Husky 2.0 - better, faster, easier

We recently released a major new version of Husky: version 2.0. We call it 2.0 because it’s such a big milestone in terms of the development work that’s been done on Husky. We’ve made it faster. We’ve made it easier to implement. The code has also been entirely restructured to streamline further development and allow us to build new features on top of Husky more easily than ever. There’s plenty of new functionality available in 2.0. I can’t cover all the technical aspects because there are many, so I’ll focus on the big changes – the ones which benefit our publishers.

Husky In-Page.
This is a huge improvement that allows publishers to show Husky ads inside their pages (like Heavy.com) as opposed to inside a lightbox. This will allow us to offer a great alternative to those publishers who don't want to use the "lightbox" effect.

Husky Fixed Window
We’ve also added a “Fixed Window” mode, which is similar to the lightbox version except that it has two changes that differentiates them. First, the screen behind the ads won’t be grayed out, so users can still see what else is on the page. Secondly, Husky ads will stay in the same spot even if the user scrolls down. This will allow users to scroll down and see other content further down on the page.

Husky Auto-Detect
This new feature will automatically find all of the embedded video players on a webpage and make them husky-enabled. This means that the publisher doesn’t have to add anything to their embed code (previously, they had to add class=”husky” to every embed on the page). We’re building in support for more types of players as well as allowing the publisher to specify which players they want to automatically enable with Husky.


Husky Help Mode
We’ve started working on a very ambitious feature for Husky called “Help mode”. The goal of Help Mode is that whenever any new publisher tries to add Husky to their site and they make a mistake, or did something wrong, Husky automatically shows a message to the publisher and tells them what they need to change in order for Husky to work. This will be an ongoing process but we strongly believe that this is a step in the right direction, making Husky as easy as possible to add to your site as well as customize.

Auto-Launching Husky is Faster Than Ever
Publishers can choose to automatically show Husky ads whenever a user visits a site, and so we’ve sped up this aspect significantly, immediately engaging users in the Husky experience.

Husky Game Mode
We’ve also added some features that are geared towards gaming sites. The first feature is called a “fence”, which creates an invisible and un-clickable area around the flash game when its surrounded by Husky ads in order to prevent accidental clicks on ads. That was one of the things publishers of gaming sites complained about along with their users. Now, the publishers can enable the fencing and control the size of the fence too.

Another addition to Game Mode is that a publisher can choose to have Husky ads open in a new window underneath the current browser whenever a user clicks an ad. This prevents games from being interrupted when someone clicks on an ad and instead of it immediately blocking their screen and their game, it will show up behind the browser. This is disabled by default, but if publishers want it, they can easily enable it.

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That’s it for the major user-facing features. There are plenty more things we added for publishers and developers to make Husky integration even easier, but that would take pages to explain. We’re currently in the process of reaching out to our publishers and telling them about the new features and letting publishers know we’re releasing version 2.0. As for our largest publishers, Derek and Jesse are contacting them directly to inform them of the new functionality. Most of these publishers will be upgraded through our admin tools -- completely invisible to them.

Husky is an awesome product, it’s super-easy to implement and customize and we pay exceptionally high rates to publishers -- usually much more than they’re used to getting from any other ad networks. We’re definitely headed in the right direction.

Thanks to all of our current publishers. Your feedback has been instrumental in this latest Husky release!