Guardian+

United Kingdom (National)

Ad Specifications



If you would to like to run ‘Rich Media’ creatives such as Expandables and In-Banner Video, please contact your sales representative beforehand. If agreed please then ensure you adhere to the IAB creative guidelines here

For Outstream and Pre-roll creatives, specifications will be available shortly, in the interim please contact your sales representative.

Backup Creatives

In scenarios where your creative will be served on a 3G/4G connection such as App and Mobile Web please conform to the following guidelines:
· Format: GIF or JPEG
· File size: 40kb max

Further Ad Specifications

Creatives must be supplied in a secure format or they will not be accepted.

Creatives must be received 3 days prior to start date or 7 days prior if providing raw HTML5 assets to the campaign start date. Please allow 1 business day for creative auditing.

Please note that Flash files (.swf) will not be accepted. We are able to host standard image files (.jpg, .png, .gif, etc.), traffic HTML5 tags and traffic 3rd-party tags that adhere to the above specifications.

The Guardian along with many other publishers has committed to comply with the IAB’s Self-Regulatory Framework in relation to OBA Advertising.
In order to comply we will require all 3rd party hosted adverts to include the AdChoices Ad Marker as per the IAB’s technical guidelines
http://www.iabeurope.eu/media/86423/technical_specifications_for_iab_eu_oba_fw_v1.pdf

General Notes

White Creative: All white and light-coloured creative must have a dark one-pixel border.
Click into new window: All ads must click into a new browser window.
Browser compliance: We target all rich media ads to all versions of Chrome, IE and Firefox unless otherwise instructed. We target .gif ads to all browsers unless otherwise instructed.

Testing: All solutions are subject to final senior editorial approval (rich media campaigns are subject to testing).
Technical Contact: For all rich media campaigns we need the name of a technical contact at your end.
Lead Time: Please allow 2 days lead time for gifs and 5 days for all other creative.
Sound: All sound must be user click activated.
Misleading Ads: We will not carry any form of advertising that is deemed to be misleading or confusing to our users.
More information: For information on ad types not covered here please contact us directly via the navigation bar on the left of this page.
CPU: We may measure CPU, and reject or remove ads that drive the CPU too high (i.e. negatively affect the speed of the page load or certain page functionality)
iOS Video: The recent update on iOS 10.0.2 has led to creatives with video elements auto playing with sound initiated, in some instances the creative becomes a full page interstitial. To avoid this please ensure the following code has been implemented within the HTML:

“<video muted autoplay playsinline id="video"></video>”

Guidelines on Photosensitive effects

(Affecting people with conditions such as epilepsy and migraine)

General flashing threshold
A sequence of flashes or rapidly changing image sequences where both the following occur:
1. The combined area of flashes occurring concurrently (but not necessarily contiguously) occupies more than one quarter of any 335 × 268 pixel rectangle anywhere on the displayed screen area when the content is viewed at 1024 by 768 pixels and…
2. There are more than three flashes within any one-second period.
Note: For the general flashing threshold, a flash is defined as a pair of opposing changes in brightness of 10% or more of full scale white brightness, where brightness is calculated as .2126*R + .7152*G + .0722B using linearised R, G, and B values. Linearised-X = (X/FS)^2.2 where FS is full scale (usually 255 today). An “opposing change” is an increase followed by a decrease, or a decrease followed by an increase.

Red flashing threshold
A transition to or from a saturated red where the following occurs: The combined area of flashes occurring concurrently occupies more than one quarter of any 335 × 268 pixel rectangle anywhere on
the displayed screen area when the content is viewed at 1024 by 768 pixels and there are more than three flashes within any one-second period.

Contacts:

All creative should be supplied to programmatic.ops@theguardian.com cc’ing in your GR+ Account Manager/Sales Executive.
Any technical queries should be emailed to programmatic.ops@theguardian.com cc’ing in your GR+ Account Manager/Sales Executive
Requests for reports should be made to: programmatic.ops@theguardian.com

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