Online Advertising & Marketing Proffesional blog

Situation: limited ad-market, high frequency, limited channels, overlapped audience and so on

Default gap between unique visitor and clicks isn’t very large UVR (CTRu) vs CTR 

BUT!

Game or other interactive activity in banner generates repeated-user-clicks

For example banner with teasing game generates CTR 1,5% and UVR 1,0% 

Why? : because user likes game, wants to play again, or smth. like this.

Is it OK?: ok but don’t forget – check quality of traffic and don’t trust CTR as final performance indicator for campaign creative or message.

If you pay for click – you pay for repeated click. :( Not very good. But it depends on your tactics.

Use network with CPC(u) cost per click (unique)

Or use capping, freq. limiting or other techniques too avoid overlapping.

Minimum Kbs - Maximum quality!

• Fast method: optimization in flash
• Normal method: optimization in photoshop + import to flash

Fast vs Normal – You can try fast optimization before normal, sometimes quality result is the same. 

Fast optimization in flash

brutal force optimization – try first, then think :)

1. Go to library window (shortcut: CTRL+L)

2. Choose Bitmap object (JPG or PNG or GIF)

3. Double click on bitmap – Opens window with options

4. Switch to Custom and set quality rate (0-100). Try 30-50 first.

5. Test Bitmap Size and visual quality (press TEST button), check size, check visual quality

6. If quality is OK, try to reduce size again (type lower custom-quality)

7. If quality is OK press OK button, and try the same optimization steps to next bitmap

8. Re-export SWF and check new size.

9. If overall bitmap quality (during animation) is OK and new size is OK too – work finished. Else try Normal optimization in photoshop

Attention – Adobe Flash CS4 has OPTIMIZATION BUGS. >>>
After bitmap optimization try re-export SWF file and run it. If bitmaps became flickering/disappearing, you have to close FLA file then re-open it and export SWF again. >>>

Normal optimization in photoshop

Saving bitmap file : Adobe photoshop -> File -> Save for WEB (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S)

1. Save for WEB window view

2. Try optimise

• JPEG (type)
• Quality (0-100) 
• Optimized
• You can try blur (higher blur = lower quality, lower size)
• Set metadata to None (no metadata = lower file size)

Do you have problem: Low-readability?

Solution: Change font smoothing in photoshop.

Try this (adobe photoshop CS4 interface) and find the best smoothing option:

Choose font smoothing

 (None, Sharp, Crisp, Strong, Smooth) 

Depending on factors like font, background, font size, font color , you have to choose the best option.

Closer look

Always try different options, sometimes sharp will be too pixelated, smooth will be too blurry.

Use swf version 8 (more than 98% world wide penetration) instead of swf version 6

Always re-check technical requirements anyway!!! And don’t forget about gif/jpg backups!

for simple banners and rich media banners.
Most ad-networks support swf v8

Source: ADOBE FLASH v PENETRATION

Worldwide Ubiquity of Adobe Flash Player by Version – December 2008