Web banner

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A web banner or banner ad is a

ad networks
to serve their advertisements, resulting in a revshare system and higher quality ad placement.

Web banners function the same way as traditional advertisements are intended to function: notifying consumers of the product or service and presenting reasons why the consumer should choose the product in question, a fact first documented on HotWired in 1996 by researchers Rex Briggs and Nigel Hollis.[1] Web banners differ in that the results for advertisement campaigns may be monitored real-time and may be targeted to the viewer's interests.

Behavior is often tracked through the use of a click tag.

Many web surfers regard web advertisements as annoying because they distract from a web page's actual content or waste

ie7pro for Internet Explorer
.

History

The banner ad played a significant role in enabling the rapid development of paid advertising on the Internet.[2]

The pioneer of online advertising was Prodigy, a company owned by IBM and Sears at the time. Prodigy used online advertising first to promote Sears products in the 1980s, and then other advertisers, including AOL, one of Prodigy's direct competitors. Prodigy was unable to capitalize on any of its first mover advantage in online advertising. The first clickable web ad (which later came to be known by the term "banner ad") was sold by Global Network Navigator (GNN) in 1993 to Heller, Ehrman, White, & McAuliffe, a now defunct law firm with a Silicon Valley office.[3][4] GNN was the first commercially supported web publication and one of the first commercial websites.[5]

For many years,

AT&T Corp. and was put online on October 27, 1994.[9] Another source also credits HotWired and October 1994, but has Coors' "Zima" campaign as the first web banner.[10] In May 1994, Ken McCarthy
mentored Boyce in his transition from traditional to online advertising and first introduced the concept of a clickable/trackable ad. He stated that he believed that only a direct response model—in which the return on investment of individual ads was measured—would prove sustainable over the long run for online advertising. In spite of this prediction, banner ads were valued and sold based on the number of impressions they generated.

However,

Time Warner's Pathfinder (website), which launched on October 24, 1994,[11] the same week as HotWired, but three days earlier included banner ads.[12] Walter Isaacson, then President of Time Inc. New Media,[12] and the Columbia Journalism Review,[13] both credit Bruce Judson, then General Manager of Time Inc. New Media, with inventing the concept of the banner ad. In an interview for Harvard's Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy, on the history of the Internet, Isaacson discussed Judson's contribution, saying, "It really transformed everything. Immediately, Madison Avenue decided, 'Oh my God, we’ve got to understand this. We have to hire a lot of young people.' They would send us money. It was almost like you could look out of the Time-Life Building to Madison Avenue, and watch people walking with bags of money, to dump it on our desk, or Bruce Judson’s desk, to buy banner ads."[12]

The first central

GoTo.com (later Overture, then Yahoo! and mass marketed by Google
's AdWords program), relies heavily on tracking ad response rather than impressions.

Standard sizes

IAB standard ad sizes. This illustration has been reduced in size. See actual sizes.

Ad sizes have been standardized to some extent by the IAB. Prior to the IAB standardization, banner ads appeared in over 250 different sizes.[16] However, some websites and advertising networks (outside the Eurosphere or North America) may not use any or all of the IAB base ad sizes. The IAB ad sizes as of 2007 are :[17]

Standard web banner sizes, highlighted entries are part of the IAB's original Universal Ad Package.[18] entries with a dagger suffix† were delisted after the update in 2011[19]
Name Width /
px
 Height /
px
 Aspect ratio
Rectangles and Pop-Ups[a]
Medium Rectangle 300 250 6∶5
Square Pop-Up† 250 250 1∶1
Vertical Rectangle† 240 400 3∶5
Large Rectangle† 336 280 6∶5
Rectangle 180 150 6∶5
3:1 Rectangle†[b] 300 100 3∶1
Pop-Under†[b] 720 300 2.35∶1
Banners and Buttons
Full banner† 468 60 39∶5
Half banner† 234 60 39∶10
Micro button 88 31 88∶31
Button 1† 120 90 4∶3
Button 2 120 60 2∶1
Vertical banner† 120 240 1∶2
Square button† 125 125 1∶1
Leaderboard[c] 728 90 364∶45
Skyscrapers[a]
Wide skyscraper 160 600 4∶15
Skyscraper† 120 600 1∶5
Half page ad[d] 300 600 1∶2

Notes

  1. ^ a b This group was added around the beginning of 2000.
  2. ^ a b Added in 2007 update.[17]
  3. ^ Added in 2003 update.[20][21]
  4. ^ Added in 2004 update.[21][22]

In 2015, IAB announced advertising creative guidelines for display & mobile, considering HTML5.[23]

In 2017, IAB also introduced the new guidelines, featuring adjustable ad formats, as well as the guidelines for new digital content experiences such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), social media, mobile video, emoji ad messaging, and 360-degree video ads.[24][25][26]

Fixed size ad specification[27]
Ad Unit Name Size (px) Aspect ratio Pixels
Billboard 970 × 250 97:25 242,500
Smartphone Banner 300 × 50 6∶1 15,000
Smartphone Banner 320 × 50 32:5 16,000
Leaderboard 728 × 90 364∶45 65,520
Super Leaderboard/Pushdown 970 × 90 97:9 87,300
Portrait 3: 300 × 1050 2:7 315,000
Skyscraper 160 × 600 4:15 96,000
Medium Rectangle 300 × 250 6∶5 75,000
— 120 × 160 3:4 19,200
Mobile Phone Interstitial S: 640 × 1136 ≈9:16 727,040
Mobile Phone Interstitial M: 750 × 1334 9:16 1,000,500
Mobile Phone Interstitial L: 1080 × 1920 9:16 2,073,600
Feature Phone Small Banner 120 × 20 6∶1 2,400
Feature Phone Medium Banner 168 × 28 6∶1 4,704
Feature Phone Large Banner 216 × 36 6∶1 7,776

Standard web banners included into the IAB's Universal Package and Ad Units Guidelines

SpotXchange, ZEDO, and many others.[30] Additionally, ad serving providers may offer other, non-standard banner sizes and technologies, as well as the support of different online advertising formats (e.g. native ads
).

However, standard banner ad sizes are constantly evolving due to consumer creative fatigue and banner blindness. Ad companies consistently test performance of ad units to ensure maximum performance for their clients. IAB has updated its guideline bi-annually. Some publishers that are known for their unique, custom executions include

Vice Media, Inc., Mic (media company), and many others. According to media research firm eMarketer, such types of custom executions through publisher direct buys are on the rise, with Native advertising spending to hit over $4.3 Billion by the end of 2015.[31]

Other types

Banner on Wikivoyage

The use of web banners is not restricted to online advertising. Website designs often use non-advertising banners, also known as "hero images" or "hero headers"[32] for aesthetic reasons. Hero images are represented by large photos, graphics, or videos that are placed in the prominent sections of a website.[33][34]

A "live banner" is a banner ad which is created dynamically at the time of display, instead of being pre-programmed with fixed content. Live banners usually employ animation together with text, images, graphics, sounds and video to catch the viewer's attention. Depending on the banner design, any of these multimedia elements may be defined as dynamic and therefore variable. Formerly, they were built using technologies such as Adobe Flash, Java, or Microsoft Silverlight.

See also

References

  1. ^ Briggs, Rex; Hollis, Nigel, Advertising on the Web: Is there Response Before Clickthrough? Journal of Advertising Research, March–April 1997, pg 33-45
  2. doi:10.1386/jammr.9.2.237_1
    .
  3. ^ O'Reilly, Tim (Nov 26, 2001). "O'Reilly Network Weblogs: SLAC Symposium on the Early Web". O'Reilly Media. Archived from the original on 2001-12-22.
  4. ^ Abate, Tom; Ross, Andrew S. (26 September 2008). "Heller Ehrman law firm to dissolve Friday". SFGate. Archived from the original on 2011-07-07.
  5. ^ Erwin, Brian (19 Aug 1993). "The Global Network Navigator (GNN)". NewJour. Georgetown University Library. Archived from the original on 2012-03-22. Retrieved 2012-05-18.
  6. ^ Singel, Ryan (27 October 2010). "Oct. 27, 1994: Web Gives Birth to Banner Ads". Wired. Archived from the original on 20 January 2022. Retrieved 8 April 2022. 1994: Wired.com, then known as HotWired, invents the web banner ad. Go ahead, blame us ... the first HotWired banner ad was from AT&T, prophetically asking 'Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.'
  7. ^ LaFrance, Adrienne (20 April 2017). "The First-Ever Banner Ad on the Web: It was an advertisement for AT&T in 1994, and people clicked on it like crazy". The Atlantic. Retrieved 8 April 2022. The banner ad that's widely described as the first ever was a little rectangle purchased by AT&T on HotWired.com in 1994. About 44 percent of the people who saw it actually clicked on it.
  8. ISBN 0-471-17187-5
  9. ^ "Happy Birthday, Digital Advertising! - Advertising Age - DigitalNext". Archived from the original on 2011-07-07. Retrieved 2011-01-19. Happy Birthday, Digital Advertising!
  10. ISBN 1-59059-721-4
  11. ^ Carmody, Deirdre (October 24, 1994). "THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Time Inc. Raises Its Multimedia Profile With an Internet Test". The New York Times – via NYTimes.com.
  12. ^ a b c "Riptide". Riptide.
  13. ^ Gold, Howard R. "Who killed Time Inc.?". Columbia Journalism Review.
  14. ^ Hyperlink Advertising Explodes on the World Wide Web Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine, company press release
  15. ^ "5 Tips To Reduce And Tackle HTML5 Banner Size". digitaland. Archived from the original on 13 July 2016. Retrieved 16 July 2016.
  16. ISBN 978-1439910351
    .
  17. ^ a b "Ad Unit Guidelines". Interactive Advertising Bureau. Archived from the original on 2007-10-15. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  18. ^ "Universal Ad Package". iab.net. Archived from the original on July 5, 2014. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  19. ^ "Ad Unit Guidelines". Interactive Advertising Bureau. Archived from the original on 2011-06-13. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  20. ^ "Ad Unit Guidelines". Interactive Advertising Bureau. Archived from the original on 2002-12-04. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  21. ^ a b "Ad Unit Guidelines". Interactive Advertising Bureau. Archived from the original on 2003-10-02. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  22. ^ "Ad Unit Guidelines". Interactive Advertising Bureau. Archived from the original on 2004-07-15. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  23. ^ "INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING BUREAU – DISPLAY & MOBILE ADVERTISING CREATIVE FORMAT GUIDELINES: 2015 ADVERTISING CREATIVE GUIDELINES FOR DISPLAY & MOBILE – UPDATED FOR HTML5" (PDF). IAB. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  24. ^ "IAB New Ad Portfolio". IAB. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  25. ^ "IAB New Standard Ad Unit Portfolio July 2017" (PDF). IAB. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  26. ^ "IAB New Standard Ad Unit Portfolio Transition Guide July 2017" (PDF). IAB. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  27. ^ "IAB New Ad Portfolio Fixed Size Ad Specifications" (PDF). IAB. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  28. ^ "Ad Unit Guidelines". iab.net. Archived from the original on July 29, 2014. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  29. ^ "IAB Rolls Out 'Universal Ad Package'". clickz.com. 11 December 2002. Archived from the original on April 10, 2014. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  30. ^ "IAB General Members". Archived from the original on 2015-07-27.
  31. ^ "Marketers Expect Healthy Native Ad Spend Growth". eMarketer. Archived from the original on 25 November 2014. Retrieved 24 November 2014.
  32. ^ "Optimization Glossary: Hero image". Optimizely. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
  33. ^ "Exploring the Hero Image Trend in Web Design". marketblog.envato.com. Archived from the original on January 18, 2015. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  34. ^ "12 Outdated Web Features That Need to Disappear in 2014". mashable.com. 14 January 2014. Archived from the original on July 27, 2014. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
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