Airtory respondent sources turn a display ad into the start of your survey. The first questions appear directly inside the interactive ad unit; once the respondent finishes those questions, the answers are logged into the MX8 Platform. If the survey has more questions, the respondent can click the final image in the ad to continue and complete the rest of the survey in the platform.
This source is useful when you want to intercept respondents in their normal browsing flow rather than send them through a panel, and when you want short questions (typically demographics or a single screener) to be answered without ever leaving the ad.
It is also a good fit for brand lift studies. Because the ad unit identifies who has seen the creative, you can retarget that exposed audience with a follow-up survey and compare their answers to a control group that did not see the ad — the standard methodology for measuring lift in awareness, consideration, or intent.
Before you start
- Advanced respondent sources must be enabled in your account.
- You need an Airtory account and an Airtory API key with permission to create creatives and campaigns.
- You need three image assets hosted on a CDN that Airtory can reach (Airtory's own CDN is the easiest option):
- a background image that the survey questions render on top of inside the ad unit,
- a fallback image shown to non-JavaScript browsers and other environments where the interactive creative cannot run, and
- a final image ("thank you card") shown after the in-ad questions are complete — this is what the respondent clicks to finish the rest of the survey on the web.
The platform ships defaults for all three images so you can preview the flow end-to-end, but the defaults are unbranded placeholders. Replace them with your own assets before going live.
Step 1: Create a new Airtory source
Go to Sources, click Add respondent source, and choose Airtory from the audience type list. You will see the standard fields for any respondent source — name, target responses, days in field, market, default language, domain, and price — followed by an Airtory Creative section.
Fill in the Airtory-specific fields:
| Field (UX label) | What to enter | Required |
|---|---|---|
| API key | Your Airtory API key. Stored as an encrypted sidecar secret. | Required on create, optional on update |
| Advertiser | The advertiser the creative belongs to in Airtory. | Yes |
| Campaign type | The Airtory campaign type — currently Display. | Yes |
| Start date | ISO-8601 date string sent to Airtory as the campaign start. | Optional |
| End date | ISO-8601 date string sent to Airtory as the campaign end. | Optional |
| Creative name | The name of the creative inside Airtory. Defaults to the audience name. | Optional |
| Background URL | URL of the background image that the in-ad questions render on top of. | Yes |
| Thank you card URL | URL of the final image shown after the in-ad questions. The respondent clicks this image to continue the survey on the web. | Yes |
| Fallback image URL | URL of the static image shown when the interactive creative cannot run (for example, in non-JavaScript browsers). | Yes |
| Background color | Hex color used behind the creative. | Yes |
| Primary brand color | Hex color used for the primary brand accent. | Yes |
| Next button background color | Hex color of the next button's background. | Yes |
| Next button text color | Hex color of the next button's label. | Yes |
| Next button text | The label shown on the next button (default: Next). | Yes |
| Question color | Hex color of the question text. | Yes |
| Option color | Hex color of the answer option text. | Yes |
The platform pre-fills every URL and color field with a default so the form will save and preview without further input, but the defaults are not suitable for production. Swap in your own image URLs and brand colors before launching.
Step 2: Choose the questions to include in the ad unit
After saving the source, open it again to choose which survey questions are asked inside the ad unit. The Auto-filled questions panel lists the questions in the survey that are eligible for in-ad capture. Toggle on each question you want the ad unit to ask.
Keep this list short. The ad unit is a small surface and respondents are unlikely to answer many questions before clicking through, so we recommend limiting in-ad questions to demographics or a single screening question. Anything not toggled on stays in the platform and is asked after the respondent clicks the final image.
Step 3: Set up placements and macros in Airtory
Once the source is saved, the platform creates the creative in Airtory using your API key, branding, and image URLs. From this point on, the rest of the work happens inside Airtory Studio:
In Airtory:
- Open the creative the platform just created and confirm the in-ad preview matches what you expect — background, colors, and the first survey question should all render correctly.
- Configure your placements for the buyers and inventory you want to target.
- Add any macros required by the placement (for example, click and impression macros from the DSP).
- Copy the Tag or Ins Tag from the export panel and send it to whoever is trafficking the campaign.
You do not need to come back to the platform to wire any of this up — the Airtory creative is already pointed at the right MX8 endpoints, so as soon as the campaign starts serving, completed in-ad surveys will be logged against this respondent source and click-throughs from the final image will land in the rest of the survey.
Reporting
Reporting for Airtory sources works the same way as for any other respondent source. In-ad answers and answers given after the click-through are stitched into a single response per respondent, so standard reports, crosstabs, and data exports work with no extra configuration.