Is the old advertising solution gone?

I can't find in the new ver (3.13) the support for advertise with the POST/PRE ROLL.

how can i add advertise in this version?

The preroll / postroll are indeed gone, but the overlay is still in there. In fact, I am working on a more extensive implementation of the overlay, so you can add multiple overlays into a single video (3.14?).

Note that, when you want to use a preroll or postroll, you can still simply insert a playlist with the ads in there. The only thing that is removed is the not being able to scrub / skip advertisements. i found that a bit awkward: this not-skipping of ads is what drives people to TiVo's and webbased video in the first place...

Ok, so if I add <album>preroll</album> it still works or am I slow?

Sorry for nagging.

I totally forgot to say that I think the addons to the 3.13 are great and that you guys rock!
/Job

You won't have to use the <album>preroll</album> tag anymore, since all it did was disable the controlbar for that item. ou just use a regular playlist for preroll ads.

And thanks for the support!

Wow, that is a HUGE problem for me. <album> also kept the pre-roll and post rolls from displaying in the playlist panel BTW. Does this still work like this?

While users may not like 'em, clients and content owners DEMAND this functionality.

I guess i will have to use a different player or never upgrade. This is very bad news indeed. :-(

Ouch, you're right. Forgot about the non-displaying in the playlist field... I'll take a look at reinserting this! Seems like I was a bit too drastic here...

I have the same problem...

My client deman the function of showing advertisements without the option to scrub / skip.

so after I upgrade to the new ver (3.13) i uninstall it and back to the old ver (3.09).

can you please insert this function in the next ver?

Will be reinserted...

Hello Jeroen,

Inserting old advertisement options would be great. By the way, is it possible to download the previous version (3.12) ?

Hi again!
Please dont forget to add the instructions for the old advertisment solution also. I could'nt find it anymore :)
Thanks!
/Job

yeah the new version is missing what I needed which was for me to be able to display my own ADS in the preroll and midroll or postroll without the user able to scrub it..

when will this be added to the newer version as i think many people asking the same questin is when this will be released?? sooner or later?? as i have version 3.12 and i guess it seems are people like me would stick to the older version for this but the directions on how do this are no longer on your site as then been replaced with the longtail AD page..

also the new features in the 3.13 and thanks for the great job on making one the best .flv players out there..

regards
Rick Estrada

Note that I've added the 3.12 download to the mediaplayer page. [url=http://www.jeroenwijering.com/upload/flash_media_player_32.zip]Here's a direct link[/url].

The instruction page will be up again shortly. I am editing it right now, to cope with the LongTail additions. But first the old ad integration should be back in. I'm shooting for january first to have the next player version + tutorial page!

thanks as i will wait for the Instructions Page.. as people will appreciate until the new version has this implemented..

unfortunately JeroenWs link in the previous post downloads the age old [url=http://www.jeroenwijering.com/upload/flash_media_player_32.zip]v.3.2 player[/url] heres a link to the [url=http://www.jeroenwijering.com/upload/jw_media_player_312.zip]v.3.12 mediaplayer[/url]

okay thanks.. guess we have to just wait now for the old directions on how to implement it with user not able to scrub the video and bypass the AD.. :)

Any news when the old Instructions for 3.12 will be up again in the Tutorial Section..

Waiting Patiently :)

there really aren't any functions, you just build your playlist with preroll/postroll tracks

use the normal playlist headers and footers

thanks thats all i needed...

regards
rick

one last question are you able to preroll .SWF files?

yes, you can pre/post roll swf

when JW gets the ad page back up, there two special swf templates for pre/post roll

thanks as i got it working... be nice when 3.13 has this back in it as there are some nice new features.. but for now 3.12 is good.

I see from the examples above that providing pre/post roll advertising is easily accomplished.

However, it seems that you have to make a choice whether you are using the playlist as just that - a list of files to play sequencially - or rather as a navigational tool (menu, perhaps) to choose which video to play.

For example, on my website (bluegrasstracks . com) I have a player with a displayed playlist. I am using JavaScript to load up in the same player different playlists with clips of various TV shows.

I'm not clear on how you could accomplish pre/post roll advertising in this configuration. I understand how to use a separate XML file for videos on different pages for pre/post roll advertising, but not in this configuraton.

From what I've been reading here in the posts, it seems that there are users who want the playlist for functionality (such as pre/post roll advertising) and some who want the playlist expanded on for navigation and presentation (formatting of text using HTML, larger preview icons, etc.) Perhaps those might branch out into different functions as the player is developed further.

One suggestion might be to have all the events associated with a particular video (pre roll, the video, overlays, post roll, etc.) all defined within the TRACK element of the playlist. In essence, this would provide a mini playlist for each video.

If you have any suggestions on how I can better provide video on my site, please let me know. I am new to this. Thanks!

since yu didnt post nay examples its diff to know what yu want do

im thinking you want to have pre make playlist with ads then add sum tracks with ads tracks like addItem function do

so im think maybe pass trhu some small function to make ad track

ex:

then call by js code to put in link, button, image:javascript:addTrack('http://domain/path/video_ad.flv','preroll','Author Name','Title Name','http://domain/path/video.flv',2); return false;html looking like ex:<a href="#" onclick="javascript:addTrack('http://domain/path/video_ad.flv','preroll','Author Name','Title Name','http://domain/path/video.flv',2); return false;">Add Author Name - Title Name to Playlist</a>

@Blue Moon: you are correct in that it's better to have all ads for a track be inside the single <track> element. Unfortunately, this'll end up in long and difficult to use playlists, not to mention that most other RSS/ XSPF tools won't understand it. That's why I removed the ad functions from 3.13. I'll make sure though that at least art of it is returned in the 3.14, since lots of people did seem to use it (sorry Subfighter.com!).

I reinserted the commercial playlist tag in the code:<album>commercial</album>All playlist items coded with this tag won't show up anymore in the playlist. Will be released next week, with 3.14

I just downloaded 3.14 and i still can't get my ads working

http://stjoevideo.net/nowtest.html

that's the link i'm testing on

here's my playlist

Please disable the shuffling of the player in order to get the ad rolling first: add the flashvar "shuffle=false"

thanks, i'll give that a try

I am a bit confused now, can't figure out yet how to implement the album tag to use an overlay commercial.
Anyone has any luck with this an care to share?

I will keep trying but do have some problems with it. Everything within an album tag doesn't show up in the player. And can't get an overlay image to work.

Tonight I will go back to release 3.12 en start over again.

there is any way to use overlay on the new ver (3.14)?

Haven't found it yet, I am using trail on error right now because I don't have a clue where to start.

If I am not wrong the whole overlay banner advertising is gone in the 3.14 release.
The actionscript file is missing and I can't find any other file that would do the job.

Jeroen: can you give us some help here? The advertising model is only available as an item in a rss feed.
If you tag it with <album>commercial</album> then it won't show up in the playlist. So placed before an item it is a pre-roll. After a playlist item it becomes a after-roll.

That means you can't use a overlay anymore?

you can have the html code for a css overlay in the annotation tag - with the advantage that it doesnt show in the playlist
please see (the source of) these demos on the demopage: http://home5.inet.tele.dk/nyboe/flash/mediaplayer/
overlayandlogo: http://home5.inet.tele.dk/nyboe/flash/mediaplayer/overlayandlogo.htm
annotationdisplayimage: http://home5.inet.tele.dk/nyboe/flash/mediaplayer/annotationdisplayimage.htm

Ok that's a solution but not as nice as the option to use the overlay within the player.

If I use the logo as an overlay image and keep that different for each site I display the video's on, I can't use the same overlay advertisement in all the players except with an overlay <div>. Does that work on top of the player?
I will check it out but it seems a bit odd that its possible to have a recommendation at the end of the player but the overlay advertisement is gone.

I couldn't get the advertisement functionality that my content providers and advertisers require in this version either. I just rolled back to 3.12 and everyone seems happy enough.

@Dirk Henst - Looks like you are right, the OverlayView.as is never registered with the rest of the views in 3.14

@Jeroen - I appreciate that you tried to move "preroll" and "postroll" into a single "commercial" token, however it turns out advertisers seem to care about this distinction. With a preroll the user is required to watch the ad to see the content, but a postroll allows the user to skip the ad at the end of the video and progress to the next item in the playlist. In effect the difference between a postroll after item 1 and a preroll before item 2 is like "optional" vs. "mandatory" advertising. This seems very important to both content providers and advertisers as it affects at what CPMs ad space can be sold.
If you want to use the "commercial" token as a replacement, I recommend some option to enable/disable the skip and scrub options, as well as a flag for whether an item appears in the playlist. This should accomplish the same ends.

@Dirk Henst: Indeed, the overlay-from-playlistitem is gone in the 3.13 / 3.14 version. They tended to cause more questions than they solved. I actually replaced it with the recommendations overlay, which was in much higher demand.

@Alex: That's a good point, though I don't like the entire forced-watching of ads at all. I think this'll also go away in the next years, as we move to more targeted, more relevant advertising. I will take a look at how to get some satisfying ad implementation in the 4.x players though.

@JeroenW: Philosophically I agree with you completely. People should be able to choose which ads pay for their "free" internet content, and as a result these ads would become more valuable. For now though, I have been charged with integrating the ad engines from DoubleClick (DART), SpotXChange, Tremor, Scan Scout and Checkmate into a stand alone revision of your player. If I come up with solid plugins or some solution that the industry can use, I'll send it to ya. And thank you so much for all the work you've done in the player it is really great for everyone ^_^

@Alex: you're welcome! And I understand your point as well - with LongTail Ads we're in the same boat. Please let me know when you've managed to get it working, I'm very interested! My address is mail [at] jeroenwijering

Allthough I understand that there has to be made a choice to use overlay or not I would like to point out that it can be used for very specific targeting.

If you are a broadcaster and you want people to embed the video you serve you would also like to control the ads that are displayed. Let's say I am serving videoclips for instance the new Timbaland. People watch this video and during the video I want to server a small banner with the option to buy the track they are listening to. This is real specific and in-video ads serving which (in my opinion) is more effective then any other pre-roll / after-rol advertisement.

@Dirk,

So wouldn't the most effective way, to display an in-video ad, be to transcode the ad banner right into the video on-demand?

I understand that it would require a bit of server horsepower, but that's cheap and plentiful these days, especially if the ads are paying for it.

@streamBabie that would be the ultimate sollution. But with no or just a few paying costumers and no real ads but an extention on earning money this is a sollution which doesn't fit my current needs.

Currently we are just a small company with very little funding, the JW player did the job until now.

@Dirk,

So then, I would say that andersen's suggestion of using CSS to overlay an ad would about fit for you.

The overlay ad image, start, and duration could all come from the annotation element of the playlist to give you control of the overlay display. The code has been posted on these forums and isn't too convoluted.

It might work still don't know how to use the embed option on remote sites. But I will take a closer look.
Thought there was a problem with the overlay, full screen and opaque settings but need to check that again.

True fullscreen with wmode=opaque is working in Flash Player 9,0,115,0 so you would have to require that if you wanted to overlay and keep the fullscreen.

Also, if a playlist element is designated as a "commercial" the recommendations screen should not appear after that element.

After a commercial, the next video in the playlist should automatically begin. When the (non-"commercial") video is finished, the recommendations should appear.

Yes indeed, although there area some more issues even that don't make the recommendations play nice together with playlists (e.g. it's not possible to add recommendations for every video).

@Dirk Hengst: I am already working on an in-stream overlay option, so that'll be in there again. Only this time a bit more configurable.

it's not possible to add recommendations for every video

Will a 'recommendations file per playlist item' ever become a feature?

Can we have pre-roll post-roll as flashVars instead of being forced to use playlists.

I'd hack the player to work this way, but would also like to remain compatible with your updates.

Thus I can specify the movie URL and the URLs to play before and after from the swfobject code.
Allowing this information to be passed in directly on the page without needing to re-wrap the URLs into a playlist.

On a site note.....
SWFObject needs updating on this site, a recent IE patch broke it on some systems.
There is a patch posted here http://blog.deconcept.com/2007/02/28/swfobject-1-5-released/
Haven't tested this version yet http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/
edit: OMG THEY CHANGED THE API!!!! FOOLS!!!!

p.s. MS did a deal with EOLAS and soon the active issue will be gone anyway.

-Ben

I don't think so, since the recommendations and playlist are in a way overlapping features. They're both a means to jump from one video to the other. That's why they don't work nice together: they try to achieve the same.

That's if you only use the system to point to other videos. All you're doing is listing a load of URLs in an XML file, so you may be recommending that a viewer visits other pages on your site or link them off to an external website.

Also, you may want to point to videos in other playlists anyway, say you have year based playlists, e.g. "2006,"2007","2008" and you have a video of a featured event that takes place every year, for that video alone you'd want to 'recommend' someone goes and has a look at the previous years' event videos.

I'm well aware that I may be guilty of trying to use a system in a way that it was not originally designed. :)

@Peter,

The best way to achieve the great freedom of use that you are looking for, is to call a serverside script which generates the recommendations on demand. Then you can do whatever you want by using data from the statistics log generated by the callback function to generate a custom recommendations file based on the title, etc. that the user just watched. Sure it's a bit complex, but once you have it set up you can do anything.

JeroenW
@guys: this week I'll release the 3.16 version (together with a 4.0 beta), which has the older playlist-commercial functionality again:

1. blocking of the controls for ads
2. ads not visible in playlist

thanx that was needed for long time.....

@guys: this week I'll release the 3.16 version (together with a 4.0 beta), which has the older playlist-commercial functionality again:

1. blocking of the controls for ads
2. ads not visible in playlist

I'll write some small documentation in the 'playlists' article of my site.

Truly excellent stuff! Many, many thanks!

The functionality sounds like exactly what I'm after and the documentation will be very gratefully received as I'm new to the player and have never played anything older than 3.15. :)

It's back in there. Here's a demo: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?page=wizard&example=25

I've also added some info in the playlist page (just two lines - nothing fancy): http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=Supported_Playlists

It was back in Jan 08 but previously in this thread Alex mentioned trying to impliment DoubleClick (DART) into the player - I have now been given the same task to do by the powers that be! Does anyone know if he was successful??

@JeroenW - Did Alex email you with a solution??

Thanks in advance for any help you may give.

You can also do some edits to the player and html to have it load an advertisement ofirst, then load a new player with the original content by javascript.

Cheers
Bastian Pasinski

Regarding Doubleclick DART,
the solution mentionend above works.

Contact your Doubleclick Instream Specialist.

https://www.xing.com/profile/Bastian_Pasinski

I didn't get an email from Alex yet, but have solved Doubleclick integration (with DQ&A) at present. Some Dutch Doubleclick-served sites run ads in the player already...

@JeroenW & Bastian,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. My apologies its taken me so long to pick up your responses - I didn't get an email prompting me, so I just stopped by quite randomly!

I was pulled off the task of implimenting the Doubleclick but am now back on it ... with pressure!!

@JeroenW - Any chance of some more information outlining the solution, or the revised player would be dandy?

The new DoubleClick solution is built on top of DART InStream. It allows you to setup prerolls, postrolls and various overlayed ad formats. Plugin is ready and the implementation for your adserver(s) would be very simple. Please ask adam for the implementation: adam [at] longtailvideo [dot] com.

JeroenW
It's back in there. Here's a demo: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?page=wizard&example=25

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /nfs/c02/h04/mnt/18813/domains/jeroenwijering.com/html/include/headers.php:71) in /nfs/c02/h04/mnt/18813/domains/jeroenwijering.com/html/include/wizard.php on line 41

I've also added some info in the playlist page (just two lines - nothing fancy): http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=Supported_Playlists

This link not available too...:(
can you provide correct links?

Hmm, that's already outdated info. I moved most stuff to the wiki. Please take a look at the wiki:

http://code.jeroenwijering.com/trac/

There is no information on the wiki pages about preroll/postroll - At least not for the 4.1 player.

I remember in the old player (3.14 i think), there was lots of information about how to use album to pre- and post-roll, but this all seems to be gone, is it still possible to use pre- and post-rolls? Note that we're not talking about some google-ads or doubleclick stuff, our company wants to have self-made videos (or videos that our clients send us) as pre or post roll..

I'm quite shocked that i'm not able to find anything about this, is it gone for good, or is it just not documented?

---------------------------

I just noticed that http://code.jeroenwijering.com/trac/wiki/Playlists3 talks about it very shortly - It took hours of googling for me to find that page, perhaps it should be expanded a bit with information containing the words advertisement, preroll and postroll, since thats what i think some people (like me) would search for =)

Ok, i kind off feel like a fool. Based on the above wiki page, decided to pay for an premium license of the player (still haven't gotten the email btw, does it normally take this long?). Now i saw that that wiki page is for the version 3 of the player, and not version four.

So I guess my question is: What do I need to be able to run our own pre-roll and post-roll video clips using the player? We have customers who make their own TV-ads/commercials (Sone Erricsson for example), and we need those adverts to be served, and it should not be possible to skip them or access the timeline...

What do we do? Or is JW player not the thing for us?

Hi, this is Adam from LongTail.

We do indeed have a pre-roll & post-roll video solution available. Please email me directly to discuss:

adam {a} long tail video (dot) com.

Hi all,

I am producing swf content with interactive hot spots in the video.
When I click a hot spot inside the Player, it stops the video
instead of activating the hot spot url.
Is there any way to disable the "stop" feature when clicking in the video?

Thanks in advance, Hal Tipper

Hal Tipper,

I think the thing you're looking for is the "displayclick" flashvar... You can find it here: http://code.jeroenwijering.com/trac/wiki/FlashVars - It's number three in the playback section