Flash Ads in Google Adsense Units

Did you know that Google Adwords advertisers can upload flash ads, instead of the usual text and image ads (and animated images too) to reduce ad blindness and create more intuitive advertising campaigns.

An excerpt on the Inside Adwords blog reveals this. Read more about the coding on that post.

I’d like to use flash ads, but how do I upload them?
“You can upload Flash ads in the same manner that you upload all image ads, but make sure you’re aware of the following requirements. Flash ads must be 50K or smaller in size and utilize Flash versions 4 – 6. All Flash creatives should also support the clickTAG variable. The clickTAG is the tracking code assigned by Google to an individual ad. It allows Google to register where the ad was displayed when it was clicked, and helps advertisers determine the effectiveness of their campaign. On any click, Flash creatives should redirect to the URL specified in the clickTAG argument; there should be no other redirection in between.”

Flash ads follow the same Editorial Guidelines that apply to image ads, but Flash ads may not be resized before submission. Surprisingly I have not seen any flash ads on any websites as yet. Remember that you need a Macromedia flash enabled browser to see these ads. And a 50kb flash file might take more time to load on a slow dial up internet connection than a 1-5kb fast loading optimized compressed jpeg image file. And you need to show that ads fast before readers scroll down the page. So maybe that is why…