Where You Should Stick Your Ad and Why

Joseph Carrabis
Media Planning & Buying Posted on June 22, 2007

Return to Ads that work well within pages

For this figure:

(click to enlarge)

...well...we're not sure. The content is incredible. The author is intelligent, lucid, knowledgeable and conversational. Although there's no image given, we're sure he's also handsome, stunning and virile.

This figure is also the first demonstration we have of a "box" style advertisement on a web page. What is good is that the banner colors are so completely different from the rest of the page that the eye is naturally drawn to it.

Not so with the box, and this is an example of conflicting ad composition. The banner is so overpowering a visual signal that the box is effectively ignored. Lastly, there is no indication that either ad is keyed to the page content, thus people coming for the content may simply ignore (defocus from) what's being advertised (best case scenario) or won't come back because the ads are too off-putting to validate the energy required to focus on the content (worst case scenario).

Ad Placement #5

This last figure is -- to me -- an example of the worst kind of banner-box advertising, design and combination:

(click to enlarge)

Two horizontal menus stacked vertically separated by things that might or might not be banner ads. This design is a navigational maelstrom because visitors are visually challenged to figure out what to click on to find what they're looking for.

Also note the small, gold colored, right most box near the bottom of the screen. This is one of three action items, the first two of which are for site-relevant content (sports). This right most item is an ad. This is a clever method to get visitors to investigate a screen target once. Unfortunately, it's a "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" type of thing. Visitors looking for relevant content will quickly become jaded and either not return or will have learned to ignore that area of screen content.

Next: Tarred by the broad brush

Joseph Carrabis is CRO and founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Development Network. Read full bio. He was recently selected as a senior research fellow and board advisor for the Society for New Communications Research.

More articles from Media Planning & Buying

 

Comments

Joseph Carrabis
Joseph Carrabis August 28, 2008 at 8:30 AM

Rob, Sorry I didn't see this until now. "Many actionable solutions"? Well, we do have that tool that determines where ads should be placed based on user responses to some questions.
Are there some general rules? How general would you like them? "For boomer males do x except when marketing high end cars or when there's a slightly younger female in the creative or the product is an OTC or ..."
I know the goal is to make things as simple as possible and sometimes the simplest solution results in the 30 or so questions we currently ask (and I'm happy to learn there's a simpler solution with as high an accuracy). This isn't a defense (as I hope you'll agree I'm always working to improve things and enjoy discovering alternate methods that simplify things and freely recommend them).
Developing the tool and this article was quite an experience for me. I was shocked to learn about the disconnects that exist(ed) in the system -- who didn't talk to whom, who didn't know what and couldn't find out. Something as simple as not knowing where (on what sites) the creative would show up, hence essentially shooting in the dark and hoping you were at least shooting in the direction of the target. You reference this in your "hysterical/horrifying ad/story combinations".
"...there are still a number of moving parts that need to be addressed..." Agreed. And quite willing to discuss.
And thanks for reading my column. - Joseph

Rob Graham
Rob Graham June 22, 2007 at 1:39 PM

I enjoyed the article and found is very interesting. I'm a bit biased perhaps as Joseph is a friend of mine. However, from a practicality standpoint I'm not sure he was able to offer many actionable solutions. Joseph has accurately pointed out that there are a number of shortcomings regarding ad placement that few of us would dispute. However, I don't think he is able to, not would I expect it, to offer up some sort of unifying solution here. I think the real challenge is to get advertisers to think about the benefits of really planning ad buys and ad placement and not just defaulting to choosing a group of silos to push content into. Also keep in mind that most of the logic engines behind contextual advertising still haven't been tweaked enough to avoid the sometime hysterical/horrifying ad/story combinations that result. The article wasn't too long and it brought up some excellent points for media planning. However, there are still a number of moving parts that need to be addressed further before the industry can really act upon a lot of these insights.