Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
TIP
When you
reworkingwithvideoinarich-mediabanner,checkwiththe
rich-media company to see if they have a Flash video player already built
for use in their system. They may have special code to work with their
streaming servers, and you
'
'
ll just need to skin their player to match your
design.
Dynamic Content In Your Ads
I was once approached to answer a question about feeding
dynamic content into a banner. The reason, in this particular case,
was because we had just launched a microsite that was entirely dri-
ven by user-generated content. In the site, a user could fill out a
form to submit two different sides on any topic. If the topic was
approved by the microsite
s administrator, then other users could
go on to debate which of the two sides of the topic was better. For
example, one topic might be sports and one discussion in that
topic might be about football versus f
'
ú
tbol. Users would go to the
microsite to use text, audio, or video to weigh in on the side they
liked better. In addition, users could simply click a button to vote
on their favorite side without saying anything at all.
TIP
Remember that if you want the capability to load external files such as
XML or images, you
'
regoingtoneedtousearich-mediacompanyto
serve your ads.
Getting back to the banner ads with the dynamic content; with
such a site running off of user-generated content, the topics of dis-
cussion are always current and up-to-date with real-world events.
Because the microsite always had current information, the banners
needed to have current information as well. The answer was to build
a single round of banners that could be updated
“
on the fly.
”
Because
regular 40k standard Flash banners don
t allow the luxury of loading
external files or content, rich media was the option available.
Once the banners were built, they would pull their content from
an external XML file that could be changed at any time deemed
necessary. And because all of the content within the banner was
dynamic, only one banner had to be built for each size. In other
words, even though there were 10 different sites running the
160
'
600 ad with different content on each banner, there was only
one 160
×
600 banner built. The readers on site A might be inter-
estedindifferenttopicsofdiscussionthanthereadersonsiteB,
and using the rich-media technologies allowed us to give them
each the dynamic content that they were interested in.
×
