Introducing Bigger – But Not Necessarily Better – Online Ads
By Anna Johnson on July 6th, 2009TechCrunch reports that 37 members of the Online Publishers Association – including such online publishers as The New York Times, Forbes, ESPN, CNN and MSNBC.com are running, or plan to run, three new, larger ad units on their websites.
The three ad units are the:
- Fixed Panel (336×700 px), which ‘follows’ the user as they scroll up or down the page.
- XXL Box (468×648 px), an extra wide side-of-page ad that expands to 936 x 648 px. This also includes page-turn and video capability.
- Pushdown (970×418 px), which opens to display the ad, then rolls up to 970 x 66 px at the top of the page after the elapse of seven seconds.
TechCrunch has provided a graphic which overlays the ad units on the TechCrunch homepage to indicate how these ads look: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/01/big-websites-start-running-bigger-display-ads-big-mistake/
President of the Online Publishers Association (OPA), Pam Horan, says the new ad units are designed to allow Internet marketers to give consumers a “branded experience directly on the pages of these very rich content sites.”
But TechCrunch writer Robin Wauters reckons that instead of becoming bigger… ad units on websites should become more relevant to visitors.
Here, here.
It looks like big ad units, per se, aren’t too popular with TechCrunch readers either. As at the time of writing this, a TechCrunch poll showed the following responses to the larger ad units:
- Ecstatic 8%
- Happy 4%
- Indifferent 15%
- Disappointed 31%
- Angry 41%
- Total Votes: 2,300+
Here’s the thing. As an Internet marketer and online publisher I am all for online advertising. I have no doubt that TechCrunch is too, since its business model rests on advertising revenue.
I’m not particularly for or against large ads (I voted for ‘Indifferent’) but I do think that running them is a little risky – not for the Internet marketer, but for the online publisher.
This is simply because a large ad that is relevant to a given audience will probably attract people to the Internet marketer… but a large, irrelevant ad will probably turn people away from the online publisher.
