Archive for April, 2009

On occasion, you might find that the way an ad renders isn’t what you expected.

This would typically occur in a case where you’re placing the same ad in multiple publications with different mechanical specifications, in particular, such a case where one ad is a vertical placement and the other is a horizontal.

Of course, AdDogs.com is designed to deal with these different shapes automatically, but you might find that, for instance, a heading you’ve defined in your vertically-oriented ad fits just fine, left to right, but when the ad is rendered horizontally (wider than it is tall), the heading is left justfied, because you didn’t specify centering in the original, it just “happened”.

In cases like this, you’ve got several choices.

1. Ignore the problem and move on. We don’t recommend this, because the effort it takes to get the ad rendered correctly in most cases is so trivial that you might as well just do it (see below)
2. Return to the order placement screen (from which you choose dates and approve the overall ad) and click the red X to remove the specific ad rendering from your order. In this case, you’d likely later go back and alter the ad definition, then re-place the order with only that rendering in that publication.We also don’t recommend this, for the same reason as before - the effort it takes to get the ad rendered correctly in most cases is so trivial that you might as well just do it, as detailed in the next point.
3. Take these simple steps:Return to the “View Orders” page and delete the orderReturn to the “Build Ad” page and adjust the original ad as needed to render correctly in all cases. In the example described here, you’d specify centering on the heading line, then save the ad again

   Create a new order, specifying the same ad (now corrected) and the same media you’d previously selected

In that third choice above, we think you’ll find that within 30 seconds, you’ll be right back on track, with a single ad properly rendered in all the publications you’re trying to reach.

If you find otherwise, or have questions on the matter, please Contact Us.

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There’s a special case here, however, worthy of discussion: Ads you didn’t create using AdDogs, but instead uploaded as PDF, EPS, or another accepted format. These are perfectly acceptable to use in our system, of course, otherwise we wouldn’t accept them. But they’re quite different than an ad created from one of our templates. Here’s why:

Taking the most common case as our standard example (ad pre-created elsewhere and saved as PDF), there’s a limit to the amount of reformatting we can do on such documents, because they don’t come to us as a segmented, templated page with a heading, a body, some pictures, and a tagline. Instead, they arrive, in essence, as a fully formed picture, which cannot be decomposed and shuffled around to fit any sort of space in which you might want to place it.

We do have the ability to alter the presentation, but only in terms of resizing it, not properly reshaping it. An ad created from our templates and rendered on our system can be reshaped to an amazing degree — a tall rectangular ad can be recast as perfectly square, and in fact can be recast as a wide rectangular ad in most cases, all without loss or distortion of the content. If you place an uploaded PDF ad in a space that doesn’t precisely match the dimensions of the PDF, however, we’re forced to proportionally resize the ad to match the space, and if proportionality cannot be maintained, you’ll notice clipping around the edges of the ad, as we try our hardest to get it to fit where you’re trying to advertise.

As with all matters related to our services, if you have questions on the matter, we invite you to Contact Us.