Big Websites Start Running Bigger Display Ads.

[gonzo]

Some lessons to be learned for free site owners here..... Look at the link to understand what they are bitching about.

According to MediaPost, The Online Publishers Association yesterday announced that 37 of its members, including juggernauts like The New York Times, Forbes, ESPN, CNN and MSNBC.com are (or are soon going to start) running the new, larger ad units the organization introduced last March. Since the members who are running these campaigns for brands like Bank of America and Mercedes-Benz reach about 68% of the total U.S. Internet audience, there’s a good chance you will soon see them, too.

There’s also a good chance you’ll hate them.

The three new ad units are named and sized as follows:

- The Fixed Panel (336×700) - remains in view as a user scrolls up or down the page
- The XXL Box (468×648), the extra wide side-of-page ad that expands to 936 x 648 and includes page-turn and video capability
- The Pushdown (970×418), which opens big to display the ad and then after seven seconds rolls up to the top of the page (collapsing to 970 x 66).

The first one was actually supposed to be 860 pixels in height, but they reconsidered it and brought it down to 700, reportedly after feedback from publishers.

In order to visualize how big these ads are in their most expanded state, I overlayed the TechCrunch homepage with boxes of the same size:

Here’s how OPA President Pam Horan justified the introduction of the new ad units:

“The real motivation was to provide marketers and agencies with the opportunity to deliver a branded experience directly on the pages of these very rich content sites.”

But what about the children website visitors?

Nobody seems to really care, apart from the fact that OPA recommends their members that the frequency of the pushdown ad be capped at once per day per page. Horan says it passed that recommendation on because they “want to stay close to consumers”. I puked in my mouth a little.

Is it just me or does anyone else think that display advertising units on websites should become more relevant to them instead of just bigger? What’s next, 1200×600 ads?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/01...s-big-mistake/

[RawAlex]

People are running bigger screens, but the physical size of a screen hasn't gone up as fast as the number of pixels.

In the beginning, 640x480 on 14 inch CRTs. Now CRTs are typically 19-20 inch on new machines, often largers, but resolution is way up there: I am behind the times at 1600x1200. So basically, the resolution went up by a factor of 3, but the screen size only went up by < 50%. The result? Your ads are smaller, and it takes much more content to fill a page. Solution? Bigger ads.

[DannyCox]

The default setting for graphics on most new PC's seems to be set at 1024X768 these days. The problem is 90% of the people buying new PC's never bother to change their screen resolution. The ad sizes that Gonzo published above show that the advertisers are mainly considering that fairly standard screen resolution.

I don't believe the size of the ad is going to do much for the advertiser, other than piss people off. It's the quality of the ad that will have to change and I see even more use of Flash/etc. for online mini-commercials. Larger companies are soon going to be producing "web commercials" that will equal those on television...high quality and high bucks.

[Hell Puppy]

These dont have so much to do with increasing resolutions and screen sizes as they do fighting ad blindness.

People barely see a 468x60, 150x150 or even a skyscraper on an old school 800x600 design. That's especially true if it's static. Their eyes have been trained to ignore it.

So now you have to make something so obnoxious that you have to click close to see what you really came to look at to begin with. It's almost like an on-page interstitial.

Danny's right though, unless the ad is high quality, they'll still just close it. Perhaps cuss a little, and may be less likely to return if you do it to them on every page.

Myself, as a site owner, I design my sites to make money. My thought is I like these especially with big sites using them. Makes them "acceptable" to surfers if every site they want to go to has them. Give me ONE good quality ad that the surfer will actually read on every free site I build, I'll make money with it.

Now as with pop-ups and everything else, greedy bastards will think if one ad is good, 20 of them is better.