running my forums on it now. I've been running AdvertPro for probably almost a year now and I have been happy with it. It's just that now I need to squeeze every bit of performance I can out of this server. I've already offloaded the advertpro database to a spare server so I can maximize mysql for what I need it for (my forums peak at 250 to 300 simultaneous users).

btw - since you have tested out adcycle, have you ever been able to call an adcycle banner from another perl script. I've tried the standard system call, but all I seem to get back is the cookie info, which is the same thing I get if I execute adcycle.cgi from the command line. I am testing out their daemon setup which seems to be running fine so far, but I haven't put it into any real load situation yet. If you have any idea on how to get the actual banner info returned by calling adcycle as a system call from another perl script, I'd be most appreciative.

Thx.
Quote Reply
Re: AdCycle In reply to
 
Unfortunately I haven't delved that deeply into Adcycle code, so I'm not sure what the adcycle script is actually calling, then returning. Follow the script looking at what it reads as input, what it yanks from the database, and then what it returns.

As I said, I also had problems with broken images under normal loads, which I never traced back, but it might be related. It's using environment/cgi variables that are not set or passed properly in some situations -- but that's only speculation.

I've found AdvertPro to be substantially more reliable over all, so with that as a working option, I never dug into the Adcycle code too deeply. The price difference may seem big, but when you look at the features/performance/etc and what it "costs" in trying to do the same with Adcycle, I don't think the difference is really that big. Adcycle has a niche, but I think if you are running Links SQL, then you are really in the AdvertPro league.

You might want to think about that given the size and potential growth of your site. Adcycle has to grow into, AdvertPro is already there in terms of scale.



PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.
Quote Reply
Re: AdCycle In reply to
Quote:
btw - since you have tested out adcycle, have you ever been able to call an adcycle banner from another perl script. I've tried the standard system call, but all I seem to get back is the cookie info, which is the same thing I get if I execute adcycle.cgi from the command line

You want to avoid that when possible, especially for ads as it is pretty server intensive.

It's much more efficent to use 'require/use' perl statements if it's in perl to save forking a new process and reloading perl.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
Quote Reply
Re: [Alex] AdCycle In reply to
completely forgot about that... question though - if I'm running the program that calls the ad under mod_perl and the banner script isn't running under mod_perl, is that going to cause any problem?

I'll check over on advertpro's site about calling their ad script with a require/use...

thx
Quote Reply
Re: [JerryP] AdCycle In reply to
Hi,

If you use system calls under mod_perl, you are losing a lot of the benefit of mod_perl. If you use require/use in mod_perl and the script doesn't support mod_perl, then you can have some really strange results. =)

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
Quote Reply
Re: [Alex] AdCycle In reply to
What you are saying, is if running under mod_perl, use/require code in-line rather than making a system call *BUT* make sure the use'd/require'd code is mod_perl compatible itself, or watch out!!



PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.