Displaying banner ads

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 the Windows Media Metafile Elements Reference at the Microsoft Web site. For more information about server-side playlists, see the Playlist reference.

Related topics

• To add a banner advertisement to a stream
• Streaming entertainment programming and advertising