Have you ever requested a banner?

[p.arena]

Have you ever asked for banners in a size or language that were not offered by the affiliate program?

If so what was your experience in turnaround time and what do you expect generally from the sites that you promote?

With WBX we get asked occasionally for banners to be produced in other sizes or languages, and our turnaround time is generally a few days or so depending on how busy our designer is with other projects.

Interested to hear what the general experience is with this, and whether it is something many affiliates often require.

[universal4]

I voted that I ask only sometimes.

I usually just create my own when I need special sizes, but let me explain my position.

Often when I see the need for a special size banner if is because I am working on a specific site that requires a certain size and I have decided that I plan on using that spot to promote a specific property.

For me to complete that task, and complete that page that needs that specific size banner, what good is it gonna do to ask for a banner of that size?

(Not being cruel but dealing in realities) Are you gonna drop what your doing and create the banner immediately? If you are sleeping, are you going to wake up and create the banner immediately?

I am working on the page that needs that size now, not tomorrow, or in a few days (a few days is certainly a reasonable time frame for special requests), but tomorrow or in a few days I will be working on diffferent sites or different pages, so it's just easier for me to create my own.

As an example, I often use banners 120x400 or 120x240 and sometimes that size isn't available advertising the property or bonus or game I need.

So in these cases I will take a 120x600 and chop it up. (bytheway a 160x600 will reduce to 120x450 keeping aspect ratio) Some times when I chop up a 120x600 I will end up with 120x350, 120x380, 120x475 or any other number of strange sizes, but if I see something like that will work, then I go with it, complete the page and move on.

My biggest pet peeve for graphics developers that work for gambling properties? LIGHTEN UP the weights....and stop putting out creatives that weigh more than my whole pages....sure an animated gif that has 38 frames might look nice, but if that sucker is over 50k i am gonna chop out most of those frames and get it down to a size I can live with, or I will move on to another creative...and if all a group offers are super heavy banners, I move on to another property.

WBX, I am not saying you guys make your creative too heavy, just took the opportunity to drop that in there....

Actually, the fact that you are asking this and showing genuine interest in whether affiliates need this service sounds great, and providing you can get them done within a few days (and they aren't too heavy) it is something that I am sure that some affiliates will find quite handy.

Hey wake up I need a banner.....lol

Rick
Universal4

[edgarf76]

I have requested banners that did not have my size for a specific sport. Some are quick, they get it done in a few days and do a good job. Sometimes for some books I have not gotten any response at all.

The same goes for landing pages with promo codes. Some programs make them quickly with a no deposit code, others give a BS reason that they cannot make the landing page or just ignore the email.


I would rather get an email saying we are really busy and cannot work on this right now. I hate BS, I like being upfront.

[F-L-C]

I usually just resize myself but I have asked for banners on occasion when there was nothing suitable to resize in the backend. The longest I had to wait for a banner was 3 - 4 weeks but that was the exception. Other programs usually delivered within a couple of days.

[Marit VS]

From an operators point of view we get request for re-sizing all the time. Currently we suppose Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and English as languages, but if the affiliate is willing to give us the translations, it's never too much trouble to make a banner suited for them.

The longest an affiliate of ours had to wait for a custom made banner is a couple of days, but we always try and get it asap. I mean, the faster we get the banners for you the quicker the affiliate will start pushing the casino!

I don't think It's too much to much to ask, as long as you are willing to have a little patience and not expect it that same day.

[clarar]

Hi,

we also do re-sizing and translations, usually it takes us a little more time because its something customized but as Marit said, with some patience everything can be done.

[p.arena]

My biggest pet peeve for graphics developers that work for gambling properties? LIGHTEN UP the weights....and stop putting out creatives that weigh more than my whole pages....sure an animated gif that has 38 frames might look nice, but if that sucker is over 50k i am gonna chop out most of those frames and get it down to a size I can live with, or I will move on to another creative...and if all a group offers are super heavy banners, I move on to another property.

WBX, I am not saying you guys make your creative too heavy, just took the opportunity to drop that in there....

Actually, the fact that you are asking this and showing genuine interest in whether affiliates need this service sounds great, and providing you can get them done within a few days (and they aren't too heavy) it is something that I am sure that some affiliates will find quite handy.

Thanks Rick, yeah we try to keep our banner file sizes small. Some of our flash banners that are heavy on animation can get close to 100kb but we have smaller gif versions of the same banners to choose from.

I'll raise your feedback with the team though, appreciate it

[universal4]

Thanks Peter,

Overall I have found almost all programs pretty responsive when it comes to special requests on banners, with very few exceptions. (so newbies, never be scared to ask, not many of the affiliate managers bite...no matter how hard I try to get them to)

And as for the 100k ones, I personally would never even consider using one that large, we had one group one time (no longer operating) that almost every gif banner they put out averaged 100k (even for 468x60's).

If you are wondering about the most common sizes we all use, there is thread here in the public section (either general or freshman) where a number of us posted up the most common sizes we all use and I think it was a good help to a few operators who hadn't thought about a few of the sizes.

When a developer is sitting down to create banners it is usually a lot more convenient for them to do a lot of sizes at once since they can copy and paste frames and resize etc while they are working on a set.

Another thing that some casino operators do not stop and consider, if you are putting together blackjack or roulette specific banners, do not put the slots bonus on it. Visitors usually feel bad about thinking they get a $500 bonus advertised on a blackjack banner only to find out the percentage is a third of that with a max of $100 for table games....(but that's not what the banner said)

Good discussion nonetheless, will see if I can dig up that other thread I mentioned.

Rick
Universal4

[universal4]

Here are a few banner size discussions
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/your-best...ze-206156.html
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/banner-sizes-203403.html
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/can-peopl...ds-201109.html
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/banner-si...se-192767.html (poll attached)


Rick
Universal4

[Christiaan]

I have a pretty big banner on top of my website. Most of the programs don't have anything in this size or bigger so I can't take a other banner and resize it. If I have to make a banner bigger the quality is to poor.

[universal4]

Normally if you need to stretch an image, the best way is to start with something as larg as you can and keep the aspect ratio and pic which ever dmension has to change by the highest percentage then save it.

After that you can turn off the aspect ratio protection and try changing the other dimension and see how it looks.

You are correct though in that if the change is really large difference, it may not always look the best and in those cases asking the managers and waiting a few days is the only other option.

Rick
Universal4

[Maria F]

I think it is very important for affiliate programs to provide customize banners, logos, mailer HTML text, take over pages, landing pages and unique reviews. We are suppose to be there to help affiliates, if they do better we also do better.

[Nick.RevenueJet]

We do provide our affiliates with quite a bit of banners and logos on their back end, but I always tell my affiliates to send me any special request as our in-house designer is super efficient creating new, high quality banners.
Unless the request is made on a Friday (my designer works Sundays through Thursdays), any affiliate should expect the special banner to be in their inbox within 24 hours.

[QuasarAffiliates]

Yes totally agree. We are here to help out affiliates and if a custom made banner is what you need, then it is important that we deliver. We are committed to helping out all our affiliates so if a request comes in for a special banner or specific size, you can be rest assured that we will work on delivering the material as quickly as possible. If translations are needed, I do normally ask for assistance because it reduces the wait. I like to deliver within the same day or the day after (depending on the work that is needed and the work load of our graphics team)

Regards,
Rebecca.

[universal4]

Really nice to see a lot of the operators ring in on this subject.

This is one of those subjects that comes up every so often and it's a good discussion because some affiliates may not know it's an option or may be hesitant to ask.

Rick
Universal4

[bauss]

I've never requested a banner from a affiliate that they didn't already have available. I may do it in the near feature once I code the admin section for my advertisements so I can track clicks on my site that I send to affiliates.

[Doolally]

I've requested a new banner to made once or twice but generally make my own if I have a specific design or theme I'm looking for. If the program has one I like but I'd prefer it slightly different, then I'll request one.

Most sites are very responsive but you'll always get a few that aren't.

[xecutable]

Usually request a custom size banner for the front page as it's not a standard one. Sometimes I'd make my own, as I do not like swf-flash stuff and sometimes it's all they have.

[Christiaan]

Usually request a custom size banner for the front page as it's not a standard one. Sometimes I'd make my own, as I do not like swf-flash stuff and sometimes it's all they have.

I don't understand why they keep making those swf banners. More and more operation systems don't support swf. Especially the mobile devices with iOS and Android stopped supported flash.

[xecutable]

Yeah, I am guessing some webmasters request them, cause they look smooth and cool, but in the same time slowdown the loading process, especially if you have a many of them. I am guessing that with the arrival of HTML 5 things will change.