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Ask DN: What's the current state of banner advertising?

9 years ago from , Interactive Designer at Look-Listen

We all know that creating banner ads is not the most interesting or glamorous job in the world. In an agency however, online ads are a common client request. At our agency, we have traditionally built these ads as Flash but are making a transition to HTML5.

I'm having a difficult time finding up-to-date resources on this online. I was curious if anyone in the DN community had any experience with building ads lately. In your experience, do traditional ad servers still require Flash or have we made a full transition to HTML5? Are there other best practices that you could recommend?

Thanks for your time and apologies for posting about a much-despised topic :)

3 comments

  • Hash MilhanHash Milhan, 9 years ago (edited 9 years ago )

    Well... creating banner ads may not be the most glamorous job in the world only if you see it that way.

    First let me give you some links for resources, where you can get some inspiration and then some great examples.

    Flash is still heavily used in Online Advertising (also known as OLA). AS2 in 40kb ads (these are the less glamorous ones) and AS3 ads that vary in file size, or else known as Rich Media Ads.

    At least in the UK the main ad servers are DoubleClick (by Google), MediaMinda (Sizmek) and FlashTalking.

    For examples of some great online banner ads check out

    Here are some great examples (Flash on desktop, HTML5 on mobile).

    4 points
  • Ryan Hicks, 9 years ago

    We are currently still building in flash and training our peeps to transition to HTML5. However, it won't work until the client agrees to the extra cost it might incur or the when the technologies embrace it. I don't design the ads in my agency, but isn't google still using flash for all their banners on their servers? I know there are a few services offering HTML5 banners as a service, but it's still pretty new.

    You're not alone.

    1 point
  • Lee Mahayati, 9 years ago

    Hey, you can search on behance or dribble or even google have solution how you've got inspire to buid nice banner. You can make it with photoshop. And export that to gif file. Pretty small too,

    0 points