Advertisements within .tel
Advertisements within .tel
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of 6 © 2009-2011 Telnic Limited. All rights reserved.
Overview
.tel is a Sponsored Top Level Domain managed by the Sponsoring Organisation Telnic Ltd. This top-level
domain differs from others in that it is designed to support storage and use of personal communications
contacts. These are published in DNS, and the domains in which they are stored can be queried to provide
a list of these contacts. This list shows the ways in which the domain owner chooses to be contacted, and
entries can be selected by a querying user to initiate communications with the domain owner.
Additionally, the .tel platform supports several types of advertising to monetize .tel domains:
Text-based static adverts presented as "Sponsored Links" visually distinct from web links in contact information. These adverts are stored in the DNS as system text records.
Image-based static adverts presented above Sponsored Links. These adverts are hosted elsewhere, while the .tel DNS only stores the image locations and the target URLs for them.
Google AdSense dynamic adverts presented on computer browsers only (not on mobiles) automatically from Google's ad network. In this case, the .tel DNS stores the IDs of the adverts, and the proxy creates them on the fly. This document provides a summary of the advertisement specific functionality within .tel and forms a sub-set of the full
developer guide which should be used to provide further background and context.
ABOUT TXT RECORDS
Advertisements provide the ability to separate sponsored content from contact information in the domain
and provide adequate presentation for those links. Adverts are stored in the DNS as TXT records.
Generally speaking, a TXT record can hold a series of strings, each of which is
≤ 255 octets in length (according to the main DNS standard
RFC 1035). However, storing one or multiple massive TXT records is unwise since the DNS is optimised for relatively short messages, and not all networks react correctly to excessively long DNS messages. In a .tel domain, TXT records are used to store non-contact related information. Multiple records of this type are allowed in a single FQDN, with all available TXT records returned in response to a DNS query. The sub-type of TXT records for static advertisements is identified by the
.tad initial string followed by the version number and the advert fields. The Google AdSense records use the
.gad string, while imagebased ads use the
.tia prefix. All advert records must be stored in a special sub-domain
_ad of the current domain. Any advert records that are found in the domain itself, as well as malformed adverts, will be silently discarded. Client application may choose to lookup and present those sponsored links to the user, or to ignore that subfolder. If a TXT record contains plain-text strings, it is displayed as is with no additional processing. If the record contains system data, such as an advertisement, it undergoes pre-processing before being displayed on the page. Note that the order of processing records for a domain is not guaranteed, although text strings within one TXT record are processed from left to right.
Advertisements within .tel
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of 6 © 2009-2011 Telnic Limited. All rights reserved.
ABOUT ADVERTISEMENT RECORDS
An advertisement is a TXT record with a special prefix and format, placed in the
_ad sub-domain of the current domain, such as
_ad.hotels.tel or _ad.florida.us.hotels.tel. Depending on the type of advert, the record follows this structure:
TXT ".tad" "Version" "DisplayPreference" "Preference" "Title" "Label" "URI" "Description"
TXT ".gad" "Version" "DisplayPreference" "Preference" "PublisherID" "AdUnitID"
TXT ".tia" "Version" "DisplayPreference" "Preference" "img" "uri"
Version – Currently "1"
Display Preference – required numeric value in the range 1-6 indicating the position of the advert on the page, as outlined in the table below.
Preference - numeric value between 0 – 65535 that acts as the sort order for each display set.
Title – text string up to 255 bytes long representing the title of the ad
Label – text string up to 255 bytes long. It is the anchor text of the below URI.
URI – collection of consecutive key / value pairs (where each key is labeled "uri") that are concatenated to produce the final URI used within the advert; this ensures that URIs in excess of 255 bytes can be created.
Description - collection of consecutive key / value pairs (where each key is labeled "desc") that are concatenated to produce the final description to be used within the advert; this ensures descriptions in excess of 255 bytes can be created.
PublisherID – Google AdSense Publisher ID of the format "pub-xxxxxxx"
AdUnitID – ID of the Google AdSense advert unit
Img – URL of the image to be displayed as the advert text
RENDERING ADVERTISEMENT RECORDS
On the web, .tel advertisements can be displayed at the top or bottom of the page, or on the right (PC
proxy only) depending on the display preference setting. Note that client applications may ignore
advertisement TXT records or display them according to the application's layout.
If the domain contains different types of adverts, the image ads are shown first, followed by text ads and
Google AdSense, if appropriate. Among multiple adverts of the same type, the preference determines the
order, and no sorting is done for advertisements of the same type with the same display preference and
preference values.
The table below defines the display settings for .tel advertisements based on the display preference. The
table also gives the maximum number of adverts for each block where .tia and .tad records are counted
together. Finally, the provided maximum dimensions apply to .tia records.
IN TXT ".tad" "1" "1" "51" "Free Money" "click here to win" "uri"
"http://casino7.info/roomoffer.htm" "uri" "=24342354&z" "desc"
"Sierra Resorts offer" "desc" "free gaming chips for members."
IN TXT ".gad" "1" "2" "51" "pub-6575877768951234" "6745285678"
IN TXT ".tia" "1" "1" "51" "img" "http://www.adserver.com/images/ad.jpg"
"uri" "http://casino7.info/roomoffer.htm"
Advertisements within .tel
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of 6 © 2009-2011 Telnic Limited. All rights reserved. Display preference Browser type Position Max. number of records Max. Dimensions (WxH pixels) 1
Desktop Top 2 (1 .tia) 448 x 60
2
Desktop Right 5 (2 .tia) 250 x 250
3
Desktop Bottom 2 (2 .tia) 448 x 60
4*
Desktop Right 5 (no .tia) N/A
5**
Smartphone Top 1 .tia (no .tad) 300 x 50
6**
Smartphone Bottom 2 .tia (no .tad) 300 x 50 * Display preference 4 is reserved for .tad records of a special type where the heading is "Related Links" rather than "Sponsored Links" and a different background colour. This type can be used to publish announcements, press releases and other content that requires special attention but is not an advertisement. * Display preferences 5 and 6 are reserved for .tia image adverts only. These values are not valid for other record types.
NOTE
: Google AdSense records are only displayed on desktop browsers, on the right, in 250x250 pixel blocks, with two blocks at maximum per domain name.
STORING ADVERTISEMENT RECORDS
Advertisement TXT records are created & modified via the
storeRecord SOAP command.
NOTE
: Do not create the _ad folder before adding the record; instead, use the owner parameter.
Storing a text advert
<typ:storeRecordRequest domainName="stead.tel">
<typ:txt profiles="_all_" owner="_ad">
<typ:text>.tad</typ:text>
<typ:text>1</typ:text>
<typ:text>1</typ:text>
<typ:text>100</typ:text>
<typ:text>Title of the ad</typ:text>
<typ:text>label of the ad</typ:text>
<typ:text>uri</typ:text>
<typ:text>http://www.telnic.org</typ:text>
<typ:text>desc</typ:text>
<typ:text>sample description</typ:text>
</typ:txt>
</typ:storeRecordRequest>
Storing a Google AdSense unit
<
typ:storeRecordRequest domainName="telnicnsp10.tel"> <typ:adsense profiles="_all_" recursive="true"> <typ:displayPreference>2</typ:displayPreference> <typ:preference>101</typ:preference> <typ:publisherId>pub-6575877768951234</typ:publisherId> <typ:adUnitId>6745285678</typ:adUnitId> </typ:adsense> </typ:storeRecordRequest>
Advertisements within .tel
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of 6 © 2009-2011 Telnic Limited. All rights reserved.
Storing an image advert
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"
xmlns:typ="http://xmlns.telnic.org/ws/nsp/client/record/types-1.0">
<soap:Header/>
<soap:Body>
<typ:storeRecordRequest domainName="example.tel" >
<typ:imagead profiles="_all_">
<typ:displayPreference>6</typ:displayPreference>
<typ:preference>103</typ:preference>
<typ:imageUri>http:/www.adserver.com/images/ad.jpg</typ:imageUri>
<typ:adLink>http://casino7.info/roomoffer.htm</typ:adLink>
</typ:imagead>
</typ:storeRecordRequest>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
Full details of the inputs/outputs of this command are available within the Telnic developer site.
Adverts displayed on a desktop proxy
Top section consisting of 1
image advert (.tia) and 1 text
advert (.tad)
Right section
with 1 image
advert
Text advert
AdSense block
Advertisements within .tel
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of 6 © 2009-2011 Telnic Limited. All rights reserved.
Adverts displayed on smartphones
Bottom image
ad followed
by text ad
Top image
ad followed
by text ad
Over the coming months Telnic will be releasing a number enhancements and applications, as described below. For latest information on released features, please see 
