Please ensure that your animated advert follows these simple rules:
File Size: Adverts cannot be greater than 25kb, unless agreed with Channel4.com
Frame Rate: The frame rate is set to 25fps. We advise you to set your Flash adverts to the same rate.
Background Colour: The background colour of the main Flash panel is set to white.
Dimensions:
Homepage, E4 and T4 Flash Panel = 760x200
Music Flash Panel = 553x145
There are normally nine elements for the Flash panel. The sequence for this is:
01. sting
01. Feature (9 secs)
including link to content on the C4 site
01. advert (3-4 secs)
including link to site (optional), and call to tracking code.
01. Feature (9 secs)
including link to content on the C4 site
01. advert (3-4 secs)
including link to site (optional), and call to tracking code.
02. sting
02.Feature (9 secs)
including link to content on the C4
site02. advert (3-4 secs)
including link to site (optional), and call to tracking code.
02.Feature (9 secs)
including link to content on the C4
site02. advert (3-4 secs)
including link to site (optional), and call to tracking code.
03.sting
03. Feature (9 secs)
including link to content on the C4 site
03. advert (3-4 secs)
including link to site (optional), and call to tracking code.
03. Feature (9 secs)
including link to content on the C4 site
03. advert (3-4 secs)
including link to site (optional), and call to tracking code.
Advert length: Adverts are to be designed to be of a fixed length. The normal length of time is 3-4 seconds. Ads must not be any longer than 8 seconds. It is advisable that the ad pauses on user interaction (i.e. on rollover of a hit area, or on a mouse movement somewhere over the advert). Please refer to Starting and finishing an Advert.
Script and Player version: Please use Flash 6.
Starting and finishing adverts
Adverts should start with an blank, stopped frame, be designed to play for 3-4 seconds, and should be terminated on a blank frame with the following code:
_root.adDone();This will allow the main Flash movie to play the next movie in sequence.
stop();
The adverts are called by a main Flash movie via XML. As a result, it is important that all actionScript does not reference the _root, except at the end of the movie.
As an alternative, please use this.mc or this.function in your actionScript. It is not possible to lock the root of your advert using the _lockroot = true method as the advert needs to reference a function in the main Flash panel when it closes.
Tracking and click links. Clicks are trackable using standard 3rd party click commands which need to be inserted into the .swf at creative build.
You can preview your adverts - simply save your advert in the media/swf/adverts folder, open homepage.xml and change every instance of template.swf with the filename of the advert you wish to preview, and main.html in a browser.
Please include both the .fla and .swf files when sending the creatives through to our Traffic Department.
Click here to download example.
