Publishing a Banner

Publishing a banner produces a different output package from other Activator channels. Where an email or a slide publishes a single source file, a banner publishes a bundle of bundles — one distribution package per viewport, plus a set of visual representations used for review.

What gets published

On publish, Activator does the following for every viewport on the banner:

• Compiles a distribution package containing the HTML source, styling, and any local assets needed by that viewport, ready for delivery to an ad platform

• Records an MP4 video preview for each animated viewport — a full capture of the banner playing through every scene

• Captures an image preview for each static viewport

• TBA - Generates an MLR report that walks every scene of every viewport in a single review-ready PDF (see MLR Report for Banners)

All of these are bundled together for delivery to the connected DAM.

TBA - Publishing wizard options

Banner publishing introduces two options unique to this channel:

Viewable rendition. Choose which visual representation acts as the viewable rendition on the connected DAM document — typically the MP4 preview for animated banners or the image preview for static banners. The MLR PDF is always available alongside.

Generate video previews. Video capture is the heaviest step in the banner publishing run. The wizard exposes a toggle to skip video generation when only the distribution package and image previews are needed (for example, during early-stage iterations or when only a static representation is required for the next review).

Distribution package structure

The distribution package is a ZIP bundle structured roughly as:

- animated_300-250/
  - index.html
  - style.css
  - assets/
    - bg.jpg
    - logo.png
- static_300-250/
  - ...
- animated_300-600/
  - ...
- static_728-90/
  - ...

Each viewport folder is self-contained and ready to be uploaded to an ad-hosting platform.

CDN vs local assets

If an asset is already hosted on a CDN (with a public URL), Activator references it directly. If an asset is local — uploaded to Activator or shared from the Design System — Activator compresses it and includes it in the per-viewport assets folder. The same compression applies whether the banner is animated or static.

This is important because ad platforms typically have strict file-size limits per banner (often around 150 KB initial load, 300 KB subsequent). Keeping shared assets on a CDN is the cleanest way to stay under these limits.

MLR

Banners go through the same MLR approval workflow as Slides and Briefs. Support for attaching the generated MLR PDF to the DAM document is not yet available and will be included in a future update. See MLR Report for Banners for details on what the report contains.

Related

• Banners — overview of the Banners channel.

• MLR Report for Banners — what the banner MLR PDF contains.

• Banner Viewports & Renditions — how viewport renditions are stored on the document.

• Publish content — general publishing workflow across all channels.