Banner ad with getURL function

1

Hello! Haven’t posted in a long time, good to be back.

Having problems with a banner ad that needs to be clickable. The client sends me an email that reads like this:

The creatives look ok and are in spec, but are not clickable. Here is a suggestion from Google about fixing that issue:

There is no button action defined in the creative. Creative developer will need to add an invisible button over the area of the creative that should be clickable, or turn a symbol into a button (or movie clip) and associate the below ActionScript code to it.

on(release){

getURL(_level0.clickTag, "_blank");}

Hopefully that helps."

So, I made a movie clip, added that code to it, it doesn’t do what I needed it to do, so I switched it back to AS1/2 and tried this:

on (rollOver) {
//do this
}
on (rollOut) {
//do this
}
on (release){
getURL(“http://www.delawaretire.com”,"_self");
}

anyhow, getURL isn’t getting anything when I preview the SWF in firefox or Chrome. It looks like you can click on it, but doing so doesn’t open the URL in a new window.

If anyone cares to help me out with this, I’d be immensely appreciative. Thanks in advance!

2

Nevermind, got it sorted. This worked. Thanks anyhow!

invisible_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, mouseDownHandler);

function mouseDownHandler(event:MouseEvent):void {

navigateToURL(new URLRequest(“http://www.flashexplained.com/”));

}

3

Have you not switched to HTML5 banners?

4

Nope, not yet. I even tried doing these banners in HTML5, they looked great were the right file size and everything. The Client came back and demanded SWFs.

Now they’re telling me that I HAVE to do this via the AS3 ClickTag method, and I’m at a loss.

5

What’s the proper syntax for this?

on(release){

getURL(_level0.clickTag, “_blank”);}

When I put the URL before hand, it gives me a syntax error. When I put the URL in parentheses before the “_level0.Clicktag” bit, it gives me a syntax errror too.

6

That is an AS2 clickTag but to be perfectly honest that is the version I only saw associated with Cars.com

There is no reason why AS2 SWFs won’t still play, however no version of Flash past Flash CS6 can output AS2, and Flash CC exports a Flash player version higher than what the ad software companies take.

I would ask for direct communication with the vendor serving the ads, which might be Doubleclick, or not.

What you had above AS3 has no clickTag, so it might be:

invisible_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, mouseDownHandler);

function mouseDownHandler(event:MouseEvent):void {

navigateToURL(new URLRequest(“clickTag”));

}

Because URLs are added in ad software and are dynamically assigned.

7

Awesome, thanks! I’ll give it a shot. Might not hear back about it until Monday. Thank you!

8

I read this. I still don’t think I quite understand what, exactly, a clicktag is.

http://www.surfline.com/advertising/surfline_ad_specs/guide_to_clicktag_122710.pdf

9

Hey Dan! I have no useful information for you, just wanted to say hi.

1 Like
10

Never heard of that vendor. Case matters, so it looks like this vendor uses clickTAG rather than clickTag
The actual URL is served dynamically by the ad software.

Create a button, give it an instance name of my_button

Create a keyframe on a new layer and paste

var _url:String = “”;
if (LoaderInfo(root.loaderInfo).parameters.clickTAG)
{ _url = LoaderInfo(root.loaderInfo).parameters.clickTAG;
my_button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, handleMouse);
}

function handleMouse(event:MouseEvent):void
{ navigateToURL(new URLRequest(_url), “_blank”); }