How to Use AdRotator in ASP.NET

AdRotator is a control in ASP.NET that is all about ads in Web pages. It displays a number of ad images and rotates them or loads them when a page is refreshed. The ASP.NET AdRotator control uses an XML file to store the ads and their information. The XML file must begin and end with an <Advertisements> tag. Inside the <Advertisements> tag there may be several <Ad> tags and each tag defines an ad (we will see a sample XML in this article).

Let's start with an Empty Web application in Visual Studio. You can eiter create a new Web application or use an existing Web application.

 

Since we have begun with an Empty Web Application we need to add a page now.

 

Go to Project > Add New Item (Ctrl+Shift+A); a screen will popup; add a web form from it and name it "AdRotator.aspx". 

We should also add an XML file which will contain ad information.

 

Go to Project > Add New Item (Ctrl+Shift+A); select "Data" from the left and add a XML file, name it "AdRotator.xml".

Now we will write our XML file; it begins and ends with an <Advertisements> tag. Inside the <Advertisements> tag there may be several <Ad> tags which defines each ad. The predefined elements inside the <Ad> tag are listed below: 

 

Element	Description
<ImageUrl>	Optional. The path to the image file
<NavigateUrl>	Optional. The URL to link to if the user clicks the ad
<AlternateText>	Optional. An alternate text for the image
<Keyword>	Optional. A category for the ad
<Impressions>	Optional. The display rates in percent of the hits

 

Now, from the Solution Explorer open AdRotator.aspx page. It will contain some default code. We will add the AdRotator control now either by dragging it from the Toolbox or writing its code. We will also use some attributes for it like Advertisement File (which specifies the path to the XML file that contains the ad information) and Target (specifies where to open the URL). 

 

That is all. Compile and build your project and see if it works. I have added 3 images so you might often see the same image; add more images and see it rolling. In addition to advertisements this can also be used as a banner for your website and for many more purposes.  

 

Here is a detailed tutorial: Implementing Ad Rotator in ASP.NET