February 11, 2003

Bigger is better

The Wall Street Jour­nal is report­ing that the New York Times is plan­ning to have larger banner ads on its site.

Screenshot of new ad size cour­tesy of the Wall Street Jour­nal

The new banner ads will take up about half the page on most res­o­lu­tions, and the arti­cle did not men­tion if they would be GIFs, rich-​media or a com­bi­na­tion of the two.

I applaud the New York Times for making a move to bigger ad sizes — the tra­di­tional banner, box and button ads are awfully small.

While it is often uncouth to com­pare medi­ums, con­sider what an ad in a news­pa­per would look like if it took up the same per­cent­age of page real-​estate as a banner ad does on a Web site. It’d be pretty small and wouldn’t have much impact.

While I think the fail­ure of most online ads, so far, can be attrib­uted to a mul­ti­due of fac­tors, size is one of them.

I know some people in the online com­mu­nity will be put off by the new, larger ad sizes. Some will say it impedes get­ting to the con­tent — I say, if done right and tar­geted well, adver­tis­ing is content.

Some will say the bigger ads are more annoy­ing. What’s more annoy­ing to me is having to pay to get con­tent.

Filed under: Business

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