TV.com has brand ad formats done right

TV.com has brand ad formats done right

The issue of real estate is one that display oriented brand marketers love to harp on when it comes to the Internet.  Let’s face it online ad units suck.

There have been two major efforts led by the IAB to develop ad size standards, the first effort took place way back in 1996 where the ubiquitous 468×60 and 6 other units were born.  Then again in Feb 2001 the IAB released another set of guidelines which introduced 7 more units that included rectangles and skyscrapers.  Finally in Dec 2002 the Universal Ad Package was introduced which brought the 728×90 into the fold.  At that point standard building moved away from sizes and more toward issues with rich media and streaming video guidelines.

As a brand marketer you crave the visual experiences, after all, you’re communicating feeling, emotion and utility all at once; something that requires a sizable canvas.  Doing that in one of the standard units leaves much to be desired compared to TV or even print.

Then there’s the oft quoted issue of ‘banner blindness’, a phenomenon that’s been proven through sophisticated technologies like eye-tracking.  The Internet even makes it easy for viewers to ignore ad units.  Page template standardization puts aside specific page real estate for advertising. The more I use a site, the more I know that there are certain areas of a page that I need to ignore.  The fact that media sites have seemed to roughly standardize on one of two similar templates (banner on top, banner on right margin) makes it easier to take your banner ignoring skill from site to site.  

To put this into perspective pick up a newspaper.  Yes you can still ignore the advertising, but even if you read that newspaper on a weekly basis the location of the ads in relation to the articles is constantly changing.  This is in sharp contrast to web page templating which relies on a standard approach to maximize usability, navigation and content delivery efficiency.

The ads that always catch me off guard are the ads that do one of two things, they either maximize real estate on the page, or they integrate with the content on the page. I would find it hard to ignore a 800×400 pixel ad at the top of an article I was reading. I’d hate what it did to my experience with a site, but it’s the only hope for display brand advertisers.

The real question is do online publishers really care about brand advertisers? That’s up for debate and the topic of my next post.

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