Flash Banner Link not working

Regular Joined: Jan 15, 2007 Posts: 66

Hi Guys,

I recently put up my first flash based banner on the site, it's working and displaying - however the problem is if you try to click on the banner, it doesnt go anywhere... am i missing something?

I read in another post related to a previous version of RN that it is unable to track the clicks on flash banners - is this still the case?

Note that in the advertising module, if i click that little magnifying glass next to the flash flie link (tooltip says "show") then it will open in a page on it's own and also the link works fine when i click it, it goes to the advertisers home page.

thanks!

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:50 am

I don't have a flash file to experiment with but I've just put an image banner into advertising and the link works fine. How about take a look at the view source and see if the flash file is embedded in a a href="..."?

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:54 am

It doesnt track clicks on flash banners from my experience, the only way that would be possible is to rewrite the code to contain the object in a href, which brings us to this:

The above would only work if you set the link in the flash file, which must be done for it to open the link, and then set the same link for the banner when you add it in acp.

fkelly got me... Smile

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 8:57 am

the banner does have it's own link - i know that much - since if i put it in its own html page, the link works etc...

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 10:39 am

Ive been searching around and this is a good example of what to do, Param linkURL

Last thing is modifying mainfile to include the code, and Im not sure if thats an easy task, I think tables would also need altered for it to save the click url for flash. It would probably be easier to just add a code banner.

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 1:03 pm

Thanks horrorcode, but I'm not really trying to get the clicks registered, at this stage i just want the user to be redirected to the advertisers site when they click on the banner, cause right now that's not happening.

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 1:25 pm

I hear you.

You said it works right in html, so what you could do is create an html page for the banner and just add that as a "code" banner.

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 2:16 pm

Ok, I hadnt thought of that - here's what I put in the code.

Code:




<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000" id="obj1" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" border="0" width="648" height="60">


      <param name="movie" value="http://www.site.com/images/banners/N-AD-1.swf">


      <param name="quality" value="High">


      <param name="wmode" value="transparent">


      <embed src="http://www.site.com/images/banners/N-AD-1.swf" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" name="obj1" width="648" height="82" quality="High" wmode="transparent"></object>

The banner shows up and looks good!!! but it does not do anything when you click it - the mouse cursor turns to the finger, so the browser / flash is acknowledging there is a link there, but clicking it does nothing!

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 6:21 pm

Thats odd. Ill have to test it as it doesnt make any sense, as google ads are added with the code method and they work, figures everything works for them...

I just found this [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

May have something to do with it, worth a try anyways.

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 1:18 am

Mate - YOU DA MAN!
that page has made it work!!!
I modified the code to make it look like this:

Code:

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000" id="obj1" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" border="0" width="648" height="60">


<param name="movie" value="/images/banners/N-AD-1.swf">


<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always">


      <param name="quality" value="High">


      <param name="wmode" value="transparent">


      <embed src="/images/banners/N-AD-1.swf" allowScriptAccess="always" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" name="obj1" width="648" height="60" aligh ="right" quality="High" wmode="transparent"></object>

Now the only problem left is that the link opens the advertisers page in the same page the user is on - inconvenient, so i'll ask him to change the target URL to _blank

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 1:27 am

So moving on to the reason why flash / code banners cannot keep track of the number of clicks?

how do people keep track of this stuff? surely it is a required feature?

or do advertisers purely use the number of page impressions for revenue purposes?

a click could be worth up to 100 page views!

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 3:23 am

A URL needs to be passed through phpNuke in order to count clicks. As there is no interface for Flash to do this through phpNuke, there is no way for Nuke to know whether it has been clicked.

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 5:11 am

Say you had a CSS element (a cell with a single transparent gif?) layed out above the flash banner with a link to the advertisers page - would something like that work?

That way the user would be clicking on the gif file and not the flash... or is my thinking incorrect?

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 6:37 pm

That could possibly work, assuming CSS elements are allowed to lay on top of Flash. I don't know that to be the case or not

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 7:03 pm

Ive actually tried this method before...No dice. Problem is most advertisers like google, I had a reference somewhere..., anyways they use click tags so each flash file has to also use clicktag.. From there my understanding is you set the url like src=flash_file.swf?clickTag=http:google.com/..

So this could be made to work, heres the reference: [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Edit: Also, I believe somehow you can override the target the same way, like ?target=_blank

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 12:27 am

Just FYI All - in the end I changed the banner to an Image file - it was just easier to do and now i can track exactly how many clicks this particular advertiser gets...

Thanks for all the responses.