The evolution of web advertising - Part II

Well, as I promised, here I am writing the second part of the article. I’m going to try covering up the sidebar ads, different sized, popping up and floating ads in here.

Let me get straight to the point. After the banner ads proved to be defective, the skyscraper banner took its place. There were mainly two advantages of this type of publicity. First, unlike the horizontal banner, there’s little chance that this one would get scrolled off the screen, as it will be present on the sidebar, vertically. The second advantage is it’s size. A tall sidebar ad is much bigger than a banner ad, and it takes just 120px (regularly) from your screen’s width. Because of that, advertisers pay more for targeted sidebar ads, just like they do with targeted banner ads.

Banner ads and sidebar ads have standard sizes, but in the last year or two people have tried all different sizes and placements. From the smallest square ads placed in the middle of the text to break it and attract attention, to the small blocks of cubic ads on the bottom of the pages. Sites don’t get paid much for these smaller ads, because generally the click-through rates are low. But by putting 10 ads on the page, it can add up to $2 per 1,000 page impressions.

Now, for the pop-up ads. A pop-up ad is an ad that “pops up” in its own window when you go to a page. It obscures the Web page that you are trying to read, so you have to close the window or move it out of the way. Pop-under ads are similar, but place themselves under the content you are trying to read and are therefore less intrusive. Pop-up and pop-under ads annoy many users because they clutter up the desktop and take time to close. However, they are much more effective than banner ads. Whereas a banner ad might get two to five clicks per 1,000 impressions, a pop-up ad might average 30 clicks. Therefore, advertisers are willing to pay more for pop-up and pop-under ads. Typically, a pop-up ad will pay the Web site four to 10 times more than a banner ad. That is why you see so many pop-up ads on the Web today.

Floating ads, on the other hands, are winning ground because of a few well thought reasons. They’re just like TV ads. They will cover up your screen (or a part of it), blocking the content and forcing your attention. These are more powerful than the ones I’ve described so far, because they can’t get ignored. Their only problem is acceptance. People get annoyed by this type of advertising. The annoyance problem points out something interesting about advertising, however. When pop-up ads first appeared, they bothered lots of people and you did not see them on very many sites. After a while, people got used to them and stopped complaining, and now pop-up ads can be found on tons of sites.

The second option when talking about interactive ads are the Unicast ads. Unicast ads are a whole different gender, and they are spreading across the Web as a way to get serious ad clicks. An Unicast ad is basically a TV commercial that runs in a pop-up window. It is animated and it has sound. The ads can last anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. They’re also way paid and their income rate is high. Because of that, they’re most likely to spread rapidly in the next years.

Since this is long enough as it is, I am planning a third and last part of the article for tomorrow, when you will find information about contextual ads (Google Adsense for example) and how bad can a website that floats with ads get. Happy reading ;)

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Posted in Internet by Bogdan Boghiu