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To be able to count, not only the impresions but also the clicks in the flash banners they must be specially prepared for it.

This document explains the steps you should follow in order to prepare a banner like this, and includes at the end a section of frecuently asked questions that will give you the solution to many symtoms that may appear if you have not prepared correctly the flash for e-planning.

Steps

Create the animation as you normally do. Once it is complete follow the steps in order to leave the banner ready to be used with e-planning.

1. Insert a new layer above the others. In this new layer create a rectangle that covers the hole banner (choose any color).
   
   
   
   
2. Right click the rectangle and in the contextual menu select "Convert to Symbol" (You get the same effect with F8). In the dialog window select the behaviour "Button" (and a name if you wish so).
   
   
   
   
3. Now modify the properties of the new button.Change it's colour. Select "alpha". Choose "0%" of alpha. With this the button will be left transparent, making the original colour chosen irrelevant.
   
   
   
4. Edit the actions for this button.
   If you edit it in normal mode, select getURL and complete the window with the following information:
   In the URL space write "_root.clickTag" (without the colons). Select menu expressions (Flash 4) or mark with a tick the option (Flash 5 o superior).
   Target window: select "_blank"
   Variables: select "Don´t send"
   
   If you prefer the expert mode, copy and paste the next code:
   on(release){
   getURL(_root.clickTag, "_blank");
   }
   
   
   
5. In both cases, make sure the final code is equal to the previews lines and the following image. Specially, make sure "_root.clickTag" is not between colons and "_blank" does.
   If in the normal mode "_root.clickTag" is still between colons, it is because you did not ticked "Expression".
   The real URL, to were it must take you the click to the button should not stay in this action. It will enter e-planning when loading the banner.
   
   
   
   
6. Now your banner ir ready four publishing and loading in the ad server.

Why is it necesary to write "_root.clickTag" instead of the URL from the advertiser?

e-planning registers impresions, but no, or nearly no, click.
In spite of this, the tag works correctly, the flash banner appears, and the click leads to the advertiser's page.
What is wrong?

When you click it leads you to a wrong URL, that ends in "_root.clickTag"

The click leads to a URL that ends with "undefined"

When I test my banner before loading it to the server, I click and nothing happens, or a Windows Explorer window opens
showing the directory where my banner is

Why is it necesary to write "_root.clickTag" instead of the URL from the advertiser?

For the ad-server to count the clicks it is necesary that these lead to e-planning. The user does not even notice it passed through e-planning, because it is immediately redirected to the adveriser's page.
The clickTag variable gives us a way to send users to special directions, that allow us to know which is the banner that recieved the click, so as to be later redirected to the page of the advertiser.
The choice of the name "clickTag" variable is not personal. Many of the most important ad servers of the world use that same name of variable. In fact, this standarsation allows the same banner to be used in a large amount of different ad servers, and not only the one for which it was originally created.


e-planning registers impresions, but no, or nearly no, click. In spite of this, the tag works correctly, the flash banner appears, and the click leads to the advertiser's page. What is wrong?

This is a consecuence of puting the advertiser URL inside the flash banner (where it should say "_root.clickTag").
When instead of _root.clickTag, appears the advertiser URL, the user that clicks is taken directly to that page.
Hence, e-planning has no way to know that the banner has recieved a click.
(Read Why is it necesary to write "_root.clickTag" instead of the URL from the advertiser? for an explanation of the reason).
By correcting the Flash file so that it is the same as what is described previowsly you will solve the problem.


When you click it leads you to a wrong URL, that ends in "_root.clickTag".

This happens when, in the button acctions, you do not tick the check box Expression of "_root.clickTag", so it remains between colons. As "clickTag" is the name of a variable it is an expression and must stay without colons. Check the last step of the prewious instructions to know how to repair the Flash file.


The click leads to a URL that ends with "undefined"

This may be caused by two different reasons.
The most frecuent one,is that _root.clickTag is wrongly written. Because this is the frecuest one, in this situation you should first check that _root.clickTag is spelled correctly.
If _root.clickTag is not written correctly you must correct the Flash file and load ir again.
The other posibility is that the banner was not loaded as a Flash banner, but as another type of banner. (ex: banner HTML). In case this happens you should load it again and delete from e-planning the wrong type of banner


When I test my banner before loading it to the server, I click and nothing happens, or a Windows Explorer window opens showing the directory where my banner is

This is normal, if the banner is made according to instructions, when it is loaded to e-planning it will work correctly. The ad-server will give a value to the clickTag variable. (This value will be a correct URL, according to the explained in Why is it necesary to write "_root.clickTag" instead of the URL from the advertiser?).
But in the meantime, "_root.clickTag", that is the URL to which the click leads you to, has no associated value.
To make sure it works correctly, you can also publish it in html format (from the Flash) and then edit the file .html obtained, adding at the end of every instance from the name of the file "?clickTag=http://www.google.com" to obtain:

        value="mifile.swf?clickTag=http://www.google.com"

Notice that all the added text remains inside the colons.
The complete code of this file must be similar to the following:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
" http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns= "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" >
<title>My title</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<!--url's used in the movie-->
<!--text used in the movie-->
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"
codebase=" http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab# v ersion=6,0,0,0" wi dth="220" height="170" id="My-Banner"
align="middle">
<param name=&quo t;allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" >
<param name="movie " value="MyBanner.swf?cl ickTag=http://www.google.com" gt;
<param name="quality" value="high" >
<param name= "bgcolor" value="#ffffff" >
<embed src="MyBanner.swf?clickTag=http://www.google.com" quality="high"
bgcolor="#ffffff" width="220" height="170" name="MyBanner"
align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" > </object>
</body>
</html>


With this modification, when you visualise the Flash banner through this html page, the clic leads you to the google page.