Creative Guidelines and Specifications
Display
Overview
2
Display Size Format Resolution
Standard 100 kb max. JPG GIF
PNG 160 x 600, 300 x 250, 728 x 90 300 x 600, 336 x 280, 120 x 600 200 x 200, 250 x 250, 800 x 250 970 x 250 Pixel Animated 100 kb max. Or
100kb Initial Load and Polite Loading until 2,2 MB (needs to be
served by a 3rd Party AdServer)
GIF or HTML5 160 x 600, 300 x 250, 728 x 90 300 x 600, 336 x 280, 120 x 600 200 x 200, 250 x 250, 800 x 250 970 x 250 Pixel Expandable Start-File 100kb max. Polite Loading until 2,2 MB (needs
to be served by a 3rd Party AdServer)
HTML5 or GIF/JPG Only through Redirect
Base Dimension Max.Dimension 728x90 728x300 300x250 600x300 160x600 400x600 120x600 420x600 300x600 560x600 Miscellaneous
Duration: Loop of max. 30 sec. After 30 seconds the ad must be
static! Frame-rate: max. 24 frames per sec. Recommended: 12 frames 1x1 contrasting border mandatory
For more detailed information please view following pages: • General Requirements • Content (Page 3) • Ad Functionality (Page 4) • Technical Requirements • General (Page 5) • clickTAG (Page 6) • Additional Guidelines
• Expandable Creatives (Page 7) • In Banner Video Ads (Page 8)
General Requirements
3 Content
• Ads must have proper brand notification, i.e. be distinguishable from a publisher's content. Ads can't appear as if they are actually content or links on a publisher's site.
• Must include a visible border of a contrasting color to the majority background color of the ad.
• Proper URL declaration: The ad must lead to the URL that‟s declared in the destination URL field.
• Trick to click: Ad cannot trick users into clicking on it, e.g. by resembling a Windows dialog box.
• Graphical layout: Ads must take up the entire space, and not appear sideways or upside-down.
• Strobing, flashing backgrounds, or otherwise distracting ads are not allowed.
• 4th Party Calls: You may only call certified vendors.
The following content is prohibited:
• Tobacco, weapons, nudity, defamatory/hate content, illegal activities, profanities, spyware.
• Offers of free gifts, links to quizzes and surveys, misleading claims, and references to sex or sexuality. Any images of children/teenagers/adults (male or female) that reveal nipples, excessive chest or cleavage, genitals, buttocks, butt cracks, or the area between the navel and hip bones.
• Autoplay video/audio, auto expand
• Pop-ups, including surveys
General Requirements
• Potentially offensive graphics or language that facilitates, promotes, or uses offensive, distasteful, applies scare tactics, vulgar, gross, obscene, inappropriate language, profanity, contains scary, threatening or sexually suggestive text, images or situations (includes cartoons or animations).
• Advertising is not allowed that advocates, glorifies or promotes rape, torture, cannibalism, human suffering or death, self-harm, violence against animals or graphic or violent images, such as images showing blood or dismemberment.
Ad Functionality
Use of the following is strictly prohibited:
• Functionality that is not predictive or does not display an expected experience/outcome.
• Any element designed to generate a click without relevant information or content at the destination.
• Functionality such as inactive “close" icons within the ad or on the landing page that does not trigger
expected behavior. Dynamic user experiences within an ad must resolve to an expected, appropriate result on the landing page.
• Appear to make the ad page look broken or as if something is not working or what is considered to be normal on a web page.
• Impact performance: General impact on performance, reliability, and quality of the user‟s computing experience (e.g., slow computer performance, reduced productivity, corruption of the operating system, or other issues).
Technical Requirements for display creatives
5 General
• File types of creatives must be JPEG, GIF or HTML5 (HTML5 needs to be served by a 3rd Party AdServer)
• Duration of animated ads must be 30 seconds or less. Max. 24 Frames per Second
• Ads must open in new tab or new window only
• The file size for creatives must be 100 KB or less.
• Larger files must use „polite loading‟, with a maximum initial load of 100 kb and polite loading up to a maximum of 2.2mb
• Creatives can't be hosted by or make a call to an unapproved third-party adserver.
• 1x1 contrasting border mandatory
• All creatives and pixels/tags/Click commands must be SSL compliant and use the HTTPS protocol. When creatives load, they may make any number of calls to various servers. Ad servers that are called over https are supposed to make sure that any calls that it makes are over HTTPS. Not all ad servers do this though, so to be safe, make sure any pixels or calls that you add to the creative are using the HTTPS protocol.
• Please note that there will be an OBA icon in the top right corner so don‟t put important details there.
• Flash cookies are not allowed
• Landing Page must be crawlable
Common Creative Formats
Technical Requirements for display creatives
The following examples are methods for applying the clickTag variable within the ad creative: var clickTag = "www.accuen.com"
Ads must use the clickTag variable as the destination of the click even, whether handled by anchor tags (<a>), window.location, window.open or any other method of navigating the user.
When using this variable upon a click, if you use an achor tag, we recommend setting the target attribute to „_blank“. This ensures that the click destination opens in a new page or a tab.
<a href=(the URL of the clickTag) target="_blank"> </a>
A typical way to utuize the clickTag variable is to give the anchor tag a unique id and assign the hred dynamically after page load via Javascript:
HTML <a id=”clickArea” target="_blank"></a>
Javascript var clickArea = document.getElementById(“clickArea”);
clickArea.href = clickTag;
To leverage Javascript„s window.open method within the HTML: <a href="javascript:window.open(window.clickTag, '_blank')“></a>
In instances of multiple clickthrough urls within the same ad, enumerate click tags as follows: clickTag0, clickTag1, clickTag2
Technical Requirements for display creatives
7 If the client is using The Trade Desk as DSP (please request this information from our campaign
manager)
The Click Tag URL can be retrieved from using the following code:
Function getParameterByName(name) {
name = name.replace(/[\[]/,"\\[").replace(/[\]]/,"\\]");
var regex= new RegExp("[\\?&]"+name+"=([^&#]*)"), results = regex.exec(location.search);
return results=== null ?"":
decodeURIComponent(results[1].replace(/\+/g, "")); }
Var clickTag=getParameterByName(<Your Parameter Name>);
By appending a URL escaped landing page to the click tag URL, our system will track the click and redirect the request to the given landing page. If no landing page is provided, we will track the click and redirect the result to the default landing page. “Your Parameter Name” should be exchanged with “clickTAG”!
Var clickTag=getParameterByName(<YourParameter Name>)+
encodeURIComponent(<Your Landing Page>);
Different landing pages can be used for different actions. Please see the IAB‟s Guidance for Ad
Designers and Creative Technologists for more suggestions on implementing multiple landing pages. No subfolders allowed in the .zip file!
Additonal Guidelines for expandable creatives
Expandable creatives must be served on a supported third-party ad server.
Technical requirements
• Please note that the general technical requirements also apply for expandables
• Size: 100 KB (Initial Load) to 2.2 MB (Polite Load)
• Expandable directions: Must expand down, left, or down and left. No other directions or combinations of directions is allowed.
• User-initiated expand: May expand on-click or on-hover.
• Creative closure: Creative must close on click or mouse off. Must contain a prominent close "X" in 16 point font or larger, in the corner of the creative.
• Both click-to-expand and rollover-to-expand expandable creatives are allowed, and can expand in one or more directions as declared in RTB responses. Maximum expanded dimensions are summarized in the
following table:
Base dimension Expanded dimension Direction
468×60 468×210 Down
728x90 728×300 Down
300×250 600×300 Down and left
Additional Guidelines for In-Banner Video Ads –
Click to Play
9
• Please note that the general technical requirements also apply for In-Banner Video Ads
• 100KB initial load – 2.2 Mb total load with video
• Banner Animation : 30 seconds – Opening image can‟t be animated (of the video)
• Video size : 300x250 (inline rectangle) and 336x280 (Large rectangle)
• Audio and Video : only upon user‟s click
• Border : 1x1 contrasting border requested
• Other restrictions : Stop/Mute and Start Button required
• Frame rate: Minimum 14 frames-per-second (30 fps recommended)
• Aspect ratio: 4:3 aspect ratio recommended; other aspects will be accepted but may be letterboxed
• Audio: Must be encoded at a volume less than or equal to -12 db
Notes - related to Google AdExchange policy:
• User initiative Replay Button is possible
• Total Playing Time must be <4 minutes for AdX
