DISPLAY AD TYPES: THE TERMS YOU NEED TO KNOW TO REDUCE DESIGNER CONFUSION

The world’s first banner ad was published back in October 1994. Almost 3 decades later, it’s more than expected that the format has developed and grown into an ad form quite different from its predecessor.

As much as display advertising has been standardized over the years, there are also a lot of terminologies that are very often misused. This leads to misunderstanding and makes our work with the design team a constant journey back and forth to get the results we need (like, yesterday). What you’ll get from this article will make your job easier. And quicker.

Looking at ways to improve marketing-design communication regarding display advertising creative, we need to take a closer look at the most widely used ad formats.

What are the most common display advertising formats?

Size matters

When it comes to a size guide, we will need a whole different article dedicated solely to the variety we can find on the marketing sizing battlefield. And still, one way to manage the ad creative production process is to start using the best-performing banner ad formats first, then assess their impact on your advertising strategy and implement new ones as a second step.

So which are the most commonly used banner sizes according to Google? Here they are:

• squares - 250x250, 200x200
• leaderboards - 468x60, 728x90, 970x90
• rectangles - 300x250, 336x280
• skyscraper formats - 120x600, 160x600, 300x600

Another way to have this process structured in a better way is to find a way to automate the banner creation process. This way your team could focus on more strategic and creative tasks instead and your ad flow will continue moving without much effort. Here's where StreamEye expertise comes in. If you are on the lookout for a creative management platform that allows you to mass-produce creatives in a manner of minutes, contact us to discuss your business goals and specifics.

Static or animated?

Another perspective to display advertising decision-making is static or animated. As usual, both have very useful characteristic features and both have significant downsides. A static ad loads instantly and catches the crucial first seconds when the user's attention focus is strongest. An animated ad offers a more intense experience thus providing for a higher chance of clients putting your brand on the back of their brains for future use. But we can dig into that next time.

Now let’s get back to the banners and their standard sizes. If you are wondering who is taking care of providing standardization, we are well covered. IAB Tech Lab helps us marketers a ton as they produce global technical standards aiming to build and support a healthy and sustainable digital media and advertising industry. And what are some fundamental display advertising formats that require some more of our attention in 2023?

Standard display ads

Banner ads take up space at the top of an article or webpage and often feature a single image or text (or both). These types of ads are the first ones to draw our attention when we visit a website.

Expandable ads

An expandable ad is an ad that can be expanded to reveal more information. It's a good way to show more information about a product or service, including images, videos and text. Expandable ads are often used for e-commerce sites. They are also very often seen on mobile devices.

Rich media ads

Rich Media ads are interactive, which means they can contain video, images, audio or animation. Because rich media ads are more engaging than standard (or static) display ads, they're usually more effective at driving sales and building brand awareness. They can also be used to generate leads (frequently done using a lead magnet such as a downloadable e-book, e-guide, questionnaire, etc).

Rich media lets agencies create complex ads that can elicit strong user response. Using HTML5 technology, the ads can include multiple levels of content in one placement: videos, games, user interaction, etc. They are normally costly to produce and involve JavaScript scripting to enable their full potential.

Of course, there’s an easier way to do that but let’s finish up our list now.

Video ads

Video ads are similar to TV commercials. They show a range of different types of content, including animations and live-action clips. In today’s very low attention span levels, video ads perform better than static images in terms of clickthrough rates (CTR) and conversion rates (CR).

They are usually more expensive than other types of display ads because they require more production time and resources. Finding a way to produce and use them quickly and efficiently can help you achieve your business goals by raising brand awareness among potential customers who see them online.

How can we make display advertising creative production more effective for our brand?

Display advertising is a great way to reach more potential customers. The format is highly targeted, meaning that you can use it to reach people who are not actively searching for your product or service. That’s a game-changer for marketers, right?

But then we are facing the neverending process of banner creation. We constantly need new banners. We need them in new formats. Their creation takes constant time and effort that needs to be planned and also justified. Very often banner creation overburdens the design team and they are stuck with tedious tasks that keep coming in. Quite frequently, it takes up a lot of time. This results in fewer campaigns running and consequently fewer leads entering our funnels. Not exactly what we aim for as marketers.

There are two main ways to handle this situation: one is to know very well which banner ad formats work best for our company and stick to creating just them. This way we can estimate banner creation time and streamline the flow based on that but we will also be limited in using these particular ad formats instead of exploring and testing out different options.

The other successful way of overcoming this obstacle is having a reliable partner in the banner creation process. Reach out to our team of professionals to discuss your brand’s needs and see how StreamEye can help you use the most of online display advertising formats with very minimal effort in nearly no time.