I'm building a publisher site and need banner customization plus audit logs, what should I use?

For a publisher site, the best fit is usually:

• Banner customization: use a flexible ad/banner management system that supports templates, placement targeting, A/B testing, and per-page/per-device rules.
• Audit logs: use a centralized audit logging service that records who changed what, when, and from where.

What to look for

Banner customization

Choose something that can:

• Let you configure banners without code changes
• Support different sizes/layouts
• Target by page, section, user segment, device, or geography
• Schedule campaigns and rotate creatives
• Provide preview/approval workflows

Common options:

• A headless CMS with banner components
• A feature flag / experimentation platform for controlled rollouts
• An ad server / campaign manager if these are monetized placements

Audit logs

You want:

• Immutable or append-only logs
• Tracking of create/update/delete actions
• User identity, timestamp, before/after values, IP/device if needed
• Search/filtering and retention controls

Common options:

• Built-in audit logs from your CMS/admin panel
• A dedicated audit log table + event pipeline
• Logging to CloudWatch / Datadog / Elastic / Splunk / OpenSearch

Practical recommendation

If you’re early-stage:

• Use a CMS with banner components for customization
• Add application-level audit logging for all banner/admin changes
• Ship logs to a central observability tool

If you want more control and scalability:

• Use headless CMS + audit event stream
• Store audit records separately from operational data

If you want one “stack” suggestion

• Banner management: Strapi, Contentful, Sanity, or a custom admin UI
• Audit logs: database audit table + event bus + Datadog/Splunk/OpenSearch

If you want, I can recommend a specific stack based on:

1. your backend language,
2. whether banners are ads or site UI banners, and
3. how strict your compliance/audit needs are.