Fire Your Ad Agency
By Amit Asaravala
Large ads are in. Or so everyone says. In the weeks since the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) issued voluntary guidelines for larger ad sizes, several sites began displaying 600-pixel tall, skyscraper ads alongside each page. Some companies, like Excite, are now running real-estate-draining, 300x250-pixel ads. And that's not even the largest size available. The guidelines include specifications for a 240x400-pixel ad, which accounts for 96,000 square pixels of screen space.
The last time the IAB issued guidelines for ad sizes was in 1996. Since then, the largest ad available on most Web sites has been the 120x240-pixel vertical banner, which consumes only 28,800 square pixels of screen space. The more-than-threefold increase in allowable ad size from then to now was instigated by advertisers worried about dismal click-through rates on their banner campaigns.
In addition to larger ads, advertisers are looking for better ad placement. Excite's "large rectangle interactive marketing units"—as they're called by the IAB—are positioned dead center or just left of center in articles. And one media outlet, CBS MarketWatch, has gone so far as to sell watermark ads that appear in the background of some of its pages. Readers checking their portfolios who suddenly find themselves thirsty for a beer or longing to buy a new monitor should pay closer attention to the faint Budweiser and CDW logos hidden behind the unique content.
Larger ad sizes and better placement may well generate more click-throughs at first, but the fatal flaw in this strategy is that once viewers get used to seeing ads in the new sizes and positions, the numbers will drop again.
