Startup Neuranet Uses HTML5 To Build Multiple Ads Fast, And At Once

March 7, 2014 by Dave Haynes

One of the start-ups I spent time with at this week’s DX3 conference in Toronto was Neuranet, which has developed an online ad production tool called Flexitive.

Based on HTML5 and other technologies that have really just bubbled up in the last two-three years, the SaaS-based service allows creatives (and minimally creative marketers) to build online display ads in different formats and shapes, in real time, and all at once.

It’s based around the same responsive design mindset that’s becoming pervasive in web design. The basis of responsive is that you design once for many screen shapes and formats, instead of building a mobile web site, a tablet-sized website, a widescreen website and a standard desktop website. The design responds somewhat dynamically to the screen resolutions.

So with Flexitive, you can design a billboard landscape ad at the same time as you build a vertical sidebar ad, and a smaller banner ad, and see them all in a window and tweak each to focus images and add motion, such as text flying in. You just drag the assets into a canvas and go from there.

I mention all this because the platform also supports video as a background. That means full screen, full motion ads can be developed. In  other words, there’s no particular reason this platform can’t output low-cost digital signage spots.

Yup, agreed company CEO/co- founder Paul Vincent. He showed me one spot running 4K video – something put together to see if if would take.

The company is still sorting out rates, but from what Vincent ran by me, it was VERY affordable.

The output is a URL, so this would be really well-suited to cloud-based systems, like the commercial panel guys’ “smart” panels that are essentially running digital signs in a browser.

Should creative shops be worried about this sort of thing?

Not in its current form. You still need media assets and more than anything, the creative process that gets you to good ideas. You also don’t get a file, like an .mp4 at the other end. You get a URL.

But for commodity work that has a concept and assets, and needs a bunch of different outputs (like different logos or prices) this is pretty interesting stuff.