Hivestack by Perion is a programmatic digital out of home platform and embed users can use this platform to monetise their screen inventory and set pricing through Hivestack's Global SSP or Ad Exchange.

In order to run ads from Hivestack on your embed digital signage displays, it's very straightforward. Here's how:

Go to the Hivestack plugin on your account (if you don't have it reach out to us and we can add it for you):

Click 'Create new'

Give your Hivestack setup a name and add your API key:

Then you have some options - these provide various ways to run ads on your screens.

You may be provided with a Test and Live API so you can run test configurations separately to live ones.

As those environments are completely separate, serving ads from different end point URLs, you will need to specify if the API is for Production (live) or Test, so embed will fetch the ads from the relevant Hivestack environment URLs.

Mode allows you to choose between 'Device' or 'Location' Mode.

Device Mode = ScreenIDs are assigned to specific devices in embed

Location Mode = ScreenIDs are assigned to Geofenced locations

Ad Areas allow you to specify different 'areas' on your layout to run ScreenIDs.

For example, you could set up 3x ad areas to be used in a single layout such as: Top, Side and Bottom.

Using both Location mode and Ad Areas means you can set up location based ad serving for multiple sections on a layout.

In Hivestack, multiple ScreenIDs can be created per location. This means Locations and Ad areas can be used together.

For example: In Hivestack, you could create bounding box for location A = ScreenID1

Then make another bounding box for exact same location A = ScreenID2

and then another = ScreenID3

In embed, you then create the 3x Ad Areas (top, side and bottom).

Then select 'Add location' button to set coordinate inputs for the bounding box and Ad Area ScreenIDs.

Give it a name, then associate the relevant Hivestack Screen IDs to the relevant Ad Area e.g.

Top = ScreenID1

Side = ScreenID2

Bottom = ScreenID3

Next, add the coordinates for the Hivestack location bounding box:

With this configured and added to a layout, when any relevant embed device enters this location in real life, the top area will show ads from ScreenID1, the side area will show ads from ScreenID2 and the bottom area will show ScreenID3 ads.

If using Device Mode, then a ScreenID from Hivestack needs to be associated to a specific device in embed.

This means, that once the device is running the Hivestack plugin for content playback it will look to Hivestack and fetch only the ads associated to the specific ScreenID set.

Go into the Device edit page for the specific device, then scroll down to find the 'Hivestack' section.

In here you'll see a box next to the Hivestack API created earlier. Here is where you enter the ScreenID for this specific device.

If you're using Ad Areas in Device Mode, then it's the same process but you'll now see multiple boxes to add ScreenIDs for each Ad Area (section of the layout):

Once you've added the ScreenID to the device, be sure to select 'Save Device' to apply the changes.

Once you've set up your Hivestack API (and Device ScreenIDs if using Device Mode) you now need to configure a layout for content playback.

Either create a new layout or edit an existing one.

Then, go into a zone playlist and select the 'Plugins' section:

Find the Hivestack plugin and select it.

With it now inserted into the playlist you will see a few settings.

First is to choose the Hivestack APIs you've set up.

Then you'll see the available 'Ad Areas', if using that feature.

You can then select which Ad Area you want to use in this specific Zone. For example, if the zone is placed at the Top of the layout, we could select the relevant Ad Area so the ads are pulled in related to the that Ad Area here only.

Finally 'Playback Limit' which is to either let all ads play (Unlimited) or to define a max number of ads to play at any one time (Limited):

If using the Limited feature, you can specify a numerical value to limit how many Hivestack ads are shown. Once this number is reached, the embed playtlist will move to the next item. This allows you to interject standard embed playlist content with Hivestack ads and limit how many to play at any given time.

With your Hivestack playlist item configured, you can now save the playlist and publish to your devices.

If you want to preview the ads before publishing, click save + preview on the layout and then in the 'Device' dropdown, select a device to preview by.

Using Device Mode, ensure the ScreenIDs are set for the Device you choose in the preview. If using Location Mode, ensure the Device chosen in the preview is in the Location of the Ad area.