Online advertising file sizes!!!!! Grrrr!!!

[karlosroyderman]

With the growth and popularity of Broadband in the UK, the amount of rich Flash
advertising on the web should be increasing. Rich Media cos such as
Eyeblaster/Tango Zebra allow for richer content, but cost 3 arms and 7 legs.
Standard "carpet bombing" technologies such as DoubleClick's DART are cheaper
but very restrictive. I have been working with a Flash filesize limit of 30k
for the past 2 years and want answers on why this isn't changing. I found out
DART can accept a creative up to 70k. Obviously it is down to the sites the ads
run on... The big question - do Flash creatives stream down to the user through
the DART system??? If so, then surely as long as the streaming is under a
certain low level, all will be sweet? Also, does a craetive with a higher
filesize cost more to serve through DART, eg. a 15k ad instead of 45k ad. Come
on kids, if I get the answers I need then be prepared for a small revolution.No
retreat no surrender.

[!lurk]

30KB is a web standard from the IAB
([url]http://iab.net/standards/richmedia/inpage.asp[/url]).

Who wants larger ads? The advertisers or the users? Whom do
publishers care about more?

[WM]

Believe it or not a 10K in-page ad outperforms a 40k ad almost 100% of the
time. I work for a major ad network and have access to stats on over 10 billion
ad impressions each month. Time and time again I see really great 50K ads get
0.03% click thru rates. The ad networks are setting these restrictions for your
own good. The pricing for pops and technology like eyeblaster is based on how
obtrusive the ad is. Large, obtrusive ads get higher CTR and lead to more
leads/sales. It's not really about bandwidth. The market is able to sustain
these rates because they are proving to be worth it (for brand advertisers).
There is also more competition to buy up the larger ad units because there is
less inventory available as well. Supply and demand

Excuse the shameless plug for my friends product, but he has a great product
for building flash with tiny file sizes...

[url]www.ThermalEffects.com[/url]

I love that tool.

Best,
WM

[FlashAcesDesign]

I see really great 50K ads get 0.03% click thru rates

That can also depend on the quality of the ad design itself. Most of my
customers are given limited restrictions in sizes when advertising on sites.
Mainly an issue with download speeds.

On restrictive ad sizes I normally get around large files by.
1. using vector based images as much as possible.
2. Optimizing any images being used in Abode Photoshop - set quality to 55-60
range.
3. Lowering image quality on your export settings in flash. as low as you can
without losing alot of resolution.

Hopefully dial-up will become obsolete in a few years and then we will never
have to deal with these restiction problems.

[karlosroyderman]

Obviously, there is FAR more you can do creatively with a 50k ad than with a
10k. For a designer, it is soul destroying to have to compress any imagery or
use vector graphics as an alternative... Due to the inherent streaming
capabilities of flash, couldn't an ad have a 10k initial hit followed by a 40k
stream spread out over say 10 secs (which would amount to a 4kbps average)???
This is very low and wouldn't affect the remaining page load even for a 56kbps
connection...

[FlashAcesDesign]

They (the owners of the sites accepting the advertising) only care about the
overall file size not whether it streams or not. Plus many times you only have
so many seconds of animation - time restraints.

[!lurk]

There are "polite" ads, which do just this. They are generally the
typical 30KB initial download, followed by up to 100KB after the rest
of the page has finished loading (triggered by the onload handler).