Ad Specifications: 300x250 Expandable Banner

The Expandable Banner is a component of the Video Pod, together with the Video Ad and the Leave Behind Banner. Click here for a description of the Video Pod.

Formats Supported: .SWF, .JPG, .PNG, or Static .GIF

For Video Cloud players that support banner ad units, a 300x250 Expandable Banner and optional Leave Behind ad unit can run alongside the video advertisement. When the video ad unit starts to play, the content on the right side of the Video Cloud player will fade and a 300x250 static or rich media ad will display providing exclusive ownership of the player. This 300x250 unit remains for the duration of the advertisement stream.

Download a Flash 9 or Flash 8/ActionScript 2 Creative Ad Template (use the banner_template.fla from the .zip file). 

SWF Format

• Dimensions – 300x250.
• File size max – [Publisher discretion]
• Banner length (in seconds) – Companion will display for the duration of the Video ad.
• Flash version – Flash 7/Flash 8 [Publisher discretion]
• Frame rate – 30 fps.
• Key frame – every 30 – 60 frames (2 seconds).
• Max animation rate – [Publisher discretion]
• Looping restrictions – [Publisher discretion]
• Requires a 300x250 rectangle with a top left registration point at (0, 0) drawn on stage for the whole movie. This bounding box can have an opacity of 0%, but must be present so the Video Cloud player can size the movie properly.
• Ad content should begin on or after frame 5. At this point, content can be inset from the stage borders or extend outside them without it affecting sizing.
• A stop(); action should be placed in the final frame on the main timeline. You can place a stop(); action in the final frame on the main timeline or you can choose to loop the playback of your creative.
• Must not reference level0 in ActionScript. References should not be made to _root unless _lockroot=true. It is recommended that relative paths be used instead.
• Any reference to any methods or properties of the Stage class must be removed.
• ActionScript should not change the player quality.
• Preloaders are built into the players, so should not be present in the movie.
• Clickable – Supply a click-through URL and implement a clickTag function as described in Adding a click-through URL to an ad creative.
• 3rd Party Serving – Third party redirect ad tags for SWF, JPG, GIFs, and FLVs are permitted to run inside a Video Cloud player, provided that the agency or third party supplies a single redirect URL (http:// or https:// path) to the asset file and has met all the required advertising specifications.
  Note: IFRAME, ILAYER, JavaScript and HTML tags are not supported for Flash players. Flash does not support these ad tags. If you are synchronizing companion banner assets outside the Video Cloud player in Flash mode, then you can use a third party solution that includes IFRAME, JavaScript, and HTML tags for the companion banners being served on the HTML page.

1x1 impression third party tracking pixel and click tag URLs are also supported. Place 1x1 tracking pixels in either trackStartURL, trackMidURL, trackEndURL, and/or trackPointURLs depending on what you want to track. For more information on each tracking point, see Ad Format XML Elements and Attributes.

IMPORTANT: Writing methods and properties to any Flash object's prototype property will cause it to be added to all instances of that object. As such, it is strongly recommended that you avoid modifying the prototypes of Flash's built-in objects like MovieClip, TextField or Button in the creatives. Doing so will modify all instances of these objects in the Video Cloud player, bloating the player and possibly causing erratic behavior. The recommended method for developing in Flash using ActionScript 2.0 is that prototypes are not modified and that instead classes are created that extend the built-in objects.

JPG, PNG, or Static GIF Format

• Dimensions – 300x250.
• File size max – [Publisher discretion]
• GIF must be static. Flash 8 will only display the first frame of most animated .gifs.
• JPG must be non-progressive.
• Clickable – Supply a click-through URL.

More Ad Specifications

• Video Ad
• Overlay Ad Unit
• Overlay Pod
• Video Pod
• Leave Behind Banner