12 exciting new ways of advertising for publishers (or: what will replace the display banner?)

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advertising for Or: what will replace the display banner? 12 exciting new ways of digital publishers

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advertising for

Or: what will replace the display banner?

12 exciting new ways of

digital publishers

Display ads are by far the

biggest source of income for

online publishers

Currently

• medium rectangle

• half-page

• leaderboard

• and possibly hundreds

of more obscure types

(You may or may not have noticed them

depending on your banner blindness..)

There’s the

online conversion rates are dropping

Digital ad incomes are huge while

But, and this is no secret…

• 8% of the users account for 85% of clicks on banners

(and some of them aren't even humans)

• The average click-through rate of display ads is 0.1%

• About 50% of clicks on mobile ads are accidental

• You are more likely to survive a plane crash than click

on a banner ad

”10 Horrifying Stats About Display Advertising” on Hubspot

Some horrifying statistics

Display banners are often obtrusive and

don’t enhance or integrate with the overall

experience well enough

What’s going wrong here?

With today’s ‘everything online is open and

free’ standard, publishers struggle to find

the sweet spot for just-enough advertising

The online playing field

'Just-enough’ ads you say?

Generally, Ads lower the perception of quality of the content, their

distractive nature makes the brand feel cheaper.

More cognitive load means

harder on the eye

From a user experience standpoint, banners are noisy;

banner blindness is getting more prevalent

meaning increased risk

Also,

of missing crucial interface elements(potentially poor usability, less traffic etc.)

The increasing popularity of ad blockers is

evidence that banners are a nuisance to

many internet users.

23% of Americans are using ad blockers,

expected growth 45% per year.

pagefair.com

At the same time

(Maybe.)

!

Although something can be said for the

user experience being ignored for too long

(Leaving out any of the privacy / tracking issues people might have.)

Are ad blockers unfair?

(Btw, site’s are responding to this…)

via littebigdetails.com iconmonstr.com

the display banner as we know it is nearing

the end of its life span

‘Sad’ news

buh-bye!

many advertisers, together with publishers,

are rethinking online branding,

let’s take a look at 12 concepts…

However

From conversion to brandingAdvertising concept

1

* see our blogpost on emotional design

There’s a rise of beautiful and emotional* online advertising

that conveys the brand identity more effectively

qz.nl

Even though the ad is huge, it doesn’t ruin the experience

because of the visual attractiveness and the positioning

qz.nl

”[These ads feel] intuitive for readers and lets

Aziz Hasan, creative director at Say Media (digiday.com)

advertisers keep the authenticity of [their] brand,”

WeTransfer knows how to let advertisers to make the brands

‘pop’ while maintaining the core feature simple & convenient

wetransfer.com Many of the ads don’t invite click-through at all. A flaw?

Vox’s huge Triton ad uses a depth effect; while scrolling

the ad moves slower, hence it’s longer visible

polygon.com The visual effect of layers imitating ‘layering’ and thereby depth is also called the ‘parallax scrolling’.

1 2

3 4

(A bit like a micro-site)

Devil Ad has developed an ad format that

can be placed next to an article

devilad.nl

Advertisers can pitch their story more elaborately with visuals, text, video’s or other interactive elements !By not squeezing the message in a small box, this format it feels more integrated

Critical note: this format excels when there’s a column to spare, it doesn't scale that well to smaller screen sizes though.

devilad.nl

Visual noise is kept at a minimum even

though the photography is larger.

In the end, size does and does not matter.

The thing is

This is digital space.

There’s no need to repeat the formulas of

print, to fight over pixels as if we’re limited

by the medium’s ‘size’.

!

Let’s search for appealing digital native

formats instead.

Swipecube(Mobile) advertising concept

2

AdGibbon has developed a mobile-first format, Swipecube, which contains content in 4 ‘sides’

that can be swiped through

Thus creating an efficient use of space in which advertisers can express more with less visual

noise

Critical note: the swiping is very much a hidden feature at the moment. This affordance could be communicated more clearly.

Snap banners(Mobile) advertising concept

3

The Snap banner sticks to the bottom of the screen while the page content scrolls past

Used in the Entertainment Weekly redesign (by Global Moxie)

When scrolling beyond a certain point the banner is ‘parked' in the page

When tapping the banner, the ad opens in a full-screen modal window so the user doesn’t leave

the article directly

For advertisers the banner’s ’stickiness' is attractive because it’s more likely to be 'above the fold’* !For users it’s presumably more acceptable because it’s tiny and doesn’t interrupt the content (too much)

* Don’t get us started about what we REALLY think about ‘the fold’ in the digital media context.

Display ads in GoogleAdvertising concept

4

Google (the godfather of modest advertising) has been

experimenting with display banners.

It’s no accident that some clean photography was used

Still, the project was plugged (Seodesk)

Interactive bannersAdvertising concept

5

On Quartz user are invited to sign-up, they

directly engage with the brand on the

publisher’s siteqz.com

The user is triggered by a question and

can submit contact information, all within

the siteqz.com

After submitting the form, there’s a

confirmation. Still, the user doesn’t leave

the site until (s)he clicks on ‘Learn more’qz.com

Some WeTransfer ads are also interactive:

here people can freely click through to a

slideshow, before they choose to leave the sitewetransfer.com

With Time’s ”magnetic ads” brands can use

the left column as navigation for the right

column.time.com

On a side-note, don’t add tech for tech’s sake*

Instead, integrate interactivity with the story, make it meaningful. (* Like with the The crowdsourced 3d printed QR code drone delivery ticket system)

PrestitialsAdvertising concept

6

Forbes uses a ads called prestitials,

banners that appear before the actual

content is shownforbes.com

With their (light-hearted) addition of a

"Thought Of The Day” this design pattern

should be little more agreeable for users

Why display such a traditional small and static banner in an

otherwise empty canvas?

Also, the Forbes website is already chock full of noisy banners, so

this addition might lower the acceptance towards ads even more.

Still, this can use some tender loving care…

AdvertorialsAdvertising concept

7

BuzzFeed work closely with advertisers

and create viral content for their website.

buzzfeed.com

Because science.

According to the principle of reciprocity

delivering valuable content generates a sense of

gratitude (and, possibly, debt) towards the

advertiser.

”But why would Mini sponsor an article

which has that little to do with the product?”

ISBN-13: 978-0061241895

NRC.nl

Look, integration!

On nrc.nl the commercial blends in nicely

with the editorial content.

!

However

(1) Mixing the two can affect a company’s credibility and integrity, this

can be particularly troublesome for news corps like NRC (2) Google tends to rank sites that don’t or poorly separate commercial

from editorial content lower*

* searchengineland.com

Sponsored contentAdvertising concept

8

Sponsored content in a yet subtle

and elegantly form

theatlantic.com

Sponsored content in a yet subtle

and elegantly form

qz.com

Advertiser buy only the association

with the articleCommon on TV: ”This program is brought to you by…”

chicagotribune.com

Another way of jumping the ‘ad-less era

bandwagon’ while maintaining an online

presence. Well played, Shuttershock.

thenextweb.com

Sponsored channelsAdvertising concept

9

On Forbes people can follow authors

to get a personalised news stream

forbes.com

They extended this to branded channels

which boosts engagementE.g Dell and NetApp are making use of this

forbes.com

Follows the Twitter-model, which in turn

also supports all kinds of sponsored content

twitter.com

Sponsored featuresAdvertising concept

10

Like an annotation feature, which can

of course be slightly branded

Help building features that people can appreciate

qz.com

The official FIFA app has quite a few

subtle sponsored features

www.fifa.com/mobile Sponsoring features has an opportunity to grow

No ads, when payingAdvertising concept (?)

11

Either the advertiser or the user pays for

the content: there’s a clear choiceRelies on the goodwill of readings wanting to support their favourite site

thenextweb.com

The Chocolat application switches to

Comic Sans after the trial periodA designer’s biggest nightmare

littlebigdetails.com

No ads, … EVERAdvertising concept (?)

12

De Correspondent offers paid subscriptions

but everything’s accessible for anyoneThat is: anyone who has the link, preferably via a subscriber

decorrespondent.nl

To summarise…

The future is exiting!

Know any other great examples? Mail us at [email protected]

• There are no absolutes (if there ever were any) of what

works to best in which situation

• It’s up to advertisers, publishers and designers to

discover the perfect solution

• Granted, developing new formats costs a lot more effort

and money than your average banner

• But we think (while display banners are losing

relevance) that the potential and possible learnings

should outweigh this

• We wish all of you good luck with your innovations!