I had cause to write this for a client, and so I decided to do it the right way and make a nice explanatory post about the process. Having used Commission Junction for some time now I think I’ve used nearly everything they have to offer over the years. They have a wide variety of advertisers on there so there is something for everyone.

Commission Junction has a straightforward signup process. Once you have your account, verified and all that jazz, login.

You’ll then see this screen:

Ok let’s start off by creating a new SmartZone. We’ll have a basic one shall we? A 468×60 banner is one of the most common so we’ll use that. First, click on Get Links, highlighted here:

It opens up the Links pages, where you get a listing of the available categories – then click on SmartZone Settings, highlighted here:

This opens up the SmartZone page. We start by making sure we’re on the right website. On Commission Junction you can setup various websites for your use; we’re going to assume you have one, or you have the one you want selected. You see where I mean here, it’s a dropdown menu of choices:

Once you have your website selected, now you can create a SmartZone. Click on the ‘Create a new SmartZone for this Web site’ button, here:

It brings up a new window, like this:

You have several options, as follows.

• Create a name … – well this is obvious, but it’s for your benefit only. Just name it something that makes sense. If you’re putting this SmartZone at the top of your page and it will be a 468×60 banner, name it ‘Top_468x60′ for example.
• Which web site … – again, rather obvious. Select the website this SmartZone will be for.
• Select the type and size of links to be placed in this SmartZone – this lets you select, in a way, what limitations the SmartZone will have. Some options are text only, and most of the others are sized based (468×60, for example).

Once you click OK that popup window will disappear and your main Commission Junction window will change to show the newly created SmartZone, like so:

Right now you’re ready to get adding banners to your newly created SmartZone. First, click on the By Relationship button, like so:

This will open up the page where your current advertisers are listed (assuming you have some), like this:

For each one of your advertisers you have the name of the advertiser listed, followed by View Links. Click on View Links and it will open up that advertiser’s list of possible banners, text links and so on, like this:

As you see the top advertiser link on the left, is a 468×60 banner, just the one we want. Click on it and it opens up a new window with that banner’s details, like this:

Click on the Add to SmartZone button, highlighted here:

It takes you to a new page where it asks you two questions…

• Select a Web Site – this is what website’s SmartZone you want this banner added to
• Select SmartZone – this is what SmartZone you want the banner added to, inside the selected Web Site

… like this:

Click on the Save button.

The window will close and your main Commission Junction window will move to the SmartZone, with the newly-added banner in it, like this:

To get the code to put into your website, click on the Get SmartZone Code button, here:

This brings up another window, with the javascript code for the SmartZone inside, like this:

Copy and paste, and put into your own website’s code where you want the ads.

If you have 5 ads, they will appear randomly but also equally. Over the course of a day, in 100 page views, each will appear 20 times. Repeat to add more banners to the SmartZone.

Remember though: do NOT mix different sized ads especially if the SmartZone is a particular size (468×60). There is one SmartZone that is labelled “free” meaning that any sized ads can go in there, if you really need to do that.