AOL’s VIDEO TICKER ADS:

AOL’s video ticker ad is a graphic banner ad that is integrated within a streaming video, but without obstructing the video viewing experience. When clicked on by a consumer, the ticker expands to launch a video ad, or an interactive Flash ad, within the video player window. These ads will run across the AOL Network of premium video content within the newest version of the AOL Video media player platform.

In this regard, Curt Viebranz, President of Platform-A said, "Online video consumption is a fast growing consumer behavior and our new video ticker ads give advertisers a new and creative opportunity to reach consumers through this burgeoning medium. With these ads, advertisers can target users who are consuming video with a clickable video or an interactive Flash ad, creating a deeper, longer brand dialogue that isn’t passive."

"Besides, there was more AOL news that a newly revamped media player platform which introduces several new and improved features was launched: Functionality includes:

• A single flexible experience: Sharing and social utilities – such as email, bookmarking and related videos – are available from the player view port;
• Multiple monetization options: New ad inventory includes 300 x 250 interstitials, video ticker ads and synched text ads;
• A new user interface and development framework: The new UI streamlines the control set and improves customization options, while the new development framework simplifies adding new features."

GOOGLE VIDEO UNITS HITS THE UK, IRELAND AND CANADA:

Google in introducing video units in the upcoming days to English-language publishers in the UK, Ireland, and Canada. Video units are embedded, customizable video players that can enrich your site with relevant video content while enabling you to earn extra revenue from the relevant, non-intrusive ads that accompany the videos.

"With this new launch, publishers in the UK, Ireland and Canada will be able to show videos from our YouTube content partners and choose those videos by category, individual YouTube partner, or have video automatically targeted to their site. Based on publisher feedback, we’ve also just added a feature which lets you choose individual videos to be displayed in your video units."

How to set up video units on your site

log in to your AdSense account and visit the AdSense Setup page.

For more information about video units, visit the original Inside AdSense post about the launch and their recent follow-up answering some common questions. In addition, you might find the information in our Help Center useful.

IMAGE SOURCE: Arnold Zafra

Comments

Advertisers and networks want to balance the placement of their video marketing with the likelihood such placement won’t backfire by annoying the targeted audience. They have experimented with dropping ads before the video, after the video, and even in the middle like a typical TV commercial.

AOL will venture where Google has traveled with its ads on YouTube. Through work with Gannett’s PointRoll and its TickerBoy technology, AOL built a video ticker that runs within a streaming video without obstructing it.

When a viewer clicks on a video ad, it will expand within the video player’s window. Ads will be in video or Flash format, based on what the marketer created for the spot.

The video ticker appears 10 seconds into the video stream. That ticker fades away after 15 seconds, but the viewer will be able to click a branded link atop the video player to bring it back.

AOL’s debut of the video ticker format comes as part of other new advertising options emerged. They include the ability to make content like email and social networks available from the video player; new ad inventory with 300×250 interstitials and synced text ads; and a new user interface and development framework for creating ads.

follow me on Twitter

For online businesses, there is a lot of heavy lifting to be done in the effort to gain new customers. Miva sounds like a nice quiet brand for that effort. Putting Comet cursors with shopping carts with PPC is definitely messy, but then, so is business consulting in general. As it’s no longer a benefit to be seen in the financial markets as a big-ass “pure search play,” the timing of this change to a steady-growth player in a variety of niches seems apt. The only difficulty there will be in getting press coverage, since writers won’t know what to talk about. But FindWhat had its 15 minutes, so quieter organic growth makes perfect sense.

Links: Miva

Reader Comments…

Andrew Goodman is Principal of Page Zero Media, a marketing consultancy which focuses on maximizing clients’ paid search marketing campaigns.

In 1999 Andrew co-founded Traffick.com, an acclaimed “guide to portals” which foresaw the rise of trends such as paid search and semantic analysis.

Read Neville’s commentary about the BBC News site

My commentary focused on what I think the BBC could have done with this new idea rather than what they have done:

[...] But why not do it properly and give your section the attributes that would make it a far more realistic interactive experience between you and site visitors and enable you to develop some actual relationships with those visitors? Make it like a real blog!

Well, none of that happened, so I have been lurking on the section every now and again to see how it develops. As I subscribe to almost all the BBC News RSS feeds, I hardly go to the website now, so I have to remember to actually go to Clifton’s section and see what’s going on. How quaint that behaviour seems now that RSS is everywhere!

Anyway, lurking on a website can have its benefits at times when you spot some interesting content.

Clifton’s latest commentary on Friday includes these two items:

1). A fan of the BBC News website is going to take over as editor for one day, this Wednesday 20 April:

David McDowell, from Lockerbie in Scotland, [...] has agreed to come down on 20 April and help run the site – make suggestions in the editorial meetings, join in the day-to-day decision making and put together an alternative view of what our front page could have looked like that day. [...] Watch out [this] week for David’s unedited view of what it was like here, plus the front page he put together. And there will be more invitations to come, maybe overseas next time.

2). A user in Canada wrote in to ask: “Regarding the availability of the News ticker for those of us using XP at home. We have been told for almost a year that you guys are working on it? How is it going? Will we ever get News Ticker?” Clifton’s reply:

Work is due to start this month (honest) on a new, state-of-the-art version of our desktop ticker. The plan is for it to bring in more headlines that a particular user wants [...] and with a couple more features I’m keeping quiet about for now. But I think it will prove a new and exciting way to keep an eye on the site. When will it be ready? I’ll keep you posted, we’re working as fast as we can, and this year for sure.

That ticker’s pretty good. I used to use it long before RSS. A bit too push-content-only these days, though (think PointCast – remember that?), even though you can customize what the ticker displays.

Clifton’s section may not be a blog (it’s definitely not) and you have to email in any comments, but he does write informally, conversationally and with personality.

Sort of like a blog, in fact, but without the dynamic conversational aspect that emerges through things like direct commenting and trackbacks. And on commenting, Clifton says:

As I have mentioned before, we are planning a completely new approach to e-mail comments later in the year. It will allow us to publish a vastly increased range of e-mails from users, and we’ll also be asking users to help lift the best ones to the top of the pile. Watch this space.

One step at a time.

Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

Implementation:

Initializing an XML-DSO object is done using the <OBJECT> tag. The CLASSID for the XML-DSO is:

-==-

The above ID uniquely identifies the XML-DSO. Thus we initialize this control in a webpage as follows:

-==-

Most OBJECTs have a number of parameters associated with them but the XML-DSO does not require any parameters as such.

Now we can either extract data from an external XML file or using XML Data Islands, where we embed XML code in the HTML page itself. We’ll take a look at these in the examples.

Examples:

First, we’ll take a look at how to extract data from XML data islands (XML data included in the HTML page itself). Take a look at the following code:

<!-- example1.htm -->
<html>
<head>
<title>XML DSO-example1.htm</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">

<xml id="xmldb">
	<db>
		<member>
			<name>Premshree Pillai<name>
			<sex>male</sex>
		</member>
		<member>
			<name>Vinod</name>
			<sex>male</sex>
		</member>
	</db>
</xml>

<span datasrc="#xmldb" datafld="name"<</span>
<br>
<span datasrc="#xmldb" datafld="sex"></span>

</body>
</html>

The output of the above is:

Premshree Pillai
male

Note that, in the code for example1.htm, we have not initialised any XML-DSO object. Thus, when you use a XML data island, the object is implicitly created.

In the above code, we have included a XML data island using the <XML> tag. We have assigned it an ID, xmldb for use later. Now, we can extract data from the XML data island using the HTML tags like <A>, <SPAN>, <DIV> etc. As you can see, we have extracted data using the <SPAN> tag. Note the attributes, datasrc and datafld in the <SPAN> tag. datasrc is used to specify the ID of the data island you want to extract data from. datafld is used to specify the XML tag you want the data from (here, name in first <SPAN> and sex in second <SPAN>).

Note that we have two <name> and <sex> tags in our XML data island, but using the above method we can extract only the first instances of these tags. To extract all instances, this can be done using the <TABLE> tag. Take a look at the following example:

<!-- example2.htm -->
<html>
<head>
<title>XML DSO-example2.htm</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">

<xml id="xmldb">
	<db>
		<member>
			<name>Premshree Pillai<name>
			<sex>male</sex>
		</member>
		<member>
			<name>Vinod</name>
			<sex>male</sex>
		</member>
	</db>
</xml>

<table datasrc="#xmldb" border="1">
	<thead>
		<th>Name</th>
		<th>Sex</th>
	</thead>
	<tr>
		<td><div datafld="name"></div></td>
		<td><div datafld="sex"></div></td>
	</tr>
</table>

</body>
</html>

The output of the above is:

Here, we have used the <TABLE> tag and extract the contents using the HTML tag, <DIV>, within the HTML column tag, <TD>. The table will automatically iterate through each instance of <member> (the parent of <name> and <sex>). Thus we can dispaly all the names and ages in a formatted way.

Now, we'll take a look at how to extract contents from an external XML file using XML-DSO. Consider the following XML file:

<!-- example3.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<ticker>
	<item>
		<message>JavaScript Ticker using XML DSO</message>
		<URL>http://someURL.com</URL>
	</item>
</ticker>

Now, consider the following HTML page:

<!-- example3.htm -->
<html>
<head>
<title>XML DSO-example3.htm</title>
<script language="JavaScript">
function load() {
	var xmlDso=myXML.XMLDocument;
	xmlDso.load("example3.xml");
}
</script>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" onLoad="load()">

<object id="myXML" CLASSID="clsid:550dda30-0541-11d2-9ca9-0060b0ec3d39" width="0" height="0"></object>

<table datasrc="#myXML" border="1">
	<thead>
		<th>Message</th>
		<th>URL</th>
	</thead>
	<tr>
		<td><div datafld="message"></div></td>
		<td><div datafld="URL"></div></td>
	</tr>
</table>

</body>
</html>

The ouput of the above is:

Observe the code of example3.htm. First we have created a XML-DSO object with id as myXML. Note that we have added the width and height attributes to the <OBJECT> tag and set their values to 0. This is because we just want to create a XML-DSO object but do not want it to occupy any space in the webpage. Next, we have created a table with datasrc as myXML, similar to example2. We have extracted the content using <DIV> tags (within TD tags) with datafld as message for first column and URL for second column. The additional code here is the <SCRIPT> we have added. As you can see in the script, we have set the variable xmlDso to myXML.XMLDocument which refers to the object we have created. Next, we load example3.xml using the XML-DSO's load() method. Thus, now the file example3.xml is bound to the object, myXML. Everything else is similar to the previous examples.

Thus, when we want to load an external XML file using XML-DSO, we have to explicitly include the object and also use a small bit of JavaScript to load the external XML file. The above script is very specific and cannot be used to load just any XML file. A more generic script is as follows:

<script language="JavaScript">
var xmlDso;
function load(xmlFile, objName) {
	eval('xmlDso='+objName+'.XMLDocument');
	xmlDso.load(xmlFile);
}
</script>

Now, to load any XML file use:

load("SomeXMLFile.xml","anyXmlDsoObject");

XML DSO and JavaScript:
It is possible to manipulate the XML DSO object using JavaScript. Consider the following XML file:

<!-- example4.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<myDB>
	<member>
		<name>Premshree Pillai</name>
		<sex>male</sex>
	</member>
	<member>
		<name>Vinod</name>
		<sex>male</sex>
	</member>
	<member>
		<name>Santhosh</name>
		<sex>male</sex>
	</member>
</myDB>

Now, consider the following HTML file:

<!-- example4.xml -->
<html>
<head>
<title>XML DSO-example4.htm</title>
<script language="JavaScript">
function load() {
	var xmlDso=myDB.XMLDocument;
	xmlDso.load("example4.xml");

	/* Get the complete record set */
	var memberSet=myDB.recordset;

	/* Go to next data */
	memberSet.moveNext();
}
</script>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" onLoad="load()">

<object id="myDB" CLASSID="clsid:550dda30-0541-11d2-9ca9-0060b0ec3d39" width="0" height="0"></object>

<span datasrc="#myDB" datafld="name"></span>

</body>
</html>

Now, the output of the above will be:

Vinod

The above script is self explanatory: Initially we store the entire data of the data file into a variable memberSet using the recordset method. The moveNext() method points to the next data item (next row). Some of other methods that can be used are :

• movePrevious(): Point to previous data item.
• moveFirst(): Point to first data item.
• moveLast(): Point to last data item.
• EOF: This property is used to check if we have reached the end of the data.

Note that, in the above methods, the data is pointed relative to parent of the nodes being displayed.

XML Ticker using XML DSO:

So far we have considered simple examples. Now, we will consider a more dynamic example, “XML Ticker using XML DSO”. In this example, the ticker reads it's messages and URLs from an external example file and ticks the messages with the specified delay.

<!-- ticker.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<ticker>
	</item>
	<item>
		<message>JavaScripts by Premshree Pillai</message>
		<URL>http://premshree.resource-locator.com/javascripts.htm</URL>
	</item>
	<item>
		<message>The Scripting Newsletter</message>
		<URL>http://premshree.resource-locator.com/cgi-bin/newsletter.pl</URL>
	</item>
</ticker>

<!-- ticker.css -->
.tickerStyle {
	font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica; font-size:10pt; color:#666666; border:#666666 solid 1px; width:400px; height:20px; text-decoration:none; text-align:center; background:#FFFFFF
}
.tickerStyle:hover {
	font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica; font-size:10pt; color:#FF6600; border:#666666 solid 1px; width:400px; height:20px; text-decoration:none; text-align:center; background:#FFFFFF
}

<!-- ticker.htm -->
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>XML Ticker using XML DSO</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="ticker.css">

<!-- begin script -->
<script language="JavaScript">
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
//	XML Ticker using XML DSO		//
// 	(c) 2003 Premshree Pillai		//
//	Created : 19/03/03 (dd/mm/yy)		//
//	http://www.qiksearch.com		//
//	http://premshree.resource-locator.com	//
//////////////////////////////////////////////////

var xmlDso, tickerSet;
function initTicker(xmlFile, objName, counter, maxMsgs, timeOut) {
	/* Check for IE4+ */
	if(document.all&&navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Opera")==-1) {
		eval('xmlDso='+objName+'.XMLDocument');
		xmlDso.load(xmlFile);
		setTimeout("xmlDsoTicker('"+objName+"','"+counter+"','"+maxMsgs+"','"+timeOut+"')", timeOut);
	}
	else {
		alert('This Ticker works with IE4+ only!');
		return false;
	}
}

function xmlDsoTicker(objName, counter, maxMsgs, timeOut) {
	/* Get all the data as a record set */
	eval('tickerSet=' + objName + '.recordset');
	if(!tickerSet.EOF && counter<maxMsgs-1) {
		tickerSet.MoveNext();
		counter++;
	}
	else {
		counter=0;
		tickerSet.MoveFirst();
	}
	setTimeout("xmlDsoTicker('"+objName+"','"+counter+"','"+maxMsgs+"','"+timeOut+"')", timeOut);
}
</script>
<!-- end script -->
</head>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">

	<!-- begin ticker placement -->
	<center>
	<object id="ticker" CLASSID="clsid:550dda30-0541-11d2-9ca9-0060b0ec3d39" width="0" height="0"></object>
	<a href="" datasrc="#ticker" datafld="URL" class="tickerStyle">
		<span datasrc="#ticker" datafld="message"></span>
	</a>
	<script language="JavaScript">
	var tickerMaxMsgs=2; // Maximum Messages in the XML Data file
	var tickerCount=tickerMaxMsgs;
	new initTicker("ticker.xml","ticker",tickerCount,tickerMaxMsgs,2000);
	</script>
	</center>
	<!-- end ticker placement -->

</body>
</html>

Here is a Screenshot of how the output looks like:

Observe the above codes. They are self explanatory.

I hope you have found this article useful. You may mail me your comments/suggestions.

Download Examples

Article first published at CodeToad

Premshree Pillai studies engineering in Information Technology at
Mumbai University, Mumbai, India. He is a programming enthusiast
and maintains a Website (http://www.qiksearch.com), where he posts
his scripts. He is also a freelance writer and has written for a
range of popular Indian magazines.

Let us see how we can get XML and client side JavaScript to work together. We will see how we can display the contents of an XML file using JavaScript, accessing child elements, manipulating elements etc.

Browser Issues:

When it comes client side languages browser incompatibilities is a major issue. But here where we want to use XML and JavaScript, XML is the issue. Not all browsers have support for parsing XML documents. I will use IE6 to explain the codes. Browsers that do not support XML, cannot read them. When you view an XML file in such a browser it will just ignore all the tags.

Sample XML file:

Let us consider a sample XML file >>

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<company>
<employee id="001" sex="M" age="19">Premshree Pillai</employee>
employee id="002" sex="M" age="24">Kumar Singh</employee
<employee id="003" sex="M" age="21">Ranjit Kapoor</employee>
<turnover>
<year id="2000">100,000</year>
<year id="2001">140,000</year>
<year id="2002">200,000</year>
</turnover>
</company>

The above XML file shows employee data and Turnover of the company (just an e.g).

Manipulating XML file data using JavaScript:

Loading XML file: You can load a XML fie from JavaScript like this <<

-==-

Actually, just the last two lines of the function are enough to load the XML file. The previous two lines are written to ensure that the JavaScript functions that we may use later to manipulate the XML file data, does not perform any function on an uninitialized object. Thus the function verify() is called.

-==-

Now the XML file can be loaded

-==-

• Displaying contents of XML file: View the entire contents of the XML file using alert(xmlObj.xml);
  The entire XML file will be displayed in an alert box as it is with proper indentation.
• Children and nodes: In the above XML file <company> is the top level tag under which all other tags come. These tags are called children. The above XML file can be represented graphically like a folder-tree. A folder-tree is shown below.

Thus in the above XML file the top level tag <company> has 4 children. The numbering of children (as is usual in all languages) starts from 0 (zero). The <turnover> tag has 3 children under it. We can find the no of children a tag has by using the childNodes.length property. Thus the no of childen of <company> tag (here, 4) can be found by using xmlObj.childNodes.length The no of children of <turnover> tag (here, 3) can be found by using xmlObj.childNodes(3).childNodes.length Here we use childNodes(3) because is the 3rd child of <company>

• Testing for children: You can test whether a particular node child has any children using childNodes(i).hasChildNodes
  Thus xmlObj.childNodes(3).hasChildNodes() will return true.
  xmlObj.childNodes(2).hasChildNodes() will return false, since the <employee> tag does not have any children.
• Getting Tag Name: You can get the tag name of a child using childNodes(i).tagName. Thus xmlObj.tagName will return “company”.
  xmlObj.childNodes(0).tagName will return “employee”.
  xmlObj.childNodes(3).childNodes(0).tagName will return “year”.
• Displaying content of a tag: In the XML file the content of the 1^st <employee> tag is “Premshree Pillai”. You can get this value using xmlObj.childNodes(0).firstChild.text
xmlObj.childNodes(2).firstChild.text will return “Suhasini Pandita”.
  Similarly xmlObj.childNodes(3).childNodes(1).firstChild.text will return “140,000″.
• Attributes: In the XML file, the <employee> tag has 3 attributes. An attribute can be accessed using childNodes(i).getAttribute("AttributeName"). Thus xmlObj.childNodes(0).getAttribute("id") will return “001″.
  xmlObj.childNodes(1).getAttribute("age") will return “24″.
  xmlObj.childNodes(2).getAttribute("sex") will return “F”.

XML and JavaScript Example: There are many more properties and methods available. Using these properties you can create lots of client side applications. The main advantage of using XML along with JavaScript is that editing of data becomes very easy. XML being structured, it becomes very easy to manage content. One example is a folder-tree menu. Another one is a JavaScript Ticker. You can find a XML based JavaScript Ticker at http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex2/xmlticker.htm.

XML based JavaScript Ticker:

We will create a XML based JavaScript Ticker that can tick any number of messages. The ticker reads it’s contents, i.e the ticker style, text to be displayed, the link for that particular message from a XML file. Let the XML file be ticker_items.xml.

The structure of the XML document is as follows >>

TICKER

   tickerstyle

        >> pause = "true" / "false" :: "true" for pause onMouseOver

        >> timeout = any integer :: The delay in seconds between different messages.

        >> border = any integer :: Border width of Ticker

        >> bordercolor = #HexColor :: The border color of Ticker

        >> background = #HexColor :: Background color of Ticker

        >> width = any integer :: Ticker width

        >> height = any integer :: Ticker height

           tickerlinkstyle

           mouseout

                  >> font = "verdana,arial,helvetica....." :: Ticker link font 

                  >> color = #HexColor :: Ticker link color

                  >> decoration = "none" / "underline" / "underline + overline" :: Ticker link style

                  >> weight = "normal" / "bold" :: Ticker link weight

                  >> size = 'any integer'pt :: Ticker link size               

            mouseover

                  >> font = "verdana,arial,helvetica....." :: Ticker link font

                  >> color = #HexColor :: Ticker link color

                  >> decoration = "none" / "underline" / "underline + overline" :: Ticker link style

                  >> weight = "normal" / "bold" :: Ticker link weight

                  >> size = 'any integer'pt :: Ticker link size       

  tickeritem 

                >> URL = A valid URL :: Ticker link URL

                >> target = "_blank" / "_top" / "_self" / 'any other valid target name' :: Ticker link target

XML Ticker Script :

-==-

As you can see in the source code, the ticker reads all the contents/messages to be displayed, the links for each message, the target for each URL, the ticker static style, roll-over style, border width, color, background, the delay between messages etc from the XML file. So if you want to change any parameter of the Ticker, all you have to do is make necessary changes in the XML file.

The ticker shown here is a basic ticker that rotates messages at an interval that is specified in the XML file. There are many effects you could add to the ticker like Fading message, Teletypewriter. You could add features to change the ticker speed or to list all messages at an instant.

You can find some Ticker effects at http://www.qiksearch.com/javascripts.htm

I hope this article has helped you in some way.

Article first appeared at CodeToad. Reprinted with the author’s permission.

Premshree Pillai studies engineering in Information Technology at
Mumbai University, Mumbai, India. He is a programming enthusiast
and maintains a Website (http://www.qiksearch.com), where he posts
his scripts. He is also a freelance writer and has written for a
range of popular Indian magazines.