Web and Video

These are some very rough notes that I took at Erik Natzke’s session on online advertising at MAX 2007.

You want to make ads attractive and legitamite.

He has enjoyed trying to make advertisements fun, essentially bring the fun into the ad. You can have fun, playful ads that are functional.

Important to remember that you are sharing space on a page, so you  have to be graceful (more so than regular).

Want to tell a story, but needs to be precise, regardless of framerate or machine. So the story and message is still taught consistently, regardless of the machine.

Hard to get the vision across if numbers are in the way, so he built his own kind of Flash to have more control. So you have a canvas you can work from that’s appropriate.

You are limited to what you can do (for example, limited to 22K).

Need to use trial and error to get things right sometimes.

Can try designing everything on the stage, and then try things out.

Or, you can start with the minimum content, and then add what you can to that.

Optimization is important.

When an ad is for worldwide distribution, things can get more complex. For instance, you might need to make more changes, have a ton of different sizes of the ad.

Need to find a good workflow for the ad, because you might need to make all these changes.

Recommends keeping everything in a single FLA - all the SWFs that will be at each size are along the Timeline (helps you from going nuts).

Sometimes builds in intelligence where you can change the size of the SWF and the graphics do the right thing / resize / redistribute and such.

Trying to get away from keyframes and timeline animation - Easier to optimize, less time to develop, easier to work with, “keyframes can be all consuming” and “code is more interesting”.

Did a random animation using code - can feel more unique, real, is dynamic.

“Reflection - cause that’s what advertising is about”

Built a scrubber into an animation so can view the animation  like it’s in a video editor — then he can tweak the animation as necessary.

Personalities, people, and pets - character ads. These things commonly in ads.

Interaction results in more click throughs, people almost feel like they owe the company the click for a good experience.

(10 votes, average: 3.9 out of 5)

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