Tutorial Tuesday: Create interstitial and expandable ads

Thanks for following along with our Google Web Designer Tutorial Tuesday series over the past few weeks. In the series, we’ve covered a number of basics to get you started with the tool: we’ve taken a tour of the user interface, created animations, and learned how to use the CSS Panel. Today, for our last post in the series, we’ll be focusing on creating interstitial and expandable ads.

Interstitial ads

Interstitial ads give users a full page ad experience at natural transition points such as page changes or app and video launches. Interstitial ads are displayed in an iFrame that floats over a web page or app, and users can click or tap a close button to hide an ad from their screen. Many people using Google Web Designer will want to design interstitial ads with multiple pages, so we’ve created three step-by-step videos to help you do just that. 

Start with the first video>> 

Expandable ads

Expandable ads are small banner-size ads which expand when clicked. Expandable ads are displayed in an iFrame that's the size of the expanded page, and a user can click or tap a close button to collapse an ad to its original size. As with interstitial ads, we’ve created three step-by-step videos to help you design expandable ads using Google Web Designer. 

Start with the first video>>

Don’t let the learning stop here

While our Tutorial Tuesday series has come to completion, you can keep learning about Google Web Designer via our help center and YouTube Channel, and our user forum and Google+ page are additional outlets where you can both learn and share feedback about GWD. 

We’ll be sure to post about other exciting developments as we release them, so stay tuned to the blog for the latest information.

Obsessions

|| CHINESE LAUNDRY EASY DOES IT D'ORSAY FLAT || 

I lucked up and found a pair of these Chinese Laundry flats at TJMaxx and I now I am obsessed with them and want another pair.  They are so comfortable and look cute with everything from dresses to skinny jeans.   Mine are a snakeskin so I want a more solid color this time.  They are a steal at $59!  I can't say enough great things about these flats.

|| BB DAKOTA V PATTERN SWEATER||

Another gem of a sweater from BB Dakota, I swear they are killing it this year!  This would look great with black skinny jeans or leggings.  It looks so comfy!

|| J BRAND MARIA HIGH RISE POWER STRETCH JEANS ||
My mom just got a pair of these high waisted JBrand jeans and they are so flattering!  They sucked her in and made her look so thin.  I swear high waisted is the way to go!! They are top on my list post baby when I can fit in regular jeans again!  Really dig this green/charcoal color for Fall.

|| GOLD IKAT DESSERT PLATES ||
There is a good chance I may be in the hospital over Thanksgiving delivering our baby or I will have a newborn at home, so why I am planning Thanksgiving table scape ideas is beyond me, but I love these gold ikat dessert plates.  They would look so pretty with pumpkin pie on them:)  They would be great for Christmas too!

 || REBECCA TAYLOR ARTISANAL A LINE DRESS ||
I have been stalking this dress forever and it is finally onsale for 40% off!  Really want to snag her to save for a few events we have next year!

 || LANSTON BF MINI DRESS ||
This dress is so awesome and such a great price.  Love the blush color, but it also comes in black too! Such a great dress for everyday wear.  I would pair mine with my gray Rag and Bone Booties just like the model.

|| OLD NAVY TASSLE TOTE ||
I have heard nothing but rave reviews about this tote from Old Navy.  It comes in 5 gorgeous colors and is the perfect size and price!  All the reviews say it feels like real leather and looks real.  Love the turquoise and tan colors.

|| ASOS LEOPARD SHIFT DRESS ||
I can't stop thinking about this leopard dress I spied on ASOS.   I have two leopard dresses already but can one ever have too much leopard??  It is such a fabulous style.

Making Mobile Rich Media Front and Center in DoubleClick Studio

At the end of September, we announced the launch of Google Web Designer, Google’s new HTML5 authoring tool, and last week we propelled the conversation forward around Mobile and HTML5 in the industry with our iMedia article and our Digital Dialogue. Today, we want to give you the DoubleClick Rich Media perspective on building beautiful cross-screen creative and tell you about the investments we’re making to ensure you have what you need to create effective advertising across screens.

Our customers have made it clear that building for the cross-screen world continues to be a challenge. But in spite of these difficulties, we believe that adopting HTML5 is critical to success in today’s cross device world. To help creative agencies make this transition, we are focusing our efforts on the following areas of improvement within DoubleClick: 

1. Make it easier to build innovative mobile rich media formats
2. Center the DoubleClick workflow on HTML5
3. Make sure creatives built in DoubleClick can run everywhere

Make it easier to build innovative mobile rich media formats:

We have built a first-class integration between Studio and our recently launched HTML5 authoring tool, Google Web Designer (GWD). DoubleClick Rich Media creatives built in GWD will automatically include the Studio enabler and other metrics and can be uploaded seamlessly into Studio. We plan to enhance this integration with features that will ease the workflow between applications, such as an automated push of creatives from one tool to the other.

Further, to ensure we let our developers use the tools they prefer, we have released a number of templates that can be installed into Adobe Edge Animate. A developer can use these templates as a starting point for building a variety of mobile formats. The templates will automatically include the Studio enabler and automatically “polite-load” the creative, which is important due to the larger file sizes generally seen with HTML5.

Finally, we plan to release many more HTML5 Layouts as part of our Studio Layouts Gallery to add to the growing repertoire of available HTML5 formats available in our platform. 

Center the DoubleClick workflow on HTML5:

We’re making it easy to quickly add mobile features to your creatives to make them mobile-ready. We’ve built an HTML5 video player module that will work across browsers and operating systems. This will relieve developers from having to write many lines of code to deal with cross platform support. In November, we are also adding support for the new Expand-to-Full-Screen format for mobile web, which allows an in-page unit to expand to full screen regardless of the screen size. 

We’re also making it easier to upload your HTML5 creative into Studio. With our relative paths support, you’ll be able to upload HTML5 creative with nested folders and maintain that folder structure in Studio. You can also upload custom fonts with your creatives (the actual fonts, not the static images), improving workflow, file size and quality of the creatives.

With our Mobile Showcase App, you can push your creative preview to a mobile device. This means you can test and preview in-app and mobile web creative on the actual device where it will appear to an end-user, before you actually publish the creative. 

Make sure creatives built with DoubleClick can run everywhere:

In the desktop world, a lot of work has been done to ensure ads can run everywhere. Similar efforts are now being focused on mobile web and in-app environments. We are working to ensure our ads run on all major in-app networks, so you can be sure your creatives function properly across all desired inventory. In the coming months, we will build out support for MRAID v2, and you will see us push the boundaries on standards for serving in-app creatives.

We encourage all agencies, developers and designers to spend some time experimenting with all our new products and features. Making mobile work is one of our highest priorities at DoubleClick, and the features mentioned above are only the start of a long and exciting roadmap. We look forward to hearing your feedback and to working with you to push the industry forward!

Posted by Jordan Sumerlus, Product Manager, DoubleClick Rich Media