The IAB has released new flexible ad specs as part of its New Ad Portfolio, which includes a major upgrade to the global ad specifications & usability. For the last 2 years, the IAB Tech Lab has been working closely with industry partners including the Flexitive Design Cloud team, to create a new set of standards based on flexible ads that adapt to the screens of devices and responsive sites/apps of today and the future.
“The new IAB Standard Ad Unit Portfolio and its support for flexible ads will help to significantly improve the future web user experience while providing more valuable canvases for visual communications that will significantly boost the media industry,” says Neuranet CEO, Paul Vincent.
The New Ad Portfolio consists of ad units that integrate aspect ratio-based flexible ad sizes leveraging HTML5’s responsive capabilities that are critical for responsive websites & apps – a capability that was previously not possible with Flash. In 2016, the IAB launched HTML5 guidelines to transition the industry away from Adobe Flash, due to Flash not being supported on billions of mobile devices.
These new flexible sizes adapt to all devices and screen resolutions, and also incorporate the LEAN Principles of Lightweight, Encrypted, AdChoices supported, and Non-invasive advertising that will help to improve the usability of ads across the digital landscape.
In the IAB New Ad Portfolio, for an ad to be ‘flexible’ means that the ad can have different sizes within its defined size range, but must always maintain its aspect ratio. E.g. a 6:1 ad may be bigger on an iPhone 6 Plus and smaller on an iPhone 5, but its width and height will always remain in the ratio of 6:1.
The IAB New Ad Portfolio replaces all the previous design display guidelines – including the Universal Ad Package (UAP), rich media units, and other ad units’ related guidance that have been in use for close to a decade. This means that over time, current commonly used ad sizes like 728×90, will be replaced by a flexible aspect ratio based ad size such as 6:1 or 4:1. A 300×250 could be replaced with a 1:1, or a 300×600 could be replaced by a 1:2. There are also new full-screen sizes based on screen aspect ratios such as 16:9 (horizontal), 9:16 (vertical) etc.
The IAB’s working groups prepared these final portfolio guidelines along with some transition guidance and frequently asked questions, based on all the feedback received on the draft of the technical specifications and extensive testing.
The Flexitive team can help media companies implement flexible ad products within the New Ad Portfolio on their sites & apps, and the Flexitive Design Cloud helps designers at agencies or within marketing teams to build responsive visual communications, for content components or for flexible ads, fast.
To learn more about Flexitive, and how it can help you build designs that adhere to the new IAB Flexible Ad Specs, check out the links below:
Mediapost – Neuranet Launches Flexitive 2.0 Software, Based On New IAB Standards
MarTech Advisor – Neuranet Launches the New Flexitive 2.0 Update
Also, be sure to contact support@flexitive.com with any questions you have regarding the new IAB Flexible Ads.