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Figures for Prospects.ac.uk

March 2010:

ABCE audited figures

Unique Browsers:

1,167,672

Page Impressions:

5,828,244

(Note: ABCE are now using the term Unique Browsers instead of Unique Users)

Prospects.ac.uk technical specifications

Emailing service

Fill in the online email form making sure your email is approximately 50 words:

Jobs by email service

HTML emails: Can contain text, pictures, and links to make your organisation stand out (we do not support forms). Please send all required elements below 5 days before you want the email to be sent.

Required for HTML emails

The HTML code (recommended dimensions up to 752 pixels wide by up to 600 pixels high).
Please note, Email clients do not display content consistently, therefore we recommend that you keep email designs simple and try to use as few nested tables as possible.
Avoid using Cascading Style Sheets. Your email may not display correctly as style-sheets often get stripped out or overwritten by web-based email clients, such as Hotmail.
Web-ready copies of all images (in JPG or GIF format).
Provide alt text descriptions for all images.
Copy for the text only version (sent to people who cannot view emails in HTML format).
Text to go in the subject line of the email (max 10 words).
The URLs for any links.
The target audience (select which finalist and/or graduates you want to target by institution, degree subject, location and/or type of work).
The email address to which you would like to receive the test email.
The date you want the email to be sent.
Do not use rich media elements such as Flash, audio or video in emails.

Email the copy for your text message containing approximately 80-100 characters (including spaces) either to your Sales Representative. The SMS will include a web link to your advert on Prospects.ac.uk.

Logos

Please note the following requirements for logos.

Dimensions	(Width x height)
Square	110 pixels x 110 pixels
Portrait	80 pixels x 150 pixels
Landscape	170 pixels x 70 pixels

Max file size 8k
72ppi resolution
JPG, GIF or PNG format
No animation allowed

Logos must be one of the dimensions shown above. Pad with white space if necessary to avoid distortion of your logo on the web page.

Online banner advertising

Please note the following requirements for online advertising on Prospects.ac.uk and in the Prospects.ac.uk Newsletter.

Advert type	Width x height	Max total file size	Max animation duration
88 x 31 (Microbar)	88 pixels x 31 pixels	10k	15 secs
120 x 60 (Button 2)	120 pixels x 60 pixels	20k	15 secs
120 x 600 (Skyscraper)	120 pixels x 600 pixels	40k	15 secs
160 x 600 (Wide Skyscraper)	160 pixels x 600 pixels	40k	15 secs
300 x 250 (MPU)	300 pixels x 250 pixels	40k	15 secs

Allowed file formats: JPG, GIF, PNG, HTML, JavaScript, Flash*

Please note that we do not support Flash for 120x60 adverts used on the Prospects home page.
Flash cannot be used on HTML emails.
We cannot provide full tracking data for Flash adverts.

Disallowed file formats: Shockwave, Java applets

Flash banner, button and skyscraper specification

The specifications for Flash online advertising are applicable to adverts of the following sizes: 88x31, 120x60, 120x600, 160x600 and 300x250.

Files to supply - Please supply .swf files of version 6 (MX) or above. Only one self-contained .swf file per advert is allowed.
Links - Any links used on your Flash advert must be included as buttons or links within the flash movie itself.
Background colour - It is vital that you place a non-transparent background as the lowest layer in your flash movie (e.g a filled rectangle the same dimensions as the flash movie). Changing the background colour property alone will not make the movie non-transparent and will result in the background colour of the website showing through your advert.
Frame rate - The frame rate can be set to any value you choose.
Please note that we currently do not support audio or video files embedded within Flash adverts.

Accessibility for Flash banners, buttons and skyscrapers

Do not break apart or flatten fonts into vector shapes. All text must be ‘live’ so that it will be picked up by screen readers.
Images and buttons should have a name and description provided via the accessibility box function within Flash. It is not sufficient to just check the box ‘Make Object Accessible’ – text must be provided.

More information about this subject can be found in our Guide to the accessibility of Flash advertising

Video profiles

File formats: Any common video format accepted except FLVs. All videos will be encoded by Graduate Prospects into Flash Video (FLV) format. The Flash video encoder will not accept FLV files, therefore please supply any common video format instead. (e.g. Quicktime (mov), AVI, Windows Media (wmv), MPEG (mpg), etc). We also accept DVDs (VOB file format). Please post DVDs to Graduate Prospects. We will return all discs after use.

Video pixel dimensions: Video will be displayed on the site at 300x225 pixels in size. Please supply videos of this size or of a 4:3 aspect ratio (width x height). Please note that if videos are supplied at a smaller resolution than 300x225 the resultant video will be stretched which may lead to blurring/distortion.

Transcript: For accessibility reasons, a comprehensive transcript of the video is required. Please supply transcripts as an accessible PDF file. For instructions about how to make PDF files accessible, please see http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/accessbooklet.pdf

Captions: If possible, please supply details of closed-captions for the video. Closed captions differ from subtitles in that they typically consist of a transcription of the audio portion of a program as it occurs (either verbatim or in edited form) and sometimes include non-speech elements.

Captions aim to describe all significant audio content — spoken dialogue and non-speech information such as the identity of speakers and their manner of speaking — along with music or sound effects using words or symbols. Please be sure to include timing information for the captions. The timings need to describe which caption should appear, and at what time in the video. Please specify timings to the nearest tenth of a second.

Online display advertising specifications

Display ads can be Flash or Image based.

Specs common to both types are:

Max file size: 50k
Max width: 540 pixels

We recommend a height of 440px to avoid downward scrolling, but will accept adverts that have heights greater than this. We cannot accept widths greater than 540px.

Image specifications

File format: JPG, GIF or PNG,

Please note: If you need to supply artwork as a PDF or EPS, be aware that Prospects will resize, optimize and convert it into a webready format as above. Small text within the original document may become illegible after this process. Design using large, clear text which can be reduced. Some loss of picture quality may be necessary in order to keep the file size less than 50k.

Accessibility for image display adverts

For accessibility reasons, we will require a text only version that replicates all text used within your image display advert. The text only version will be available via a ‘[D]’ link positioned beside the advert. Please supply the text only version as a text file or Microsoft Word document.

Flash display advert specification

Please note that some of the specifications outlined below differ from the specifications for adverts in any of the Prospects digital magazines.

When including links on your Flash display advert, please refer to the instructions for tracking click-throughs if you wish to collect information on click-throughs.
It is vital that you place a non-transparent background as the lowest layer in your flash movie (e.g a filled rectangle the same dimensions as the flash movie). Changing the background colour property alone will not make the movie non-transparent and will result in the white background colour of the website showing through your advert.
Follow the recommended file size limit where possible to ensure efficient loading. If you exceed the suggested file size limit, include a pre-loader to keep the user informed of loading progress.
Please note that we currently do not support audio or video files embedded within Flash display adverts.
The frame rate can be set to any value you choose.
Please supply .swf files of version 6 (MX) or above.
Only one self-contained .swf file per advert is allowed.

Accessibility for Flash display adverts

Do not break apart or flatten fonts into vector shapes. All text must be ‘live’ so that it will be picked up by screen readers.
Images and buttons should have a name and description provided via the accessibility box function within Flash. It is not sufficient to just check the box ‘Make Object Accessible’ – text must be provided.
More information about this subject can be found in our Guide to the accessibility of Flash advertising

Instructions for tracking click-throughs on Flash display ads

In order for us to be able to track click-throughs on your adverts, we require that you modify anywhere that uses the getURL action to move on to new web page.

The process is similar to the one described in the URL on the web page given below (under the heading 'To assign a clickTAG for your advertisement'):

Traking Macromedia Flash movies (via Adobe.com)

The clickTAG is replaced with clickTAGPREFIX and you need to append your target URL to the getURL call, URL escaped. For example, given a target URL http://my.company.com/somewhere Use the following code, which makes use of the 'escape()'

ActionScript function:

on (release) {

if (_level0.clickTAGPREFIX.substr(0,5) == "http:") {

getURL(_level0.clickTAGPREFIX

+escape("http://www.mycompany.com/somewhere"), "_blank");

}

You may escape the URL yourself, if you prefer:

on (release) {

if (_level0.clickTAGPREFIX.substr(0,5) == "http:") {

getURL(_level0.clickTAGPREFIX

+"http%3A%2F%2Fmy%2Ecompany%2Ecom%2Fsomewhere", "_blank");

}

Note: you can have multiple different URLs in the advert, we do not limit how many you can have.

Testing your movie: To test your URLs are working correctly, create a test web page embedding the flash movie as follows:

<object

data="yourmovie.swf?clickTAGPREFIX=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eprospe

cts%2Eac%2Euk%2Fprofsearch%2Fservlets%2FFlashTest%3Fweblink%3

type="application/x-shockwave-flash"

width="enter desired width here"

height="enter desired height here">

<param name="movie"

value="yourmovie.swf?clickTAGPREFIX=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eprosp

ects%2Eac%2Euk%2Fprofsearch%2Fservlets%2FFlashTest%3Fweblink%

3D">

</object>

Replacing 'yourmovie.swf' with the name (and path) of your advert and setting the width/height appropriately.

Note: there are no new lines in the data and value attributes.