Gone in 6 seconds – Designer vs. Account and Client

This is an issue… and not an easy one. I mean it looks quite simple, but if you want to find whose fault is that, it’s not an easy thing.

Check this banner, and count how many animation loops you need to be able to read the message:

 

 

It took three times for me to get the message coming through. In 18 seconds – this is the length of the video – the animation runs 3 times which means that the animation length of the banner is 6 seconds.

The issue is serious because:

• There are many very skilled flash designers who develops anything you want. The problem is that they rarely know anything about adservers or marketing – so without directions or supervision they may create a colorful, very beautiful and completely useless banner.
• There is a difference between online accounts and classic ones. Former one might miss marketing background but may know better what clicktag or filesize conditions are, while a classic account are more agile to notice spelling grammars or – like in our case – that she cannot read the message.
• My experience shows that advertisers still pay less attention on online creative executions if there is an integrated campaign. That’s because they have less online experiences plus many times online creatives are adaptions of the offline creative so it should not be a big deal.

Anyhow, if you feel lost, or are unsure, take an old hand’s advice. For this issue, I have one I inherited from an old stager: To check the length of the appearance of any texts in animations, read it loud with normal speed. If you can read it, that’ll do.