Developer Center Article

Features of the Flash Ad Kit

The Flash Ad Kit includes several tools for authoring ad creatives: templates, functions, and the Flash Ad Kit panel.

Flash Ad Kit Templates

The major enhancement to the Macromedia Flash Ad Kit—compared to its predecessor, the Motif Ad Kit for Macromedia Flash MX—is support for expandable ads. These ads first appear in a standard size, such as a banner (the collapsed view), and then expand to fill a larger space on the web page. You can easily create an animated transition between the collapsed and expanded views. The Flash Ad Kit comes installed with templates for four types of expandable ads:

• The Expandable Ad with Movie Clips (exp_w_mc) template lets you create an ad with the expanding sections defined in embedded movie clips.
• The Expandable Ad with Children (exp_w_child) template lets you create an ad with the expanding sections defined as external SWF files loaded into movie clips.
• The Child SWF Expandable Ad Section (exp_child) template lets you create a child SWF file that serves as the expanding section of another ad. The child SWF file is then loaded into an empty movie clip in the other ad.
• The Expandable Ad on Main Timeline (exp_timeline) template lets you create an expandable ad with all sections defined on the main Timeline.

There's also the General (general) template, which allows you to create all other types of rich media ads, including in-page (fixed), floating, or pop-up/pop-under ads, or any combinations.

Although you can create a new ad template from your own file, if you are creating a rich media ad for delivery in DoubleClick DART Motif you must start with the baseline template in the Flash Ad Kit for the following reasons:

• Their functions use ActionScript variables that are declared and defined in the templates.
• They contain initialization code that is required for trafficking a Flash ad in the DART Motif system.
• They have prebuilt layers that help you structure your ad.

Without the variables and initialization code contained in these templates, DART Motif ad tracking cannot work.

When creating an expandable ad, you have a number of template choices. Deciding which ad template to use is somewhat a matter of choice, although there are solid reasons as well. The most common template you'll find yourself using is probably exp_w_child, along with exp_child. By using exp_w_child you can minimize the size of the initial SWF download in users' browsers. The expanded sections are typically not required until after the user either mouses over the ad or clicks a button, which loads the expanded section.

The exp_w_mc template is similar but it works with embedded movie clips rather than child SWFs. This has the benefit of being easier to work with than the child SWFs version because everything is in one FLA. This means when you look at the Stage you can see all your content in one place.

Both solutions have the obvious benefits of working with movie clips because each section (banner, expanded section) has its own timeline.

The exp_timeline template is appropriate for ads that don't require the benefits of using movie clips. It also makes it easier to author content that exists across the banner and its expanded sections—for example, a ball that moves from the banner into the expanded section and back. Because the exp_timeline model features one timeline for all parts of the ad, this template only makes sense for ads in which the animation is coordinated closely between the banner and the expanded section; in other words, when the ad expands, the banner section moves into a different phase of animation.

Although we anticipate that the exp_w_child and exp_w_mc templates will be much more popular and useful in the real world than exp_timeline, the final solution depends on clients' requirements and your Flash expertise.

The nice thing about using the Flash Ad Kit templates is that they support the following enhanced tracking features:

• Tracking any additional Flash documents that your ad loads
• Tracking clicks on exit links, which you can easily author, to web pages or content outside the ad
• Tracking any action in Flash, such as rollovers, mouse events, text entry, internal clicks, and timed events
• Timing the length of any user interaction or event

Furthermore, when you use a Flash Ad Kit template, you can track the ad display time and the total interaction time in your ad automatically. All reporting is done through the DoubleClick DART ad management solutions.

Flash Ad Kit Functions

The Actions panel shows you several new functions, along with descriptive information, that accompany the various Flash Ad Kit templates. To view the functions, open Flash and select Window > Development Panels > Actions (or press F9). In the left pane, scroll down and click Flash Ad Kit. The following functions are available in the Event Functions category: event(), exit(), movie(), movieUnload(), startTimer(), and stopTimer().

The Expandable Functions category contains the collapse() and expand() functions, which the templates use to create the expandable ads.

The Misc Functions category contains closeSelfFloat(), which closes a floating ad; closeSelfPop(), which closes a pop-up window; and getFilename(), which ensures that child assets load correctly when the DART system changes the asset filename.

Flash Ad Kit Panel

The Flash Ad Kit panel is an authoring panel for bundling, managing, previewing, and packaging your rich media ads. You must use this panel to create a Flash Ad Kit production file before you can traffic your ad. To view the Flash Ad Kit panel, select Window > Other Panels > Flash Ad Kit.