DIGITAL ADVERTISING GUIDELINES

Overview | Rich Media Guide | HTML5 Guide & Specs | Video Ad Guide | Mobile Ad Guide |Creative Delivery Lead Times | Supported desktop web browsers

Overview

Our Digital Advertising Guidelines are developed to provide a comprehensive overview of advertising opportunities based on platforms and technology. This document intends to set out all general rules (DOs and DON’Ts of advertising with Fairfax Media) and includes pointers to more specific documents and product specifications where applicable and intends to be consistent with the latest IAB Australia guidelines.

Fairfax’s standard digital ad units include the units of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Universal Ad Package (UAP) as well as a wide range of additional formats. Please refer to our Standard Banner Ads and Standard Advertorial Ads pages for details.

References

• Internet Advertising Bureau, Australia: iabaustralia.com.au
• IAB Guidelines & Best Practice

General Rules

Advertising creative material:

• Must not:
  • destroy, disrespect or pretend to be content
  • contain nudity, profanity, violence
  • contain strobing effects and rapid image sequences
  • contain uninitiated sound
  • disable form fields, navigation or other site functionality
  • contain or prompt download of executable / installation files
  • set third, fourth etc. party cookies for pre- or re-targeting purposes is not permitted.
• Must:
  • be of sufficient quality – i.e. meeting professional design standards, using suitable image resolutions etc.
  • leave users to remain in full control of rich media units, i.e. able to terminate, shut down or minimise overlays, players etc.
  • include a 1px solid border with at least 20% contrast against its environment. Note that custom and integrated ad shapes and executions may be excluded at the discretion of Fairfax.
  • include a static or animated fallback creative format to be served to users with low-powered devices, without sufficient plugins or where JavaScript disabled.
• Accepted
  • Animation can loop twice (play through 3 times)

Furthermore:

• Fairfax reserves the right to remove or request the removal / revision of any creative that is deemed unsuitable.
• Fairfax may at its absolute discretion refuse to publish any advertisement.
• Fairfax reserves the right to reject / remove any rich media ad from the rotation that does not meet creative specifications, contravenes guidelines or adversely affects site performance other ad placements or user experience.

Building, Hosting & Reporting

We operate under the statement -“We build, we serve, we report. You build, you serve, you report” Meaning if a creative unit is built by Fairfax, we will also host/ad serve and report on the creative unit. If however, 3rd parties (to Fairfax) build a creative unit, such as client and/or creative agency, we expect 3rd party ad server tags, meaning the client/agency hosts/ad serves and reports on said creative unit.Note: some Fairfax executions are comprised of multiple creative units, coming together to form one product, which in turn may be a mix of 3rd party and Fairfax built/hosted assets.

Rich Media Guide

Rich media creatives are interactive, highly engaging ad formats, usually combining a number of technologies, such as HTML5, video etc. Typical rich media executions are full page adverts, expanding ads, video rectangles and transitional. Rich media creative may include click initiated sound, video and data-capture forms etc.

Rich Media Rules

Our overall goal here is to ensure the best user experience. This will avoid negative impact on both our clients & Fairfax brand(s).

• All rich media creative must be loaded “politely”, i.e. following the completion of the parent page’s load (See glossary for polite, subsequent polite and user initiated download methods).
• Auto initiated rich media ads are frequency capped, typically 1 impression | UB | day. Spec applicable Ad specs for further details.
• Audio content must be click initiated.
• All out of banner ads (expanding, floating etc.) are required to have a standard close button
• Strobing effects and fast animations aren’t allowed.
• Please note that CPU load limitations apply to all Rich Media creative. The recommended peak CPU load by IAB is 40%. Creative above this load may be rejected by Fairfax’s Ad Operations. Below is an overview of frequently encountered Rich Media related problems regarding unreasonably high CPU load.

Standard and rich media display ad hosts

• Google Doubleclick Studio
• Sizmek

HTML5 Guide for 3rd party hosted

The combination of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, SVG etc. enables rich animation and features similar or identical to Flash technology, hence you may refer to the relevant ad product specifications for details regarding rules, expected behaviour and deliverables with respect to user experience, hardware load (CPU performance considerations, file sizes) etc.

HTML5 Guide for Fairfax hosted

• SVG and WebFonts are not accepted at the moment
• Each individual creative need to be it's own zip file
• All files need to be in the root folder, no sub-folder allowed
• Must follow W3C standards, and your HTML file should have<!DOCTYPE html>, <html> and <body> tags
• Declare the clickTag variable in your HTML file, e.g. <script type="text/javascript">var clickTag = "http://www.smh.com.au"; </script>
• Use this clickTag variable as your click through URL, e.g. <a href="javascript:window.open(window.clickTag)"></a> OR <div id="clickArea" style="width: 300px; height: 250px" onclick="window.open(clickTag ,'_blank');">
• Put meta data in your <head> session, e.g. <meta name="ad.size" content="width=300,height=250">
• No cross-domain scripting allowed
• No local storage or session storage libraries allowed
• Must be SSL compliant

The following HTML5 specs are a living document and will change according to IAB guidance.

HTML5 Ad Specifications Notes

• A HTML5 Standard banner is defined as a basic banner with single click through with contained behaviour. Anything beyond this is considered Rich HTML5.
• Max File Size includes all ad assets such as HTML, CSS, JS & images. Shared libraries that are hosted by approved 3rd Party Vendors are not included in the Max File Size. Contact your vendor representative for a list of supported libraries.
• A backup image is required to display for unsupported environments, such as older versions of IE.

Approved HTML5 Ad host vendors

• Google DoubleClick
• Sizmek

Recommended HTML5 Development Tools

• Google Web Designer
• Adobe Animate

HTML5 Recommendations

• It's recommended that additional content such as CSS, JS, images, etc, be politely loaded, including shared libraries.
• At this time, it's preferred to use internal CSS Style Sheets within the <HEAD> of your HTML code.
• Use CSS for animations where possible.
• To reduce file sizes, please consider using:
  • HTML, JS & CSS code minifiers.
  • Sprites, SVG or compressing images using 'Save for Web'. ( see above hosting options in regards to SVG files )
  • Web fonts. Consider only loading the characters that the creative is using. ( see above hosting options in regards to Web fonts )

Expanding Ad Guide

Expanding ads are a polite loading, out of banner rich media ad type where a standard display ad expands over the page content, typically initiated by the user either by clicking or rolling over the base ad.The benefit of the expanding ad is the large palette in which to communicate a message and engage the audience the expansion also increases the immediacy of interaction.Expanding ads are ideal to combine with video in-page advertising as well as games, forms etc. Please note that such combinations will require meeting a combination of the respective ad specifications.There are various methods to trigger the expansion of such an ad, namely:

• Click/Tap to expand methodExpansion is triggered by clicking / Tap of the ad or part of the ad. It must include a clear Call-To-Action. Click/Tap-to-expand ads retract when the standard close button is clicked.
• Simple roll-over method (Desktop only)Expansion is triggered by hovering over the retracted area of the ad, It must include a clear Call-To-Action and expand the ad immediately upon rollover in order not to confuse users. Roll-over-to-expand ads must retract by hovering off the ad. Additionally clicking the standard close button should also retract the advert.
• Roll-over to countdown method (Desktop only)Rolling over the retracted ad starts a three second visually signalled countdown, which is subsequently followed by the ad expansion. The expansion includes a full page semi-transparent overlay as a background to the effective ad creative area. Such ads then only retract by clicking on a standard close button.

Particular ad units and websites may require specific methods to be used as described below.Click to Expand or Countdown to expand methods must be used for all creative executions running on the homepages of

• www.smh.com.au
• www.theage.com.au
• www.brisbanetimes.com.au
• www.watoday.com.au
• www.canberratimes.com.au

When closed, the ad must not disable links that are covered by it in its expanded phase, nor disable other site functionality.

Expanding Ad Dimensions and Specifications

The below dimensions refer to the expanding versions of IAB standard ad formats. All dimensions are set as width px X height px @ file size limit (total combined file size of polite loading ad.)Expanding ad creative must be delivered via third party redirect tag with the exception of specific Fairfax build ad formats.

For other expanding ad formats, please contact your Fairfax account manager.

Video Ad Guide

Fairfax offers a range of video solutions including bespoke program sponsorships, high impact branding opportunities as well as incremental reach for TV campaigns.VAST / VPAIDFairfax is VAST 2.0 and VPAID 2.0 compliant. Please refer to the Video specifications for details.References:

• Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST)
• Video Player Ad Interface Definition (VPAID)
• Video Multiple Ad Playlist (VMAP)

Approved Video ad host vendors

• VAST
  • Google DoubleClick
  • Sizmek
• VPAID
  • Innovid
  • Telemetry
  • Tubemogul

Mobile (m. / In-App) Ad Guide

In an effort to preserve quality as well as increasing ad-effectiveness for our clients, the following loose guidelines should be considered / adhered to when producing advertising material for Fairfax’s online properties.

• Balance text, images and whitespace
• Be aware of context and its relation to creative and ad targeting.
• Use obvious and clear Call To Action copy
• Make your ad engaging, interactive, fun and innovative
• Consider colour schemes with respect to the targeted website.
• Click-through URLs should point to mobile optimised landing pages for best user experience.

Creative Delivery Lead Times

Ad products are classified into a three tier system to determine their delivery deadlines and governing business rules. Delivery deadlines are:

Third Party Ad Tag Types

Ads within the Fairfax network may be served through either iframe or JavaScript ad-tags. All Fairfax approved third party vendors support both methods; however a member of the Ad Operations team will inform you if a specific execution requires a particular tag type / delivery method.Third party redirect tags must be live when submitted.

Supported desktop web browsers

• Chrome [latest official release]
• Mozilla Firefox [latest official release]
• Microsoft Internet Explorer version 11 [Windows OS only]
• Safari 4+ [Apple OS only]

Glossary

Revision: 7.15

Fairfax reserves the right to change the specifications without notice at any time!

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