Displaying banner ads
Applies To: Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2
You can use Windows Media Services to display banner advertisements in a player or on a Web site. Banners can include any type of digital media content, such as animations, video streams, or audio streams. For example, while a song is streaming from your server, you can display information about the artist, album, and concert schedule in the banner. Alternatively, your banner could feature a link to a concert schedule that users can click to go to the concert promoter's Web site without disrupting the audio stream.
When implementing banner advertisements, consider the following:
Banners can be displayed for the entire duration of the playlist or can change as each new piece of content streams.
You can implement customized banners for each user by referencing dynamic URLs created by reading cookies from advertising service vendors.
Rotate banners based on playback duration.
You also can use the banner space to display other Web-based information, such as news and advertisements links.
Design various sizes of banners, depending on the advertiser's requirements and your needs. The banner advertisement is displayed regardless of how the player is implemented, whether it is an embedded player, a standard player, or a skin.
Banners are implemented by associating an advertising banner URL with a BANNER metadata element in the announcement file or by using a bannerURL attribute with a clientData element in a server-side playlist file. For more information about elements that can be used in an announcement file, see Windows Media Metafiles. For more information about elements that can be used in server-side playlists, see the Windows Media Services SDK Playlist Reference.
The following procedure demonstrates how to add a banner advertisement to a stream.
To add a banner advertisement to a stream
Create a banner graphic to be displayed in the player during the broadcast.
In the Windows Media Services snap-in, in console tree, click the publishing point to which you want to add the banner advertisement.
Click the Source tab.
In the Content source area, be sure that the Location path and file name correspond to the playlist that is currently online.
In the playlist tree, expand the playlist, and then expand the smil element to show the elements in the playlist.
Click the Media element that you want to add a banner advertisement to.
On the toolbar, click the Add Element arrow, and then click ClientData.
A ClientData element is added to the Media element.
Click the new ClientData element.
The Source details area displays the properties for the ClientData element.
Click the bannerAbstract attribute and type the ToolTip text for the banner graphic. For example:
Download more albums from this artist at our Web site.
Click the bannerInfoURL attribute and type the URL that is associated with this banner graphic. If the user clicks the banner graphic during playback, it opens this URL. For example:
Click the bannerURL attribute and type the location of the banner graphic file. For example:
https://server/folder/file.jpg
On the toolbar, click the Save button.