What is a Roadblock?
A roadblock allows you to prioritize ads from certain campaigns without unassigning other campaigns in the same zone. It creates a cohesive experience by ensuring selected ads match and maintain continuity on the page. Homepage takeovers are the most common application of roadblocks, significantly boosting the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
Requirements
Access to the Indie Ads Manager platform
Keyword targeting set up on your Indie Website that allows targeting to your homepage
Need to set this up? Connect with Indiegraf Support to get started
Creating a Roadblock
Follow these steps to create a roadblock for a homepage takeover:
Log into Indie Ads Manager and navigate to the relevant advertiser
Create new campaigns for each ad type, i.e. header ads, sidebar ads, sticky footers, etc.
In the Roadblock Tag field, include your tag, i.e. "Spring Campaign 2025"
If you're using an existing campaign, click on Edit Properties and the edit campaign window will appear
If you have multiple campaigns, make sure you're using the same roadblock in each campaign
Click Save Campaign
Create the ad items and assign the campaigns the your desired zones
Optional: set the Priority to 5 (defaults to 4) to ensure the homepage takeover ads are most likely to run
Set up your keyword targeting by finding the Targeting section and adding homepage to the keyword targeting. Set this to Required.
If you set your campaign up to target at the campaign level, you will include your keyword targeting during the ad assignment
If you set your campaign up to target at the ad item level, you will include your keyword targeting while you're creating your ad item
Follow these steps for each campaign that will be included in the roadblock. Whenever possible, all zones on the webpage should have a campaign with the same roadblock tag
Conclusion
Setting up a homepage takeover using roadblocks can significantly enhance your advertising strategy. By following these steps, you can create a cohesive and impactful campaign that captures your audience's attention.
FAQ & Troubleshooting
Can I use multiple roadblock tags? Yes, you can have campaigns with different roadblock tags assigned to zones on the same website. You can learn more about managing multiple roadblocks here.
The homepage takeover ads aren't displaying first: you can adjust this by adjusting the priority. Priority dictates which ads Indie Ads Manager will try to serve first. IAM looks for valid ads assigned to the same zone starting with the ones with the highest priority, moving down to the ads with the next highest priority when it does not find a valid ad, and so on. Priority defaults to 4, but can be set to 5.