www.medscape.com

 

Technical Specifications for Professional Media on Medscape.com
Standard and Rich Media Network Ads
Last Modified: April 18th, 2007

Technical Specifications

A. Ad Sizes

Medscape.com

1. Leaderboard
Size: 728x90 pixels
Max initial load size: 30k

2. Skyscraper
Size: 120x600 pixels
Max initial load size: 30k

MedPulse

1. Skyscraper
Size: 120x600 pixels
Max initial load size: 30k
No Rich Media – ONLY Gif/Jpeg

2. Text Ads
Size: 250 character limit (title should include a maximum of 67 characters)
Links: Maximum of two (2) links throughout the ad

Sample:

Don't miss your chance to win a $500 prize

Enter Medscape.com's 10^th Anniversary Member Essay Challenge. Every week a $500 gift certificate will be awarded to one lucky winner. For details, click here.

B. Ad Behavior and Performance

• Total max animation and looping time: 30 seconds
• All clicks to Medscape.com URLs should open in the same browser window. All other clicks should open a new browser window
• A click can open only one new browser window.
• 3rd party tags must serve working ads to all browsers and operating systems.
• 3rd party serving speed and performance must be consistent and reliable.
• Additional specifications per ad format are detailed below.

C. Approved Ad Formats (Medscape.com only)

1. Medscape Hosted Image Files
Image files can be hosted by Medscape, and the click served to 1 URL destination per file.

2. 3rd Party Tags (Within Ad Space)
Officially approved vendors include: Doubleclick, Atlas, MediaPlex, and Falk. All other vendors require advance review and approval by Medscape Ad Operations.

1. Click Redirect
   Image files can be hosted and the click served with a 3rd party redirect URL
2. Standard Tags
   3rd party redirects can be used to serve the creative and the clickthrough.
3. "Rich Media" or iFrame/Javascript.
   For this format, we cannot guarantee tracking of clicks, or any metric other than impressions served, via the Medscape ad system.
   wmode needs to be set to opaque for Flash.

3. HTML Ads with multiple clickthroughs
Medscape can provide tracking on aggregate clicks per creative unit only. Code must be written in valid XHTML 1.0.

4. Medscape hosted Flash ads
Medscape highly recommends the use of 3^rd-party ad systems to serve and track performance on Flash creatives.

However, if you do require Medscape to host your Flash creatives, please read the following carefully.

Developer Guidelines for Flash ads hosted and click-tracked by Medscape

a. Version 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 SWFs are acceptable. Please inform us of the file version you are submitting to ensure proper implementation.

b. Clickthrough functions must use the following clickTag actionscript: on (release){ if (_level0.clickTag.substr(0,5) == "http:") { getURL(_level0.clickTag, target="_blank"); } } This actionscript must be applied to a button layer in the Flash SWF files for all clickthroughs. Do not hard code the URL into the SWF. Medscape will use our HTML to manage the clickthrough destination. Instead, send the URL to be assigned to each SWF. Please note that only 1 clickthrough URL value can be assigned per SWF. Also, Medscape can only provide tracking on total clicks per SWF, and cannot break out click data for the Flash creative versus the default GIF/JPGs. For additional information visit: http://www.adobe.com/resources/richmedia/tracking/

c. A default GIF or JPG and clickthrough URL must be also be submitted to support users without Flash. These may also be used by Medscape in place of Flash, if SWF is incorrectly built at time of campaign launch.

d. Due to the amount of testing required, Medscape allows a max of 10 Flash ad creatives per campaign, unless approval is granted prior to pricing and contract signature.

For more detailed guidelines and working examples, please contact us.

5. Expandable Ads
All expanding ads must be 3rd party served.
Officially approved vendor: PointRoll (Iframe Tagging only)
All other vendors require advance review and case-by-case approval by Medscape Ad Operations.

Important: Medscape uses Iframe ad calls

• The "Advertisement" label used by Medscape to denote advertising must remain in clear view, or be replicated, whether ad is expanded or collapsed. In almost every case, the label must be built into the ad creative itself, due to the current IFRAME structures on Medscape. Please contact us for the label images and/or code.
• Expansion must be initiated by mouseover or click. Mouseover must be held in place for 1 second before expansion.
• Ad must collapse when mouse is moved off expanded section.
• "Close" or "collapse" button must be included.
• Iframe tagging only
• A default backup GIF/JPG must be served to all users who cannot accept the expanding ad format.
• Maximum expansions, in pixels:

  Initial Ad Size	Max Expanded Size	Expanded Direction
  728x90	728x360	Down
  120x600	370x600	Left

6. Audio ads

• Sound must be user-initiated with a click.
• A clearly marked option for muting sound must be included for the entire duration. Examples include a button marked "sound off", or "turn off sound".

7. Video ads

• Streaming ads need to adhere to Medscape initial load requirements (see above).
• A clearly marked option for stopping video must be included for the entire duration.
• A clearly marked option for muting sound must be included for the entire duration.
• Max playtime, if non-user initiated = 30 seconds
• Max playtime, if user initiated with a click = unlimited
• Sound must be user-initiated with a click.
• A default backup ad must be included for all users who cannot accept the video format.

8. Ad formats that are NOT approved:

• Pop-ups
• Pop-unders
• Floating ads, a.k.a. "out-of-banner"
• Interstitials
• Superstitials

The WebMD Health Network for Professionals – Advertising Policies

The WebMD Professional sites consist of Medscape.com, eMedicine.com, and TheHeart.org. The WebMD Professional sites accept advertising from companies wishing to advertise their brands and/or associated brand sites. However, as a matter of policy, WebMD WILL NOT accept advertising on the professional sites from:

• Any site that requires user registration for viewing advertised content or that links directly to a registration/email capture page. Any resulting user registration or email capture pages deriving from an ad click on the WebMD Professional sites must be, at minimum, two clicks away from the original advertisement.
• Any site whose primary goal is to acquire physicians for ongoing communications about proprietary services, i.e. physician extranets, physician service portals, etc.
• Any site whose ads on WebMD will include polling, quiz, or diagnostic functionality.
• Any site that is deemed to be competitive to WebMD's business such as online CME.

In addition:

• WebMD will use the "Advertisement" label to denote advertising above all non-expandable ads placed on any of its professional sites. All expandable ads MUST include the label ‘Advertisement” inside the ad, to be viewable both before and during ad expansion.
• Medscape reserves the right to limit the number of creatives deployed per campaign, and changes to the creative in rotation, where ad operations support is required.
• Ads linking outside of Medscape must open in a new window

The WebMD Professional Network reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to reject or discontinue, for any reason and at any time, any advertising for any campaign.

Billing

1. Third party vendor surcharge must be discussed in advance and reflected within the overall program price – if client/agency does not have a direct deal with rich media vendor – vendor rate card rate should be applied.
2. For billing on actual campaigns, rich media vendors counts will serve as the authoritative source for impression delivery, unless client serves rich media tags through 3rd party tags (also known as "4th party serving").

Technical Specifications for Professional Media on eMedicine
Standard and Rich Media Network Ads
Last Modified: March 13th, 2007

Delivery: All creative assets should be sent to Kristen Gonzalez, Project Manager, Client Services; kgonzalez@webmd.net.

Technical Specifications

A. Creative Specifications

Rich Media such as Eyeblaster, Pointroll, Flash/Shockwave, CheckM8, Shoshkeles, Unicast and others are typically acceptable. We do not accept iFrame PointRoll ads.

Flash banner not served via third-party tags must have clickTAG action script pre-coded.

Standard Banners
Pixel Size	File Size	Looping/Timing
468x60	20k	3 Loops/Total max animation is 30 sec
120x600	30k	3 Loops/Total max animation is 30 sec
120x240	25k	3 Loops/Total max animation is 30 sec
726x300	60k	3 Loops/Total max animation is 30 sec
120x90 (Drug of the Month)	15k	3 Loops/Total max animation is 30 sec
120x120 (Resource Center logo)	15k	N/A
468x500 (LookitMed Splash Box)	40k	3 Loops/Total max animation is 30 sec
728x90	30k	3 Loops/Total max animation is 30 sec
Textlink (No more than 250 characters including spaces, title cannot exceed 67 characters, and there is a max of 2 links tracked)	N/A	N/A

Rich Media
Pixel Size	File Size	Additional*	Expands**
468x60	20k	50k1	468x240
120x600	30k	50k2	370x600
120x240	25k	50k	240x240
726x300	60k	50k2	N/A
120x90 (Drug of the Month)	15k	N/A	N/A
120x120 (Resource Center logo)	15k	N/A	N/A
468x500 (LookitMed Splash Box)	40k	N/A	N/A
728x90	30k	50k2	728x360
*Additional: 1 Up to an additional 50k may be loaded after a user clicks on the 468x60 banner. 2 Up to 3 additional loads of up to 50k each may be initiated after a user moves to their cursor over or clicks on the 120x600, 726x300, or 728x90. **Expands: Rollover Expands: A creative will expand after a user clicks on it, and should automatically close when the cursor moves off the banner. Click Expands: A creative will expand after a user clicks on it, and can stay expanded until the user clicks a clearly labeled “CLOSE” button.

B. Ad Behavior and Performance

• Total max animation time: 30 seconds, regardless of loops
• All clicks used to open web pages must do so in a new browser window.
• A click can open only one new browser window.
• 3rd party tags must serve working ads to all browsers and operating systems.
• 3rd party serving speed and performance must be consistent and reliable.
• Additional specifications per ad format are detailed below.

C. Approved Ad Formats

1. eMedicine Hosted Image Files
Image files can be hosted by eMedicine, and the click served to 1 URL destination per file.

2. 3rd Party Tags (Within Ad Space)
Officially approved vendors include: Doubleclick, Atlas, MediaPlex, and Falk. All other vendors require advance review and approval by eMedicine Ad Operations.

1. Click Redirect
   Image files can be hosted and the click served with a 3rd party redirect URL.
2. Standard Tags
   3rd party redirects can be used to serve the creative and the clickthrough.
3. "Rich Media" or iFrame/Javascript.
   For this format, we cannot guarantee tracking of clicks, or any metric other than impressions served, via the eMedicine ad system.
   wmode needs to be set to opaque for Flash.

3. HTML Ads with multiple clickthroughs
eMedicine can provide tracking on aggregate clicks per creative unit only. Code must be written in valid XHTML 1.0.

4. eMedicine hosted Flash ads
eMedicine highly recommends the use of 3^rd-party ad systems to serve and track performance on Flash creatives.

However, if you do require eMedicine to host your Flash creatives, please read the following carefully.

Developer Guidelines for Flash ads hosted and click-tracked by Medscape

a. Version 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 SWFs are acceptable. Please inform us of the file version you are submitting to ensure proper implementation.

b. Clickthrough functions must use the following clickTag actionscript: on (release){ if (_level0.clickTag.substr(0,5) == "http:") { getURL(_level0.clickTag, target="_blank"); } } This actionscript must be applied to a button layer in the Flash SWF files for all clickthroughs. Do not hard code the URL into the SWF. eMedicine will use our HTML to manage the clickthrough destination. Instead, send the URL to be assigned to each SWF. Please note that only 1 clickthrough URL value can be assigned per SWF. Also, eMedicine can only provide tracking on total clicks per SWF, and cannot break out click data for the Flash creative versus the default GIF/JPGs. For additional information visit: Modifying a Shockwave file for OAS: http://www.realmedia.com/tech/oas/RichMedia/local/akamai/shockwavemodifysingle.html

c. A default GIF or JPG and clickthrough URL must be also be submitted to support users without Flash. These may also be used by eMedicine in place of Flash, if SWF is incorrectly built at time of campaign launch.

d. Due to the amount of testing required, eMedicine allows a max of 10 Flash ad creatives per campaign, unless approval is granted prior to pricing and contract signature.

For more detailed guidelines and working examples, please contact us.

5. Expandable Ads
All expanding ads must be 3rd party served.
Officially approved vendor: PointRoll (Script Tagging only, but we will test iFrame if needed)

All other vendors require advance review and case-by-case approval by eMedcine Ad Operations.

• The "Advertisement" label used by eMedicine to denote advertising must remain in clear view, or be replicated, whether ad is expanded or collapsed. In almost every case, the label must be built into the ad creative itself, due to the current structures on eMedicine. Please contact us for the label images and/or code.
• Expansion must be initiated by mouseover or click. Mouseover must be held in place for 1 second before expansion.
• Ad must collapse when mouse is moved off expanded section.
• "Close" or "collapse" button must be included.
• Script tagging only, but we will test iFrame if needed
• A default backup GIF/JPG must be served to all users who cannot accept the expanding ad format.
• For Maximum expansions, please go to page one of this document to locate the Rich Media chart

6. Audio ads

• Sound must be user-initiated with a click.
• A clearly marked option for muting sound must be included for the entire duration. Examples include a button marked "sound off", or "turn off sound".

7. Video ads

• Streaming ads need to adhere to eMedicine initial load requirements (see above).
• A clearly marked option for stopping video must be included for the entire duration.
• A clearly marked option for muting sound must be included for the entire duration.
• Max playtime, if non-user initiated = 30 seconds
• Max playtime, if user initiated with a click = unlimited
• Sound must be user-initiated with a click.
• A default backup ad must be included for all users who cannot accept the video format.

8. Ad formats that are NOT approved:

• Pop-ups
• Pop-unders
• Floating ads, a.k.a. "out-of-banner"
• Interstitials
• Superstitials

eMedicine Email Specifications

1) List of client email addresses (for test and final drop) must be supplied prior to testing.

2) Subject lines may be customized, and are subject to approval by eMedicine.

3) HTML version must be provided by client prior to email drop, and text backup version is optional but highly recommended.

Preparing the TEXT Version:

Any Text Editor that can save in TEXT ONLY format (ASCII) can be used to create the text version of a MultiPart Email Broadcast. In order to make the text versions look their best to any reader one should use the following conventions:

• 65 Characters per line with a hard linefeed (or carriage return) at the end of every line. Without this, the text is subject to the whims of the outgoing and client email programs, either of which may break the lines at arbitrary points.
• Double space between paragraphs.
• Convert titles or headings to ALL CAPS.
• Use full URL's, for example http://www.messageconnex.com rather than simply www.messageconnex.com. Some email readers will not convert the later into a clickable link.
• A maximum of 24 textlinks may be tracked for an email. This includes 12 textlinks each for the HTML and Text versions.
• All trailing spaces (the spaces before the line break at the end of every line) should be removed as some email programs will convert these to =20 making your message look unpleasant.

Prepare the copy in HTML using an HTML Editor:

An HTML Editor should be used to create the HTML portion of a Email. However, keep in mind that email clients tend to lag behind the newest HTML specifications rendering many new tags and functionalities useless. Do NOT use Microsoft Word to convert your text document into HTML as it inserts extraneous code into the document that can interfere. In order to make the HTML versions look their best to any reader one should use the following conventions:

• Constrain the page within a 720 pixel table that is centered on the page. This will allow the whole message to be displayed on screen without the need to scroll from left to right. (This takes into consideration the most common screen resolutions.)
• DO NOT rely on Style sheets to format your document. Many readers disregard Style Sheets (i.e. the majority of web based email viewers). Inline style tags may be used, but do not reference a style class listed inside the body of the email. You may, however, link to an external style sheet hosted on your own server.
• DO NOT embed Javascript, Java applets, VBscript or any other scripting language in your document. Security settings on popular email clients may warn the recipient that the email is 'Unsafe' and automatically delete the message. IFRAMES are not visible in the Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express, the most commonly used email client, as the default settings list IFRAMES as unsafe content.
• Only use JPG images (best for photograph type pictures) or GIF images (best for text and clipart) that are optimized for the Web.
• Use Web Based fonts (e.g. Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, Geneva, Sans-serif).
• Third-party advertising tags must be standard tags (no IFrames or JavaScript - only href/img)
• Image maps may not be used, instead break up the images and nest in table cells with the desired cells having the click thru tags associated with it.
• A maximum of 24 textlinks may be tracked for an email. This includes 12 textlinks each for the HTML and Text versions.
• Attach a domain to the image source in the html, using the absolute URL instead of only the directory for the image source (ex: http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/test.gif)
• Inline Cascading Style Sheets with the style attribute may be used, but no other style sheets will be accepted.
• HTML background must be white, but images can be used to create the appearance of a colored background.

The WebMD Health Network for Professionals – Advertising Policies

The WebMD Professional sites consist of Medscape.com, eMedicine.com, and TheHeart.org. The WebMD Professional sites accept advertising from companies wishing to advertise their brands and/or associated brand sites. However, as a matter of policy, WebMD WILL NOT accept advertising on the professional sites from:

• Any site that requires user registration for viewing advertised content or that links directly to a registration/email capture page. Any resulting user registration or email capture pages deriving from an ad click on the WebMD Professional sites must be, at minimum, two clicks away from the original advertisement.
• Any site whose primary goal is to acquire physicians for ongoing communications about proprietary services, i.e. physician extranets, physician service portals, etc.
• Any site whose ads on WebMD will include polling, quiz, or diagnostic functionality.
• Any site that is deemed to be competitive to WebMD’s business such as online CME.

In addition:

• WebMD will use the "Advertisement" label to denote advertising above all non-expandable ads placed on any of its professional sites. All expandable ads MUST include the label ‘Advertisement” inside the ad, to be viewable both before and during ad expansion.
• Medscape reserves the right to limit the number of creatives deployed per campaign, and changes to the creative in rotation, where ad operations support is required.
• Ads linking outside of Medscape must open in a new window

The WebMD Professional Network reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to reject or discontinue, for any reason and at any time, any advertising for any campaign.

Billing

1. Third party vendor surcharge must be discussed in advance and reflected within the overall program price – if client/agency does not have a direct deal with rich media vendor – vendor rate card rate should be applied.
2. For billing on actual campaigns, rich media vendors counts will serve as the authoritative source for impression delivery, unless client serves rich media tags through 3rd party tags (also known as "4th party serving").