I thought i would take some time out of my day and pass on some information on creating banner ads in flash.  I started doing banner ads at the start of this year at EMI Music Canada, and am now doing all the banners ads at Klick Communications in Toronto.

    Some people might think that creating a banner as is easy and that it take no time at all.  That may be true for the most part but a lot of the time  they can be a pain in the neck.


Ad Size
    The first thing is to go over the standard x y size of the major banners you will find on many websites.  Most ad banner projects come in sets, so the same creative will need to be adapted to easy style of banner.

• Superbanner / Leaderboard  = 728x90
  
• Big Bix = 300x250
  
• Skyscraper = 160x60
  
• Pageover / Floating Ads = 500x500 (max)
  
• Transitional / Between Ads = 640x480
  

File Size
    File Size is key in banner ads, websites hate big fat flash ads, often times they will take larger file sizes but they will charge you more for the ad space.  Most websites will allow you to be 5km over without charging you more. the standard for most banners are 20kb to 40kb, depending on the type, if it's an expanding banner or other rich media banner they will have extra file sizes for video and the expanding area.

    You can do a lot of things to keep the file size down when creating the banners.  some of them may seem small and might only shave off 0.1kb, but if you add it all up it will keep you under the file size.

• use a limited color palette
• don't over use gradients
• keep the number of symbols down, do not creating symbols if you don't need them
• don't use huge sound files
  
• stay away from shape tweens
• JPEGs ad HUGE size to the file. open up photoshop and save for web. 
• Save for an older flash player.  I have found a 40k file in player 8 saved to player 6 drops about 10k

Animation Time
    The standard for animation time is around 15 seconds.  This allows for the ad to be seen but at the same time not pull you away from what is on the page. Most websites don't want crazy looking ads on the page that distracts the users from the website content. Pageover and Transitional banners often have shorter animation times

    Sometimes websites ask that no animation start until a set time has passed ie; no animation of 6 seconds. when you come across this, its an easy fix, just drag out the first frame for 6 seconds before the  animation starts.

Audio and Video
    Video and audio banners can be hard sometimes as they have the tight guidelines that need to be followed.   The video should always start playing on load and the audio should always be initiated by the user.  Depending on the banner the video should be no longer then 30 seconds, and be no bigger then 2mb download.  Standard audio on/off, pause play stop buttons should used at all times. 


Additional Information
    For expanding and other rich media banners that change size on a rollover or onclick, a close button should be added to make the users life easy.  the standard frame rate most websites use is 15fps,  rich media banners sometimes allow for 18-30fps.

    Websites and ad serving companys have banner specs that must be followed to the T,  they all follow the same standards for the most part, one thing that is always different is clickTag information.  If the clickTag code in the flash is wrong, it will not work on the website. 

    Use this lesson as a guide when creating flash ad banners and always follow the banner specs provided by the website.  If you work for a company doing banners, over time you will know what each and every website spec if you are working with the same clients.  It's a really big time saver if you start creating a list website specs that you have worked with, so down the road when you make another banner set, you already have the spec in hand.