Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
TIP
The majority of sites and ad-serving companies will ask that you use
“
_blank
”
as the target window. There are a few, however, that require you
“
”
“
”
to target
_self,
while still others require a target of
_top.
It is best to
check with your site or ad server for individual specifications.
The Value of a clickTag
Now that we have discussed linking out to a target URL via a clickTag,
let
s discuss how to get a value assigned to it. In most cases of
running your units with an ad-serving company, you won
'
t need to
worry too much about getting the value of your clickTag inside the
unit itself. This is because most of the ad-serving companies have
their own HTML templates that are already set up to pass the value
in. However, you will still need to test your banner before it goes
live. While there are many ways to pass a variable value into Flash,
I
'
ll just show a quick one here that uses SWFObject to assign the
value of two clickTags and then pass them in to your .swf as a part
of the
flashvars
object.KeepinmindthatI
'
ve left out a good
amount of the code in Example 3.2, so we could put more focus on
the clickTags. Note the different variants of clickTag. We will discuss
more on SWFObject in the
'
“
HTML and JavaScript
”
section.
EXAMPLE 3.2
Assigning clickTag values with SWFObject
<
script type=
“
text/javascript
”
>
var flashvars =
{clickTag1:"http://www.flashadbook.com",clickTAG2:
“
http://
www.jasonfincanon.com
”
};
swfobject.embedSWF(
“
300x350_30_my_ad.swf
”
,
“
banner
”
,
“
300
”
,
“
250
”
,
“
10.0.0
”
,
“
expressInstall.swf
,flashvars);
”
<
/script
>
Creating Time with Code
As you spend more and more time building ad units, you will begin to
find commonalities between them. Some of these will pertain to dif-
ferent ads for a single client, while others will spread across clients.
When you start to notice these reusable pieces of code and assets, set
them aside, so you can pull from them when you need them in
another project. After all, that wheel has already been invented, right?
For example, a large amount of your banners will have a single land-
ing page and therefore will contain a single clickTag. In the typical
case of having the entire banner clickable, why not utilize the graphics
