WSJ Barron's Group Self-Service Portal - FAQ
About Us
Our Self-Service Platform allows you to purchase our digital advertising products to reach your target audience across The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. We can help you drive brand awareness and consideration, increase sales, build website traffic, and get more leads and conversions.
You can advertise across our trusted network of sites, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, Mansion Global, FNLondon, and Investor’s Business Daily.
You can choose between 3 different campaign types:
Display Campaigns: Reach your target audience with visually appealing display ads across The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.
Video Campaigns: Engage your target audience using impactful video pre-roll ads across The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.
Real Estate Listings Campaigns: List and feature your residential real estate properties across The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.
Your ads will be shown across our trusted network of sites, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, Mansion Global, FNLondon, and Investor’s Business Daily.
There is $500 minimum spend required to access our Self-Service Platform. You can set a budget that works for you. Pricing varies based on products and targeting selected within the platform.
Campaigns
A campaign serves visually appealing ads across The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, allowing you to reach your target audience as they consume content on The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, Mansion Global, FNLondon, and Investor’s Business Daily websites.
We offer 3 different campaign types – Display, Video and Real Estate Listings campaigns. You can choose which campaign type works best for your advertising goals.
Display Campaigns: Reach your target audience with display ads across The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. We help you find the right audience with strategic targeting options that show your message to your desired audience at the right place and the right time.
Video Campaigns: Engage your target audience using impactful video pre-roll ads by aligning with relevant video content across The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.
Real Estate Listings Campaigns: List and feature your residential real estate properties across the WSJ | BG Digital Network. We help you reach the desired target audience to get more real estate leads.
You can pay for the campaign using a credit card. The platform supports payment by credit card through our secure payment provider, and many major credit card providers are supported.
At this point in time, we do not offer an invoicing payment option.
Campaigns that have been submitted and paid for can be reached from the Campaigns page.
The price of your campaign is determined by the products you select and the targeting that you decide to layer on.
We offer geo-targeting based on location as well as audience and contextual targeting based on the audience and content you’re looking to align with. These advanced targeting selections impact the price of the campaign.
You can check campaign progress by going to Reports and selecting the campaign.
You can change your budget on Draft Campaigns. Once you have paid you cannot change the budget and your campaign will run until the end date, or until you decide to cancel the campaign.
You can of course cancel any of your campaigns at any time. If you cancel your campaign or your campaign did not reach the impressions budget, you will get a refund.
Targeting Options
Targeting is the way in which you customize your campaign to determine who will see your ad. We have different types of advanced targeting that can be layered on to reach your desired audience.
There are 3 different types of advanced targeting that you can select:
Geo-Targeting: Reach people in specific geographic locations by selecting DMAs, States, Countries, or Regions that you want to target.
Audience Targeting: Reach your target audience by selecting 1st party audience segments that fit your campaign goals.
Contextual Targeting: Align your message with relevant editorial content by selecting relevant contextual segments that fit your campaign goals.
Creatives
Creatives are the visually appealing display or video pre-roll ads that you want to advertise across The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.
Depending on the campaign type, you can submit creatives for display or video pre-roll.
Display Ads: We accept 4 standard ad sizes – 970x250, 728x90, 300x600, 300x250.
Video Pre-Roll Ads: We accept :06/:15 second video pre-roll ads – 4x4v, 480x360v, 480x361v, 640x480v.
Creatives can be submitted during the campaign creation flow or added later.
If you have unpaid campaigns, you can edit them and add more creatives.
If you have paid for your campaigns, you can go to campaigns to reach the Creative section again and add more creatives.
Creatives will be approved or rejected by the Test Ad Manager team within 2 business days.
You cannot edit an approved creative on a running campaign, but you can add new ones. This is a great choice if you’d like to A/B test your creatives and optimize whichever one seems to capture more clicks. You can pause or resume the creative you are using for the campaign at any time, but must have at least one active creative per campaign available.
You can manage the creatives on a campaign by entering the creative section under campaigns, and pressing the edit button.
NO CREATIVE: No creative were added for this campaign. The campaign will not deliver until a creative is added and approved.
UNDER REVIEW: A creative has been added and is waiting to be approved by the Publisher.
APPROVED: The creative was approved by the Publisher.
ACTIVE: At least one creative was added and approved, the campaign has started.
INACTIVE: The creative have been deactivated and are no longer shown to the audience.
REJECTED: The creative was rejected and if this was the only creative, the campaign cannot deliver.
EXPIRED: The creative passed the end date before a creative was approved.
We unfortunately do not provide screenshots at this point in time. To confirm your campaign is live, please go to the Reports page where you can see that the campaign has launched and impressions are delivering.
In Process Campaigns
To stop a Campaign from delivering, pause it from the Campaigns page. The Campaign will stop delivering impressions until it is un-paused.
Campaigns that have been submitted and paid for can be edited from the Campaigns page.
Certain options are no longer available for editing once you have created your campaign, such as the campaign budget. In order to edit your budget, you can pause your delivering campaign, copy it, and submit a new campaign with your new budget.
Your campaign may no longer be delivering for 2 reasons:
(1) It has passed the selected end date for your campaign and impressions have stopped delivering. In order to continue to campaign and deliver more impressions, you will need to create a new campaign.
(2) You have no active creatives so your campaign is not delivering any impressions. You can view all of your submitted creatives in the Campaigns page. Make sure at least one is active for the campaign to start delivering impressions.
If you are still having issues, please contact the support team directly. The contact form is available through the Support button in the drop-down menu in the top right corner on the platform.
To view the status of your campaign, go to the Campaigns page. Various statuses are available based on your campaign progress, these include the following:
Draft: The campaign has been submitted and is currently being created in the internal (Publisher) systems. This process can take up to 30 minutes after it has been submitted.
Inactive: There are no approved creatives added to the campaign.
Live (Ready): At least one creative has been approved and the campaign is ready to go live at the set start date.
Live (Delivering): The campaign is currently delivering impressions.
Completed: The campaign has fulfilled the budget and is no longer delivering impressions.
Cancelled: The campaign has been cancelled and will no longer deliver impressions.
Paused: The campaign has been paused and is no longer delivering impressions. The campaign must be resumed in order to deliver impressions.
Pending: The campaign has been set up and paid for but missing creatives
Reporting
You can view various reports on the success of your campaign by selecting different header options at the top of the reporting tab. The Dashboard in each campaign presents real time data about the performance of a subset of your campaigns. The Campaigns page will present a list of all your campaigns and present performance numbers.
The Reports section also allows you to download a report containing all performance-related metrics from your campaign, such as Impressions, Clicks, CTR, Spend. You can schedule automated reports that will be sent to your email.
The following metrics are available in the exported Reports in the Report section. Note that some metrics may be filtered on a certain date range, depending on the settings you select when creating the report. The metrics listed in reports include:
Booked Impressions: The amount of impressions that were included in your budget when you created your campaign.
Budget: The budget you set when creating your campaign.
Clicks: The amount of clicks that occurred during the filtered period.
Delivered Impressions: The amount of impressions that occurred during the filtered period.
CTR: The Click Through Rate is the number of clicks received, divided by the number of delivered user impressions. The CTR is presented in percentages.
Spend: The total amount of the campaign budget spent based on the delivered impressions.
Billing
When you have finished creating your campaign, you will be taken to the Checkout. From here you can choose to pay for the campaign or to add more campaign.
Our Platform supports payment by credit card only through our secure payment provider, and many major credit card providers are supported.
At this point in time, we do not offer an invoicing payment option.
When you checkout, you will be charged for all of the booked impressions for all of the campaigns.
If your campaign delivers an impression amount that is lower than what you budgeted for, the platform will automatically refund the amount that was not delivered to your credit card after the campaign has ended. In the event of under delivery of impressions, the value of non-delivered impressions will be calculated and refunded.
Please note that the validity period of the credit card used to purchase the campaigns should cover the whole delivery period for all campaigns that were part of the booking, as refunds can only be issued for the same card used for paying for the campaigns. Please check the Terms and Conditions (link) for details about the Test Ad Manager refund policy.
You can update your payment information within the Checkout page.
You unfortunately cannot edit the currency assigned to your account. For more information, please contact us. A contact form is available through the Support button in the dropdown menu in the top right corner in the platform.
Payment statuses are listed in the orders section. They include the following statuses:
Settled: Payment is confirmed and the budget has been captured from the credit card.
Sent for refund: Refers to when a refund is issued due to undelivered impressions in the campaign. It usually takes 2-5 business days to complete the refund.
Completed: All campaigns that were part of the booking are completed. Any potential under-delivered impressions have been calculated, and a potential refund is issued.
Invalid credit card: There is an issue with your credit card. For more information please contact support. A contact form is available through the Support button in the dropdown menu in the top right corner in the platform.
3D secure authentication is widely used by all major credit and debit card issuers as a fraud prevention safeguard. This technology offers an additional layer of security in transactions where the credit card may not be present. 3D secure authentication adds another step to the payment process, redirecting customers to their card issuer during checkout. Outlining the steps below for 3D secure authentication:
A customer enters payment details on the Self-Service checkout page.
The customer is redirected to their card issuer’s 3D secure website.
The customer enters a one-time authentication code or password.
The details are verified by the card provider and payment is approved.
The customer is directed back to the main payment page.
WSJ Barron’s Group uses 3D secure authentication to protect our clients’ credit card information and protect us from fraudulent credit card attempts. 3D secure authentication is mandatory in the EU and Australia, and widely accepted in the United States.
Most of the time, your transaction should go through without any issues. Sometimes, you may encounter a “3D authentication failed” error message. This means that you may not have entered the card details correctly (the error could be due to anything ranging from a mistyped card number to an incorrect expiration date). If the error continues, the cardholder will need to contact their credit card issuer for assistance.
My Account
You can update your account information by clicking on the user icon in the top right corner, then clicking Profile and then Edit.
You will be asked to enter your billing information when buying your first campaign. This information can then be edited anytime in the profile under the Billing tab.
You can reset your password by logging out and completing this from the Login page, or you can edit your password in the profile when you are logged in.
In order to change the email address associated with your account, you need to contact support. A contact form is available through the Support button in the dropdown menu in the top right corner in the platform.
For assistance with your account or to cancel your Test Ad Manager account, please contact us directly. A contact form is available through the Support button in the dropdown menu in the top right corner in the platform.