Overview

On this page, we'll talk about where your banners can be displayed, file formats and sizes. We'll talk about what's going to be displayed and where, and ways you can customize that to suit your needs. You may already know some of the below, so we've tried to structure the content to be progressively less-basic as it goes on.

Single or Multiple Campaigns

A "campaign" is just the concept you're promoting ("Summer Fest 2024", "Grand Opening", etc.), and you can put as many different types of banners into that campaign. If you're only promoting a single concept, you likely only need one campaign. If you have more, we can create more. A campaign can (and should) offer up multiple banners for the same concept - don't feel like you need to cram as many details as possible into a single banner!

Banner Content Recommendations

• Keep content short an consise - you may offer every service in the world, but you only have a small space to convey that. Remember that your banner won't just be view on desktops, but also tablets and phones — the goal is to take the person to YOUR page where you can expand on your banner's content as much as you like, you just need to give them a reason to go there.
• Keep imagery light - File sizes are something to consider here, but images in general should be treated as secondary to your actual messaging, and...
• Please do not put text over images - Text over images can make it very difficult for some folks to read.
• Convey the most important bits - Make sure your banner tells people who you are and and what you actually want them to know for the campaign.

File Formats for Banners

We accept .WEBP, .PNG, or .JPG/.JPEG. If you can't provide one of these formats, let us know what you can do, and we can likely make it work.

Banner Class and Dimension Specifications

FreshWater is focused on responsive, flexible pages that allow our content to be presented on as many platforms as possible and still look consistent. Our pages use a grid system to help make this more predictable, and, hopefully, will help explain where, when, and how much real estate to expect for your banners.

The ratios here try to stay within a range where we're able to sometimes able to swap display types if needed (e.g. a Billboard is the same space as 2 Squares side-by-side, or 2 Double Leaderboards stacked on top of each other).

Banner Zones & Content Groups

A "banner zone" is a specific area of a page carved out with the intent to show banners. While most pages do have common zone options, some page types have zones specific to them, and we can even make a custom zone - just for your banners - on specific content, if that's what makes sense.

A "content group" is a grouping of pages on our site. This can be defined as any of the things we use to organize our site (a series, a set of neighborhoods, etc) or defined by you — if you have 8 specific pages that you think will be the only places people you'd want to business will read, we can make a custom content group with a custom zone, specifically for your banners.

Common Zones

Page Top
Uses the full width of the top portion of the page, under the header/nav (desktop) or header (mobile).

Content Top
This area is above the content on a page, but does not include the Right Rail

Right Rail
This area starts at the top right of story pages, and ends when the content inside it ends, but usually leads with banners.

Belt
many pages have a "belt" where one or more banners will display. This space goes for the full width of the content, and can be a single rectangular banner, or multiple squares.

Content Opportunistic
Whenever possible, we try to inject areas for banners when enough copy (generally every few paragraphs) and active banners to display will allow for it.

Content Bottom
Can be the full width of the page or full content width, depending on the page.