Comments on: Comments on 6038

Post number 6038

owillis — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 10:33:32 -0800

468x60 is dead? IAB releases new ad standards. Too little, too late...

By: Hankins

Hankins — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 10:51:05 -0800

"The new voluntary guidelines join the roster of recommended guidelines that the IAB already has in place." It seems these are an addition to the current (incl. 468x60). I'm just glad I'm not developing 88x31 banners anymore. They used to be scattered throughout deja. Those were a bitch. Try advertising a computer package after rebates and still have room for branding.

By: Su

Su — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 11:14:29 -0800

"greater interactivity blahblahblah" Why don't they just come out and say that these shapes are a hell of a lot harder to tune out than the old thin-strip kind? They're enormous, and I'm at 1024x768. Where is the actual content of the site displaying the ad supposed to go?

By: Hankins

Hankins — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 11:29:18 -0800

I agree. Maybe they're compensating for the monstrous zdnet/cnet ads. I thought those were a joke the first time I saw them.

By: tomorama

tomorama — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 11:40:57 -0800

This has nothing to do with the correct size needed for a banner advertisement. It's all psychological. They need to get your attention. Advertisers want you to look at their ad and possibly click it, they don't want you to block it out. We've gotten used to those long, thin banners. Our eyes ignore them without us even thinking about it, so the advertisers have to change the format and use something bigger to get our attention back. If the time comes when these new banner sizes are standard and we teach ourselves to effectively tune them out as well, another banner format will come along. The Wired article on All Your Base touched lightly on the issue of internet advertising and capitalization. The internet is different from every other form of media. Most conventional solutions don't apply. Marketers are paid salaries to sit at a desk and think up different ways of getting our attention, like with obnoxiously large banner ads, and get nowhere. Then some choppy flash movie with a broken-english catch phrase from a decade-old video game comes along and conquers the world.

By: Steven Den Beste

Steven Den Beste — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 12:20:30 -0800

I don't have to block it out, because I have software that blocks it out for me. Ain't automation wonderful?

By: Dane

Dane — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 12:49:49 -0800

Glad I have a LAN pipeline to the Internet, as it looks like I'll need it to swim through these gargantuan ads. Still access through a modem? Thought it was slow before? Better start accessin' that page now. Maybe it'll be loaded by dinner.

By: Su

Su — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 14:04:59 -0800

I understand that it's psychological. All advertising is, to a degree. But it's not that they're just making the ads bigger, that would be simple scaling; they're manipulating the geometry. Let's take this in the most basic terms: 468*60= 29160 240*400= 96000 336*280= 94080 300*250= 75000 250*250= 62500 180*150= 27000 The smallest of the new formats is still smaller than the old 468*60, yes, but its actual SHAPE is much more obtrusive in terms of sitting in someone's layout. And each size up is roughly 2, 3 and 4 times larger than THAT. The "large rectangle takes up a full fifth or so of a viewable page. Put two or three of those up at once, and there's not much room for anything else. Now make it blink and animate, and try to ignore it.

By: jasonshellen

jasonshellen — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 14:07:55 -0800

How about text links? I am not trying to put any graphic/web designers out of work but it's time to put the pixel ruler away. 330 x 450. 125 x 1000. 540 x 2. The new standards are just as arbitrary as the preceding string. At least the folks that run affiliate programs are aware that text links are viable. Google is hep to this method with their sponsored searches. I have found a couple of sites quoting that text links have higher clickthrus than banners but no hard evidence. Anyone out there with better evidence than I?

By: gluechunk

gluechunk — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 14:18:53 -0800

a Reuters article about the bigger ads. I find the whole ad thing pretty amusing when taking into account early Prodigy stuff. Back then the ad would take up 30% or so of the screen at times. (Is there an archive of early Prodigy screenshots?) People kept screaming that ads would never work/be accepted and that Prodigy was stupid. Here I am, 8 or so years later, dealing with screen ads that just keep getting bigger and bigger.

By: werty

werty — Tue, 27 Feb 2001 07:08:32 -0800

Interestingly, the IAB's recommended skyscraper ad size, 120x600, is actually a lot smaller than the skyscrapers on many content sites, including Economist.com (120x800), nytimes.com (140x800), and thestandard.com (150x800).