Flash Companion Banners not showing up

Hi,

Any chance I could see a page in action? It will help for me to see:

1. Your config
2. Your full debug
3. Your page running

There must be an easy explanation for the issue.. :)

Flash banners should definitely work (I have examples delivering them - although I've never delivered one with OpenX and OVA)...

This error in the debug is also interesting:

Paul

Hi Paul,

I'm sorry it took a while to extract a corresponding demo for our particular topic here, however is it convenient for you if I pm/email you the demo link, rather than putting it here? :) (I'm sorry for being such a fussy person...)

Best regards,
Khang

Hey - that's perfectly fine... email it over to enquiries@openvideoads.org and I'll take a look :)

Paul

Hi Paul,

After working with you via emails, I finally solved the issue. However this is a very interesting matter that I think should be shared among everyone using OVA AS3. Now I'll begin the explanation:

1. The reason why OVA couldn't write SWF banners to the web page is, as you said, because it couldn't locate the so-called "FlashObject" JavaScript library.

2. I too have googled this "FlashObject" and it turns out to be the ancient name of the "SWFObject" that everyone in the world is now using to embed Flash contents to their websites. It's so old that I've completely forgot it, though I'm sure I used to know SWFObject was once FlashObject. And this leads to...

3. For some reason, the OVA core framework still uses this very old way of embedding Flash content. Maybe its JWPlayer and FlowPlayer versions have already had this patched, but originally, OVA AS3 refers to "FlashObject" and uses methods such as "addVariable", which are now deprecated.

4. My solution was to search for the old version of SWFObject (or more exactly, FlashObject), and you know what, even the SWFObject website doesn't distribute it anymore (or at least I couldn't find it there). Lucky me, an old thread on a Flash forum still has it, so I grabbed the flashobject.js, put it in my demo page, and boom, everything works nicely!

So... this means... either we update the OVA AS3 Documentation so that people would know what to do. Or, ideally, I think it's better to update the OVA AS3 framework so that it uses the contemporary, standard way of SWF embedding, which is SWFObject 2.2. What would be your opinion on this, Paul?

By the way, thank you so much for helping me investigating this interesting case. You can always take a look at the demo page and see the final result :)

Best regards,
Khang

Hi Khang,

Thanks for the update - that's really helpful and appreciated :)

But, I do need to correct one important point in your update - OVA doesn't use FlashObject at all for embedding Flash companions... it uses OBJECT/EMBED tags directly where it's asked to embed Flash companions.

In your case however, your ad server (OpenX) provides the Javascript directly to embed the companion code, so OVA just inserted the code as HTML into your page.

Being specific, your Ad Tag was returning:

So to me, it seems that the version of OpenX that you are using to serve your companions is using an old version of FlashObject as part of the embed code it generates.

OVA works with OpenX, but it's not responsible for the code that OpenX generates ;)

I wonder what version of OpenX you are running? Is it quite an old version?

Paul

Ahhh... so that's how it goes.. Thanks a lot for your information, Paul! (and I'm sorry I've been working too much with OVA and the custom player I forgot the Ad server itself would be another important factor)

Actually my OpenX version is 2.8.7, which is as far as I know one of the later versions... In fact I've tried going to the "update" section in the OpenX CMS and it always says "your version of OpenX is up-to-date".

... or maybe there is just something internally wrong with my OpenX installations and settings...

Anyway, I'll take a further look into the case, and obviously the OpenX team is to be notified of this, if needed. But if it's possible, would you in your free time add a few notices to the OVA Documentation, especially for those OpenX guys, so that they are aware of this issue? :)

Thanks again for your help, Paul,
Best regards,
Khang

*By OpenX guys, I mean people using OVA + Custom Player + OpenX server, not the guys working on the OpenX project. I'll check my OpenX server again and if it's really an OpenX's matter, I'll contact them :)

Yeh - it's definitely an OpenX ad server issue.

That aside, for sure - it's a good suggestion - I'll happily put a note on the OpenX OVA guide to help going forward :)

I'll specifically add a note to this guide:

http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/open-video-ads/13058/openx-ova-configuration-guide

Paul