Once the ad module is properly installed, enabled and you have created a group for your ads, you can create advertisements by visiting 'create content' on your website and choosing 'advertisement' as the content type. If you have enabled multiple ad type modules, you can select one of them from the resulting menu, such as 'image advertiesment' or 'text advertisement'.

Text ads:

Text ads are very simple, requiring that you fill out only three fields of information. First, you need to specify the Destination URL where you want people to be redirected when they click on your text ad. Second, you enter the a header for your ad. The header will be linked to the Destination URL. Finally, you need to specify the body of your ad.

Image ads:

Image ads or only slightly more complicated than text ads. They depend on the drupal core Upload module for managing the actual images. As with text ads, you first need to specify the Destination URL where you want people to be redirected when they click on your image ad. Second, you can optoinally enter some Mouseover text. If you enter text in the mouseover field this text will be displayed when people hover their mouse pointer over the advertisement. Finally, you need to scroll down to the File attachements section of the page and click the Browser button to select your image, then click Attach to upload the image.

HTML ads:

HTML ads allow you to easily define your own custom ad type by simply pasting in a block of HTML code. At this time, however, the ad module is unable to track when html ads are clicked.

Ad groups:

Ads can be organized into groups. For example, you may have a group called "Text Ads" and another group called "Image Ads." You could then assign your text ads to the "Text Ads" group, and your image ads to your "Image Ads" groups. (This is not required, it is perfectly valid to include both image ads and text ads in the same group.) When displaying ads, you typically tell the ad module to display ads from a certain group and then the ad module randomly selects an active ad from the specified group. Each ad can be a member of any number of groups.

Ad status:

There are several states that an ad can exist in. An ad in the Pending state is one that has recently been uploaded and is waiting to be approved by a privileged user. An ad in the Approved state is one that has been approved by a privileged user but is not actively being displayed, the ad could be waiting on an autoactivation event. An ad in the Active state is being actively displayed. An ad in the Offline state is approved but is currently not being displayed. An ad in the Unpublished state means that the ad node was unpublished so the ad is not any longer being displayed. An ad in the Expired state is no longer being displayed. An ad in the Denied state means it was not approved by the site administrator.

Scheduling:

If you put an ad into the Approved state and then enter a date and time in the Automatically Activate Ad field, the ad will be automatically activated on the date and time specified. This feature requires that cron be functional on your website. If you enter a date and time in the Automatically Expire Ad field, the ad will be automatically expired on the date and time specified. Again, this feature requires that cron be functional on your website.

If you enter a number into the Maximum Views field, the ad will be automatically expired once it has been displayed this number of times.

If you enter a number into the Maximum Clicks field, the ad will be automatically expired once it has been clicked this number of times.