Creative Specifications

Document Overview

This document outlines the mandatory specifications for display ads used in campaigns running on the Impression Desk platform. Compliance with these specifications is critical to ensure access to a broad pool of quality publisher inventory. Non-compliance will result in ads being disapproved, which will seriously affect campaign scale and performance. Please be aware that Infectious Media reserve the right to charge for additional trafficking resource if ads need to be re-trafficked as a result of non-compliance with these specs.

Standard Display Banners


Supported Formats


  • GIF or JPEG or PNG
  • SWF - The Impression Desk platform works with any Flash version, but your creative must be saved as a SWF file.
  • 3rd party ad tags must be from approved ad servers (we recommending using only secure tags to limit delivery restrictions).
  • Dynamic HTML (DHTML)


Commonly Used Ad Sizes


  • 120x600
  • 160x600
  • 300x250
  • 728x90
  • 468x60

Many other ad sizes are available and vary by region. Ask your account manager for more details.

Technical


  • Size: Creatives cannot exceed 40K in size. Rich Media allows for heavier ad deliver but incurs additional ad serving cost.
  • Looping: Creative must only auto-animate and loop for a maximum of 30 seconds, after which point the ads must be completely still. There can be a further 2 minutes of user initiated animation but it must be click to initiate. Some inventory restricts looping If it’s using US/LATAM Microsoft inventory then it must be sub-15 seconds.
  • Fourth-party calls: All ads may only include tracking elements from certified third-party servers or research vendors already approved by Impression Desk inventory partners including Google Adx. For a list of Google Adx approved vendors, see here.
  • Border: Creative must have a solid border in a contrasting (usually black) colour to the majority background colour.
  • Click Tags: You must include a clickTAG layer1.
  • Run-Size: Third-party ads containing Flash must not exceed 50% of a user's CPU2.


Design and Animation settings


  • Creative must open in a new window/tab. Although, new windows opens/pop-ups are not allowed when creative is served in Google inventory. The target window for the click-through URL must be set to "_blank" so the click-through will open in a new window.
  • Creative cannot simulate mouse or computer actions [E.g. mimicking the movement of a mouse icon].
  • Strobing, flashing backgrounds, or otherwise distracting ads are not allowed.
  • Branding must be consistent across creative sizes and must be clearly visible.
  • Links to landing pages that generate pop-ups when users enter or leave the landing page are not allowed.

Notes


1 The variable name must be spelled 'clickTAG' (upper-case TAG; no space between click and TAG) and not 'click tag,' 'Click Tag,' or any other form.

This is the proper code for the clickTAG parameter:

on (release) {
  if (clickTAG.substr(0,5) == "http:") {
    getURL(clickTAG, "_blank");
  }
}

Note that is not necessary to specify the destination URL for the ad anywhere in this code; this is taken care of through the usage of clickTAG. Also, depending on the structure of your Flash ad, it may be necessary to prepend "_root." or "_level0." to "clickTAG" above, resulting in "_root.clickTAG" or "_level0.clickTAG". It is strongly recommended to upload the ad into your account and verify that the ad is behaving normally prior to it going live, allowing time for any necessary changes.

2 Common causes of high CPU use are continued animation, heavy animation sequences, and animation that surpasses the 30-second limit. If applicable, you can use the Task Manager feature in Windows to check for compliance with this rule.

Facebook Exchange


  • Image: The image must be 100x72px.
  • Title and Body Text:
  • Title must be between 1 and 25 characters, with no word having more than 20 characters
  • Title text cannot contain newline characters
  • Body text can be a maximum of 90 characters including spaces, with no word having more than 20 characters
  • Title and body text cannot start with punctuation
  • Title and body text cannot include words separated by commas without the spaces, e.g. “Michelin,Pirelli,Bridgestone" would not be allowed
  • Title and body text cannot consist entirely of capital letters
  • Title and body text cannot include duplicate consecutive punctuation characters with the exception of ellipses (“...”)
  • Title and body text cannot include double spaces
  • Title and body text cannot include more than 2 consecutive 1 character words
  • Title and body text cannot include the following characters: \ ^ ~ _ = [ ] | < > or International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Symbols, e.g., θ, ð, ʃ, ʒ, etc or superscript and subscript characters with the exception of TM and SM
  • Landing Page: Image and text will go to one landing page only.
  • Auditing: Facebook will be auditing creatives.
  • Uploading: Infectious will upload the creatives to Facebook.

Video


We are able to accept (and re-code) videos in the following formats: FLV, MP4, WMV, F4V, AVI, M4V, MOV, MPG.

We utilise both VAST and VPAID delivery of pre-roll video files and maximum video size is 2.2MB (this size applies also to in-banner video but there is an initial 40kb ‘polite’ load first).

We are able to run a range of ad lengths (including 15 and 30 seconds) but we recommend that video ads files should be no longer than 20 seconds so that we can make use of skippable ad format inventory (such as YouTube’s TrueView).

Ask your account manager for more specific restrictions and exceptions around in-banner and in-stream video advertisements.

Rich Media


Impression Desk offers a range of rich media options including Dynamic Creative, Expandables, Page Skins etc.

Generally, ad sizes are in the 40-100kb range and are in SWF (Flash) format. Ask your Infectious Media account manager for more information, specific requirements, restrictions, additional ad serving costs and exceptions around rich media ad serving.