IAB Australia has announced that its Standards and Guidelines Council working group has published new interim Creative ad specifications which will address industry concerns around the recent changes to Flash support by browsers. The Creative Guidelines replace the existing HTML5 guidelines which were published in 2013 HTML5.
The announcement come as the industry adjusts to this week’s ‘switch off’ with Adwords no longer serving Flash ads on Chrome. All other Flash Ads can continue to serve on Chrome, but will see significantly reduced click-through-rates because users will need to click once to watch an ad, and click again to click through or interact with it.
“As an industry we need to be nimble and work to the strengths of modern browsers, so our Council has focused considerable attention on refining and updating our Creative Ad Guidelines to assist marketers and advertisers,” said Alice Manners, CEO of IAB Australia. “The updated Guidelines will be just the first step in the process of helping the industry transition to the HTML5 dominant landscape.”
Key issues addressed in the IAB Australia Creative Guidelines include increasing base file weights to accommodate increased ad payload requirements; acknowledging that material will be developed by creative teams rather than fully qualified front end developers; and drawing distinctions between creative specific JavaScript/CSS and common libraries that power ads.
HTML 5 Specifications can be downloaded below.
