From the familiar environment of Flash, you can now build, preview, share and upload ads while seamlessly collaborating with any number of team members or freelancers. There’s no coding, no fretting over technicalities, no guesswork. It works the way you work. With Eyeblaster Workshop v2.0, you can create it, see it and share it, all with a few clicks of the mouse.

We’re engaging with our clients to test new developments and influence the Eyeblaster Workshop roadmap. I recently spoke with Elliot Owen, a London based designer at Mediacom, who put the new Eyeblaster Workshop v2.0 through a rigorous beta test.

How often did you use the Workshop?

Every ad I build, I use it – so in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been using it all day. I’ve got a big campaign coming up, so there are 15, 20 different ads. Working on them all using the Eyeblaster Workshop.

Did you find that it saved you time?

Having the EBA files and recent projects listed, and being able to open files with one click is a big time saver. Previewing sync ads is certainly helpful and a timesaver.

What types of ads did you use the Workshop for?

The campaign I’m working on right now includes quite a variety of formats. Skyscrapers, leaderboards, banners and MPUs for MSN. It’s very heavy on video. There’s also one mini-game. Quite a few of those are synchronized, home page takeovers, things like that. I used Workshop for all of it.

Did you find the advanced video features helpful?

Absolutely. Some of these ads have multiple videos, so being able to add the assets in and having the numbers link up – and being able to test everything on my machine is much faster. So I can load videos and add videos to the ad unit simultaneously – with multiple video loader components.

Was the ability to share within the team and send previews to the client something that you used?

We have sent previews to the client, and I generally will send the link that Workshop generates to my project client. Those URLs are very useful to send to the client. If I build an ad and pass it to someone else, I will compile and bundle within Workshop and pass it over.

And how about uploading and source file bundling?

I bundle and upload ads directly from Flash, and it saves a lot of time. It does quick error-checking and makes sure you have all the components – the backup GIF in there, etc. And to sign-in and upload from the machine is very helpful.

Any other thoughts?

It’s certainly been very helpful, and managing the larger campaign has been useful as well, as far as organizing the different ads and different files. When you make an ad, you have the folder there, and it puts the Flash files into the folder – it saves time and keeps things organized. If you don’t have that, it’s easy for things to get confused, and for files to end up in different places. It’s quite a big time-saver.

For more info on Eyeblaster Workshop 2.0, visit http://www.eyeblaster.com/products/workshopforflash.asp .

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Gefen Lamdan, Sr. Product Planning Manager | Creative Eyeblaster