NATS4 Flash Banners
The Flash Banners Adtool type lets you upload a flash banner of your choosing in order to help affiliates promote your site. After uploading, NATS will automatically pass an affiliate linkcode into your flash banner.
In order to take advantage of this feature, however, your flash banners should be able to utilize the input parameter clickTag. To do this, your flash banner or button should have an action code similar to the following:
Action Script 2
on (release) {
if (clickTAG.substr(0,5) == "http:") {
getURL(clickTAG);
}
}
Action Script 3
function goto_url(e:Event) : void {
if (String(root.loaderInfo.parameters.clickTAG).substr(0,5) == "http:") {
navigateToURL(new URLRequest(String(root.loaderInfo.parameters.clickTAG)), "_blank");
}
}
movieClip_2.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,goto_url);
For more information on adding links for tracking purposes to your flash banners you should refer to this article:
http://www.adobe.com/resources/richmedia/tracking/designers_guide/
Uploading a Flash Banner
After you have edited your flash banner to accept the affiliate input link and redirect a surfer, you will need to upload your banner to NATS. You can do so by going to the Adtools Admin, scrolling down to the "Banner Adtools Types" category, and clicking the "View Adtools" action icon next to the "Flash Banners" adtool type.
On the next page, you will see a section labeled "New Flash Banners Adtool." Use the available "Banner" field to add the banner file you want to use; you can upload a file from your hard drive, or input a URL to load from in this field.
Once you have selected a file to use as your new Flash Banner, you can define the other available settings for your banner. These settings include:
- Enabled on - Choose what sites you want the banner to be enabled for.
- Publish Date - Input what date you want the banner to be available from.
- Default Group - Select an adtool group to categorize the banner under.
Once you have defined the available fields, click "Add Adtool" to add your new image banner to NATS.
Your flash banner will now be displayed in the "Image Banners Adtool" table, along with the other available flash banners and basic information regarding that flash banner.
When you have done this, your affiliates will be able to navigate to their Affiliate Tools page and get an embed code similar to the following:
<embed height="60" width="468" name="plugin" src="demo_banner.swf?clickTAG=http://demo.nats4.com/track/MS4yLjAuMC4wLjIzLjAuMA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" />
NOTE: For Default Affiliate skins, the embed code for the flash banner in the affiliate view will ONLY show with the following link styles: Encoded with HTML, Un-Encoded with HTML, and Shortname with HTML. Specific Affiliate Linkcode Display Settings may need to be adjusted.
If you would like to show both a track link and an image link, you can check TRACK_BANNER_IMPRESSIONS in the configuration admin under under misc.
Displaying an Image Banner
Before you can include your new Flash Banner on one of your sites, you must first add a "SHOW" rule. To do so, click on the "Add a new rule" action icon next to your new image banner. On the next page, simply add a "SHOW" rule type for the affiliate(s), program(s), and site(s) you want this banner to be enabled for. You can also choose to enable this banner for all affiliates, programs, and sites. For more information on rules in NATS4, please see our NATS4 Rules wiki article.
Once you create a "SHOW" rule for your new flash banner, affiliates will be able to grab the linkcode for that banner through their Ad Tools page.
