Facebook may buy Atlas

http://allthingsd.com/20121206/facebook-in-talks-to-buy-microsofts-atlas-ad-platform/

Ad-supported internet for job creation

http://marketingland.com/iab-study-ad-supported-internet-responsible-for-5-1-million-u-s-jobs-23068

Google display beats search

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2220372/How-Google-Rakes-In-Over-100-Million-in-Search-Advertising-Daily-Infographic

likely to click?

This is old but I just saw it. Very funny! http://www.businessinsider.com/its-more-likely-you-will-survive-a-plane-crash-or-win-the-lottery-than-click-a-banner-ad-2011-6?op=1

anti-aliasing

good article on css font antialising

http://www.usabilitypost.com/2012/11/05/stop-fixing-font-smoothing/

standard flash banner validation

How do you make sure your banner is working, clicks through, and meets specs?

We have a QA process using this Doubleclick tool:

https://doubleclick-support.appspot.com/validator/

But today it's down, so we're using this:

http://www.adopstools.com/?section=tools&page=clickchecker

This is the only one I've seen with a CPU usage test:

https://adthenticate.adobe.com/

Adform:
http://test.adform.com/testpage/banners-test/

The Adobe one is good, but requires a login.

html5 banners are late to the party

I have yet to see specs or guidelines on running html banners in standard placements. The closest I get is this link to Doubleclick's html5 rich media guidelines.

So far, the animated HTML5 banners I've seen are all over 100k. We got a batch sent to us that were built using PNG sequences taken from the flash versions, stitched together using Jquery, Edge, and who knows what else, adding up to over 2mb each for what had originally been 40k flash files. This is not what Steve Jobs had in mind when he disallowed Flash from iOS devices!

popup windows from standard banner clickTags

This is an old post that I never published. The banner never trafficked, either. Pop-ups from standard banners are despised and not worth trying, in my opinion.

http://www.bonth.nl/2011/12/19/as3-clicktag-ie-popup-blocker/#more-552

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14192.html

So we did this banner...
The client wanted to run it as a standard placement, not rich, but they wanted to have it load xml for its text, so that they could change it themselves. Okay no problem... just post a crossdomain on your server to allow Doubleclick to access your xml. My xml file was pipe delimited for line breaks.
Oh one more thing: we needed to have the clickthrough open in a 450x400 px window, no address bar or scrollbars... ok? This can be done in DFA, says the media guy. Days later: no dice. Scrapped.

Too High

In a meeting with the Managing Director and a few others, discussing estimates.

"When I used to build banners, I did ten a day. How can a banner take two days to build?" Me: well, it depends on the animation, and if there's interactivity... and there will be revisions to get everything pixel perfect..." 

Managing Director: "who cares? Does anybody really look at banners, anyway? let's just see how fast we can get it done, and have some money left for something more interesting!"

third party data providers in a banner

I've been involved with several projects where we discussed using 3rd party data from someone like BlueKai or Causata, but so far, we haven't followed through. Who has done this? Talk to me.

Domain name available

After using it for twelve years, I lost my personal .com domain name. I had it set to auto-renew, but forgot to update my credit card with the host, and didn't check my old email very carefully. One day, I went to show someone an old Flash animation, and to my surprise, I got served a site promoting anti-oxidants.

Why anti-oxidants? I don't think the new domain owners share my name, so I assumed they just wanted to sell it back to me at a profit. Surprisingly, they aren't interested in selling it. I don't fully understand their motivation. Are they just trying to improve their search ranking?

I had an exchange of emails with some guy on a hotmail account. I told him that he was a thief, under the Anti-Cybersquatting provisions of the Lanham Act, specifically 15 U.S.C. §§ 1125 (d) and 1129(1)(A)., which states that:

Any person who registers a domain name that consists of the name of another living person, or a name substantially and confusingly similar thereto, without that person's consent, with the specific intent to profit from such name by selling the domain name for financial gain to that person or any third party, shall be liable in a civil action by such person.

My situation is similar to this, except that for me, it's not worth pursuing. I don't really need my personal name to be a web site.

Anyway, I started looking up domain names. I'll probably buy something new. I have some ideas. Adfinger.com is taken. 

What inspired me to write this post is the onslaught of ads I've been getting since my search. Register.com buys a lot of ads! If someone out there wants to use jbradleyjohnson.net to sell antioxidants, go for it! I don't need it!

end of the banner ad era?

I agree with the guy who says, I think the Banner has a bright future. They’re awesome. http://www.digiday.com/publishers/the-great-banner-ad-debate/

I need to save this link- a pdf from Adobe - so that I can optimize my Flash files!

MRaid for mobile

This is a step in the right direction: standardizing SDKs for mobile in-app advertising. http://www.iab.net/mraid

Addroid

Matt Cooper came and showed us his Addroid banners. They play video in standard 40k Dart placements. That's without any ointment! I think he'll have success with his simple, low-cost video ad serving. Like me, he's been doing banner for a long time. Unlike me, he's got entrepreneurial ambitions. Bottom line, this is going to replace a lot of standard Flash banners.

Google is working to make ads better!

I like this video because I like to watch people sketch. It makes me wonder, though — how do these scams work? Is there a way for me to run one of these scams from my banners?

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/making-our-ads-better-for-everyone.html

Apostrophe fail

One of these has a mistake in typography. Nobody cares but me! Forget it!

OpenX

By coincidence, two of my different projects are using OpenX right now. Their clicktag opens in clickTarget getURL(clickTAG,clickTARGET); okay gotta go

Using verification fields for advertising - http://vimeo.com/15041038 - I don't see this as a competitor with an ad banner, more like a supplement.

These Norwegians have some good banner tips!

case insensitive?

I'm not too confident about these things because of ad servers that parse your swf for a correctly formatted clicktag before they will run your banner. Even if it works, unless they see getURL(clickTag, "_blank"), they won't run it. But on the other hand, I like this.

Adform

Those Swedes at Adform look pretty smart! I like some of the stuff in their test page.

We got a bunch of banners from another agency yesterday that just needed click tags changed to open in "_self". An odd request, but an easy one to fulfill. The font was Arial and they were timeline animations. AS3, which is unusual for a standard banner, but not a problem. However, the revised banners weren't working for the guy upstairs. I thought maybe I had to use "_parent" because of the iFrame, but as it turns out, there's an option in DFA to allow scripts that has to be checked for AS3. So, "_self" worked after all.

Good story, right? I need to learn more about how DFA works.

Adobe Digital Marketing Summit

It's not too late to get early bird pricing on the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit.   It's all about optimizing your audience, somewhere between dull as nails and mind-blowing!