Flash Ad Manager v1.0 Now Available

Flash Ad Manager is now available to download as a 1.0 release from the Google Code project page.

If you missed the previous posts about it, here’s the spiel:

Flash Ad Manager lets developers remotely display custom or embedded ads during the preloading stage of a Flash application.

My main motivation with this project is to give Flash Platform developers, specifically Flash game developers, better control over how they monetize their work through the use of ads.

Currently the 2 major sources for Flash game monetization are sponsorship and advertising. With this package I hope to open up a potentially untapped area for developers, self served ads as well as provide a way for games to be released without having to be “locked in” to a single ad API like MochiAds.

Self Served Ads

Flash games, even bad ones, have an amazing ability to become viral extremely quickly. In fact, I would be willing to bet that of all online media Flash games are up there with online video in terms of reach on a site by site basis. So why is this a good thing? Having a game that becomes viral means many sites will pick up your game to host on their own sites without you even lifting a finger. The more sites your game appears on the general reach of your network grows.

I use the word ‘network’ here because that is exactly what is happening. With each new site that picks up your game there is a whole new group of people who will play your game who would not of otherwise. What makes this network unique is that you effectively have a ‘window’ into every site which hosts your game. Using Flash Ad Manager you can quickly an easily place an ad of your choosing in front of every user who plays your game on any site your game appears on.

What about ad APIs like MochiAds?

Flash Ad Manager is NOT a replacement for popular ad API’s like MochiAds or GameJacket. It is best thought of as a “self hosted ad api” which ALSO offers runtime ad API switching. What this means is a developer does not have to choose a single ad provider, rather they can embed ad code from various 3rd parties like MochiAds or GameJacket and switch between them remotely.

Benefits

Here are a few reasons Flash Ad Manager may be useful:

• Build your own advertising network.
• Privately sell ad space across your games.
• Drive traffic back to your own site(s).
• No single ad API lock in. Embed several and switch them remotely.
• Try out various 3rd party ad APIs and see which works best for you.
• Released a new game? Change ads across previous games to point to your new one!

How it works

Flash Ad Manager works by ‘calling home’ to retrieve an XML file which is parsed to determine which ad type should be invoked. Ad types are defined simply as being custom or embedded. A custom ad is either a user created SWF or image which gets downloaded and displayed by the AdManager. An embedded ad can be anything embedded at compile time such as a custom graphic or animation to an alternate ad API such as MochiAds or GameJacket.

Download

Flash Ad Manager is 100% free open source. It can be downloaded from the Flash Ad Manager project page on Google Code. Any feedback or suggestion on how to improve this project is greatly appreciated.