General Guidelines

• All banners must be sized at 72 dpi resolution.
• Media Company reserves the right to reject advertising based on content, user impact, distraction factors and other situations as determined by the staff.
• Ads with a white or transparent background must include a 1 pixel-wide visible border.
• Banners may not "Flash" messages which overly distract the user.
• Animated GIFs should have at least two seconds between frames, maximum of six frames, with a maximum size of 40KB.
• All banner advertising, when clicked, will launch the linked site in a new browser window or new tab within the browser
• Banners must be designed so that interaction with the user only takes place if the user places the mouse within the advertisement area (or “mouseover”)
• Advertisers may make banner or other creative changes or additions every month.  More frequent creative refreshing may be approved separately and indicated on the IO.
• A landing page URL for each creative must be provided
• Specifications for header and skin assets vary by site – contact your account manager for specific information.  Preferred format for these assets are .AI and .ESP.

Available Types and Maximum Sizes

Below are the size limitations for GIF/JPG/Animated GIF Banners. See below for more on Rich Media.

Not all add units are available on all sites. Be sure to speak with your sales representative regarding specific positions on your targeted Outside Hub site(s).  For Rich Media guidelines, see below.

Deadlines for Advertising Materials

Please allow 5 business days to process/load simple image and GIF animated ads and 5-7 business days to process all other types of creative. Specialize rich media ads and e-mail creative may require longer lead times as stated on the IO.

If advertising materials are late, advertiser is still responsible for the media purchased pursuant to the Insertion Order. In the absence of a mutually acceptable resolution negotiated between the Media Company and Agency / Advertiser, the Advertiser is still responsible for the media purchased and Media Company may run a house promotion until the creative is received.

Additional policies, including late fees and penalties, may be enforced as noted on the Insertion Order.

Rich Media Guidelines

With some exceptions, we primarily follow Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) recommended Rich Media standards, which can be found at http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/508676/508767/Rich_Media.

Rich Media – General Requirements

• Creative must open a new browser window or new tab when clicking thru to another site
• Floating ads and expandable ads must be trafficked in as raw javascript.
• Floating ads must include a prominently visible close button and may not run more than 15 seconds.
• All rich media ads are tested on a matrix of browsers and platforms before posting. This process requires a MINIMUM of FIVE (5) business days to test rich media for performance, stability & compatibility.
• Animation should last no longer than 15 seconds and loop a maximum of three times
• Advertising requiring the use of plug-ins like Flash and Shockwave must utilize "sniffer" code to detect if the user has the required plug-in and display an alternate image if the user does not have it. That alternate image (JPG/GIF) must also be included when submitting materials.
• Audio or Video requires user-interaction via click or minimum 2-second mouse over.
• RichMedia banners should stay within the size of their banner frame's size, (i.e. not pop-out of the dimensions of the banner itself).

Tracking Flash Creatives

Flash ads need to have a clickTAG assigned for within the creative.  The Flash File (.fla extension) must first be modified.  The clickTAG is the tracking code assigned by the ad serving network to an individual ad. The clickTAG allows the network to register where the ad was displayed when it was clicked on. This click through data is reported to the ad serving servers so advertisers may determine the effectiveness of their campaign.

General Requirements – Tracking Flash Creatives

Client should provide the following:

• .SWF File with click-thru URLs
• The font used in the creative,
• GIF/JPG provided as back-up
• Target="_blank" is required in "basic actions" to ensure click-thru opens a new window
• clickTAG code must be embedded in .SWF file as follows:

on (release) 
{
getURL(clickTAG, "_blank");
}

     For more detailed information on implementing clicktag ActionScript, visit Macromedia's Flash Tracking Kit.

Video

Media Company may use a propriety video player and will encode all video files to a Flash video format.  The video will be resized to fit in the Publisher’s video player and will be served within a 300x250 box ad unit.  Custom messaging may appear before, during, and after the video is played, as well as the color scheme and/or animation of the messaging.  Please allow 3 to 5 business days lead time for implementation.

General Requirements - Video

• We accept most common video formats and codecs, including Quicktime, Windows Media Player, Flash, and others.
• Whatever the initial file size, we will encode it down to less than 40KB.  This is important to keep in mind, as a large file will have to be compressed, which could reduce video quality.

Email Blasts

Media Company uses third-party software to distribute emails and track performance measures including, but not limited to, open rate (# of read emails), CTR%, and bounced emails.

General Requirements

• To ensure links work properly, please provide complete HTML code for email blast in a .txt file
• All links in the email blast should be absolute links
• All banners intended for use in email blasts must be static only
• A preferred subject line for the email blast should be provided to Media Company
• Please allow at least a 5 business day lead time for email blast

Text Links

Outside Hub's text link system is based on a character system

• Title - 25 character limit
• Body - 70 character limit
• Display URL - 35 character limit