Advertisers Want to be more Disruptive Online
Written by Ben Koo   
Sunday, 08 March 2009 14:46
This is part 3 in my 3 part series titled "Here are some Blogs about online advertising I am writing before the Ohio State game that they better freaking win". Of late, many online advertising thought leaders have lamented that display advertising is dying or in major need of a shakeup. In a nutshell, the ads are not disruptive, too small, not contextual and hardly get noticed or clicked on. Since hearing this I have seen a handful of web properties become more flexible in terms of the size and quantity of advertisements they have allowed/bundled into sponsorships. Here are some examples.

Homepage takeover for espn.com, including 2 non standard horizontal  IAB ad units. Is it me or does the colored background behind the baseball players even seem to match the ad units? Probably a coincidence, but kind of odd.

Its kind of annoying, but that means it works. Yes its as if Eastbound and Down threw up all over Bleacher Report. However the audience crossover for this show and Bleacher Report is very high. A multi day takeover of the homepage with this type of treatment was probably a very successful campaign for HBO.

I don't know what Chelsey Lately is and I probably never will. Gawker, always known for being one of the most ahead of the curve online publishers, does a great job with two standard ad units right on the top of the page. The bottom ad unit is non standard and is hard to ignroe when scrolling down. Gawker Media has done a great job cutting expenses as well as giving advertisers more value in this down economy and it seems to have kept them healthy and growing.

Great ad unit I am adding to this post above. Apple not only gets a monster fun flash unit in great placement on ESPN, but extend the advertisement to interactively play with the header graphics above the ad unit. Catches the eye and is really cool.

Although I suspect these ads came through a remnant network, this is a pretty noticeable statement that is hard to ignore. Also all 3 advertisements are flash, meaning they move quite a bit before resolving to what you see above. As you will see below, sports video game makers are some of the most aggressive/non conformist when it comes to online ad buys.

While there are only two ad units on blogsbyfans.com, they seem to show 100% of the time. Also the ad unit on the right is freaking huge and cannot ignored. These ads are also flash based and have catch the eye with quite a bit of movement.

Summary: In a good economy, online advertisers were thrown into the wind with little disregard of performance. Ad networks popped up everywhere, many of which were more focused on audience and unique visitors but not actual campaign performance and integration options.

Flash forward to a sub 7000 Dow Jones, and the switch has been flipped. This is the new paradigm and its being felt all across the online advertising space as advertisers want their ads to be a) contextual b) disruptive c) integrated with content.


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