Creative Guidelines and Specifications

Overview

MessageSpace sites accept rich-media (jpg, gif, animated gif, Flash swf) creatives, and third-party HTML ads (Atlas, Falk, DoubleClick, Eyewonder, PointRoll, RightMedia, TangoZebra, etc).

File sizes

The vast majority of our audiences are office/corporate-users, and as such have high speed internet connections. We usually recommend keeping ads below 350 KB in size, and this includes all progressive video, .SWFs, .JPGs, .GIFs – (true streaming not included). Video ads that don’t automatically play should be under 500 KB (teaser videos). Please note that we never allow videos to play with the sound turned on automatically.

Flash/CPU Usage

Units containing Flash must not exceed 40% of a user’s CPU. Common causes of high CPU use are continued animation & heavy animation sequences.

Ad dimensions and sizes

Please see our Ad Formats & Types page. We’re always flexible about other/new creative formats – so get in touch.

File Types

We work with static JPEG/GIFs, animated GIFs, and Flash/SWF files. We require that you send us the source files (.fla, .psd, etc) AND all font files (Windows versions) as well.

For video ads, we require an FLV file that is no larger than 500 KB to play as the teaser. This usually translates to approx 5-10 seconds of looping video, set at a low frame-rate without any sound. There is no limit on the number of loops.

Mouse-over policy

Only user-initiated mouse effects (by rollover or click) allowed and are always in control by the user. Effects can turn mouse into different icon and/or animate portions of the ad. Sound effects are not allowed on mouseover/rollover.

Expandable Ad Specifications

Expanding ads (that expand, jump or scroll out of the ad space) are supported, but must be served by third-party suppliers unless otherwise approved. These ads must adhere to the following standards:

• Any sound must be user-initiated by a mouse click.
• the ad must contract/unexpand on roll off, or provide a visible ‘close’ button
• The page must be restored to normal after the ad contracts/unexpands.

Flash Click-tracking

Flash/swf files must be encoded using Macromedia’s clickTAG technique. Your Flash banner creative should have a button covering the entire area of the banner that uses the getURL action along with the ‘clickTAG’ variable and “_blank” as the target window parameter. Here is what the code for the button should look like:

        on (release) {

          if (clickTAG.substr(0,5) == "http:") {

          getURL(clickTAG, "_blank");

          }

        }

Important things to note

• ‘clickTAG’ is case-sensitive. Make sure you reference it just as it appears here.
• You must use “_blank” as a parameter for getURL. “_top” “_parent” or “_self” will not work correctly.
• We only support one clickTAG per banner.
• Your creative can not contain any frame anchors

More information: http://www.adobe.com/resources/richmedia/tracking/designers_guide/index.html

Unsupported Ads

Ad code that contains ILAYER, LAYER, or NOLAYER tags is not supported by MessageSpace due to cross-browser compatibility and stability issues. Mail-to fields are not supported, because of user-experience issues with this functionality (the user may not have e-mail, their e-mail may not be configured to accept this functionality, etc.)