Size Matters and Can Online Display Be a Pull Mechanism?

Marketing Sherpa released results of an study based on aggregated click-through rates for online display ads that show the larger the ad, the better the click-through rate in most cases. See the chart below. Click-through rate is typically a result of four attributes - size (shown above), placement, creative/message and targeting. The results here show that the typical "box" ad (300x250) performs much better than some other standard ad sizes, especially the most convential banner ad (468x60). The two best performers, box and leaderboard (728x90), give advertisers more space than any other to place a creative message. The performance of the box may also have something to do with its typical placement on the page. For example, boxes are usually placed within the content of the page so that news stories, editorials and other text content wraps around the ad. Most of the other options are placed on or around the perimeter of the page. These results fall in line with much of the performance we see from online display campaigns. Click-through rates, sadly, are not comparable to search ads, nor do we expect them to be. Online advertising is an exercise in branding and promotion to likely candidates. Selectivity capabilities have been enhanced in recent years with retargeting (showing ads to those who have been to your site before) and behavioral targeting (showing ads to those who have accessed and viewed similar content on an ad network of sites). While this level of targeting has improved click-throughs and ROI, online display is still a push mechanism. Thus, critics of this kind of interactive promotion will always contend that banner ads are more akin to newspaper ad placement or television advertising than search and other pull mechanisms. But it got me thinking - does online display advertising really have to be a push tactic? I mean, we can sign up for email newsletters, accumulate RSS feeds and join specific social networks. Isn't it time that we should be able to tell the online ad networks what kind of ads we really want to be seeing? Isn't that what we want as consumers - relevancy AND control? For example, why is a young father between the ages of 25 and 35 who enjoys camping and drives a 2001 Japanese import seeing ads for JC Penney, Cialis and a group of accident/injury lawyers? Show this guy ads for REI, Fisher Price and Jiffy Lube for cripes sake. Better yet... 1. Give consumers the choice to tell you what they want 2. Let the advertisers subscribe to show them relevant ads 3. Address privacy concerns Meanwhile, make the game more about developing the best creative message, not the most clever method for hovering over online consumer behavior patterns.

About the Author: Chris Sietsema

As Director of Interactive Marketing, Chris oversees day-to-day digital marketing responsibilities including search engine optimization, paid search advertising, social media, email marketing and media buying.

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