Which shared libraries / CDN links to use during banner development?

[daniel.englert]

How can I know which CDN shared libraries are acceptable during banner development? (and not going to be included in banner weight calculations)

Is it enough to know that the banners are uploaded to DCS or DCM?

Do I need to know the publisher network? 

Who are the right people to ask when I start a new banner project?

 

For background my role is typically just building HTML5 banners and handing them off to a vendor that handles uploading assets for trafficking / etc so I am a little uninformed on the life cycle post development.

 

Apologies for all of the questions! I just want to use GSAP for banners and while I know Google and Sizmek have their own CDN links, I don't know the exact reasons I can / cannot consider a shared library CDN link Not part of my banner size.

 

Any and all help would be so greatly appreciated!

Dan

[geedix]

This is an interesting topic for me too. I think the idea is that as long as your library is coming from the same CDN as the rest of your ad, then it's likely to already be cached on most clients. Due to "cache partitioning" on some browsers, there's no caching benefit from other domains, so you wouldn't be able to load from cdnjs or whatever without downloading a fresh instance every time. 

You should be getting specs from the publishers that you're building your banners for, that will give you file size limits and 3rd party library rules.

[GreenSock]

Welcome to the forums, @daniel.englert. 

 

It's totally up to each ad network (we have no control over it), but last I checked every single major ad network exempts GSAP from file size calculations, at least when you use the version from their CDN. Yay! We outlined the reasons for this here and here

 

They don't typically allow other (external) CDN links because it leaves them open to problems. It's a control thing. Like if, for example, CDNJS totally went down but thousands of Sizmek ads were pulling GSAP from CDNJS, that could make Sizmek look really bad. 

 

So if you're publishing ads through Sizmek, ask them for their GSAP CDN URL. Same for Google/DoubleClick/Adwords.

 

Good luck!

[daniel.englert]

Thanks Geedix (cool avatar!) and Jack for the replies, very helpful stuff. I'm glad to finally start posting, I've been using GSAP since it first came out for Flash back in the day and never stopped!

 

To confirm, will it be enough for me to ask who the ad network is serving the ads? Is that the correct way to frame the question to determine which CDN is appropriate for a hypothetical banner build?

 

Is DoubleClick considered the ad network? If so then I would use the Google CDN links.

 

My understanding is that the publisher network are the sites that are ultimately displaying the ad content? They wouldn't matter in terms of what is cached on the end users' browser right?

 

Sorry for making my questions so specific! I think I'm getting it now, again thank you both so much.

[daniel.englert]

Follow up: 

My company usually hands the finished banners off as a ZIP file to various vendors that then upload the ad to whatever network they are supplying. Often the people I communicate with are not very helpful or knowledgeable. 

 

This is why I'm trying to find out the most specific questions to ask and the best way to frame them, I need to frame my question so anyone at these vendors will be able to give us the answers we need in order for us to make the decision to use GSAP or not.

 

If it's enough to know whether they're running them through Doubleclick or Sizmek for example then I think I'll be ok!

 

Thanks again!

Dan

 

[geedix]

I did banners for a long time, starting with Flash and continuing into the HTML5 days. I would say, "I can't build these without specs" and the project manager would find an outdated spec sheet for me. Most likely, your ads will run on Google. Could also be Sizmek, or Flashtalking, or site-served if it's a special placement. Not huge differences, aside from where you download libraries, and maybe different click tags. Sizmek might have changed after Amazon bought them. good luck!