Crawler

Since the crawler maintains visibility by keeping itself positioned above the fold at all times, it's inherently optimized for viewable impressions and yields 2-3x higher CTRs as a result!

Customization

  • Optional close button
  • Custom background color
  • Left, right or center alignment
  • Responsive design support
  • Frequency capping
  • Polite option to disable for current browser session after being closed by user

Media Support

  • Graphic banners (GIF/JPG/PNG)
  • Flash banners
  • HTML5 banners
  • Custom HTML banners, including forms with CSS and JavaScript
  • Third-Party banners from agencies and ad networks such as DoubleClick, Google, Sizmek and others

Deployment

Deploying crawlers on your web site couldn't be easier. Our code wizard will generate all of the HTML code for you. All you have to do is copy and paste that code into the bottom of your web page near the </body> tag.

Recommendations

  • Crawlers are best implemented with 970x90 or 728x90 banners because they offer a lot of creative real estate without taking too much vertical screen space away from your web site and they comply with the Better Ads standards.
  • Tablet users are best served a 728x90 banner, so that should be taken into consideration if you opt for the larger 970x90 banner size for desktop.
  • Smaller sizes such as 300x100, 320x50 or 300x50 can be substituted for mobile phones users, which will improve the usability of your web site on those devices.
  • Add some extra padding to the bottom of your web page with CSS body{ padding-bottom: 200px; } to ensure your site footer isn't covered up by the crawler.

Advanced Techniques

Border

Want to add a border to the top of your crawler? Simply add the following CSS to your stylesheet or place it just above the code for the crawler:

<style type="text/css">
#crawler { border-top: 2px solid #000000; }
</style>

For a live demonstration of this, click here to add the border and then click here to remove the border.

Close Button

Don't like the default close button? You can change it by going to Settings > Basic > Code Wizard

Maybe you want the close button to be on the left side instead of being on the right side?

<style type="text/css">
#crawler_close { right: inherit !important; left: 0 !important; margin-left: 20px !important; }
</style>

For a live demonstration of this, click here to move the close button to the left.

Close Callback Function

The ability to include a JavaScript callback function in custom creatives is useful to stop audio or video from playing promptly when the crawler is closed by the user:

<script type="text/javascript">
function crawlerCloseCallback() {
// your custom close logic here...
}
</script>

Remember this needs to be a global function in order for it to be visible to the crawler wrapper code. Using this callback is not necessary with HTML5 banners or video banners. Those types of banners are designed to destroy any audio/video components upon closing so they stop playing automatically.

Header / Footer

Want to add a message or branding above or below the banner inside the crawler? You can add a custom header and/or footer by going to Settings > Basic > Code Wizard

Transparency

How about making the background of the crawler partially transparent? Again, it just takes a little additional CSS to accomplish it:

<style type="text/css">
#crawler, #crawler > div { background-color: rgba(224, 224, 235, 0.7) !important; }
</style>

For a live demonstration of this, click here to make it transparent and then click here to make it opaque again.

Quirks Mode Considerations

If your web site happens to render in Quirks Mode you will need to correct that in order for the crawler to show up correctly in Internet Explorer, however, this can usually be accomplished by simply specifying a doctype if one is missing or by switching to a standards compatible HTML doctype.

The HTML5 doctype as well as all of the XHTML 1.0 or 1.1 doctypes, which are the most commonly used for modern or relatively modern web sites are already rendered in standards compliant mode and require no changes.

On older web sites that use HTML 4.01 you must use the complete doctype with system identifier which would be one of the following:

  • <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
  • <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">