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What Forms of Online Advertising are Acceptable Today?
As I traverse the Web checking out new sites and those familiar to me, I’ve started to wonder what forms of advertising are acceptable today. I am curious about your thoughts as well. For purposes of this discussion, we will look at advertising for typical content Web sites and blogs — not porn, warez or any other potentially objectionable content. Let’s take a look at each of the most common forms of ads running today.
Traditional banner ads
These are the most standard form of online advertising and include a variety of IAB formats (e.g. leaderboard, skyscraper, 468 standard, etc.). I think everyone would say these ads are typically fine and acceptable. I turn off ads that are overly animated, have iPhone scams, participation giveaways and the idiot dancing people. I would lump most affiliate programs into this category.
Sponsorship ads
This has become popular with the increase in professional bloggers. It seems the initial size was 125 pixel square, but now more sites are starting to provide alternative formats. We currently run the 125 size, check out GigaOm and SAI for a few alternative sizes. These ads are typically considered fine and acceptable. In fact, these are probably the best paying ads and also allow several select sponsors to display a strong relationship with a blog or Web site.
Google AdSense and other text ad networks
Again, these are typically considered fine and acceptable. These ads are normally contextual in nature and should provide greater return than the traditional banner ads above.
Popups and popunders
With popup blockers on nearly every computer today, these forms of online advertising have basically dried up. Most users hated them from the beginning.
SnapShots
These ads are newer and typically come packaged with a preview of the link that is moused over. TechCrunch and Mashable currently run this form of advertising. SnapShots combine a site preview plus contextual or image advertising where the publisher gets paid a CPC when a user clicks the ads and not the link.
It’s an interesting play… on the one hand, the idea of providing a preview of the site before you head there is a good thing. On the flip side, if you are intending to go to x site, see an ad for y site and go to y instead, the publisher makes a few cents but the intended linkee gets nothing. The SnapShots team have emailed me over and over to have CN use SnapShots. I haven’t made a decision yet but am leaning towards no.
Kontera and VibrantMedia inline text ads
Many blog publishers think these ads are the devil. These ads show up as links within content and are always distinguishable by link color and/or double underline. What I like about these ads is that the ad provider determines which words become links, not the writer. This alleviates the concept of writing content just to get a good round of inline text links (I know some still try though). When these ads first hit the market, they paid very well – partially due to users possibly being confused. I’ve watched the overall income drop on these ads month over month but they can still perform well in certain circumstances. I run these ads (only 3 per story) on HTMLCenter currently but not on CenterNetworks.
Interstitial ads
These ads appear typically before or between pages on a Web site. When these ads appear, you are forced into clicking the ad or clicking a close button. I haven’t seen many blogs running this format yet but it seems many of the large content Web sites run these ads without a second thought. CNET and the NY Times are always hitting me with these interstitial ads. Why is it acceptable for CNET to run an interstitial and reap the nice CPMs, but not a blog? This is probably the most interesting format to look at the differences between how a user reacts to advertising on a Web 1.0-style property versus a Web 2.0-style blog.
What formats did I miss? What formats do you run on your blog or Web site? What formats would you like to see in the future? I am hoping we see better monetization of RSS and mobile.
both of those ad formats seem to be very popular in the making money blog segment with bloggers like john chow
Two forms of online advertising that irk me, and can be seen on some well known blogs: peel-away ads in the top right corner, and the stripe ads that run at the top of some blogs.
Yea sponsored posts are certainly gaining in popularity slowly – seem to be gaining moe momentum outside the tech zone.
Are you suggesting that MySpace paid TC to run the post about the movie? I can’t imagine that. But I could see it being a smart cross-marketing opp as people might blog about the event helping myspace, tc and the movie itself.
Similar to Dash giving Jason Calacanis a case of devices to give away – both dash and jason benefit.
A growing component of social media advertising (a subset of all online advertising) comes in the form of sponsored posts/actions whether the compensation is via giveaways, passes, cash, products or contests. Examples include Zappos/Twitter, SocialSpark, Calacanis/Mahalo/follow-me contests, Comcast/FedMedia and TechCrunch’s string of movie promotions where movie passes (or more) drive sponsored posts at TC and attendee blogs: http://www.techcrunch.com/?s=screening
Good questions.
I have no idea what all changes hands and why for the various movie promotion posts TechCrunch has been publishing. As you suggest, at the least it’s tickets or marketing compensation in exchange for posts — I suspect the value of such marketing comp from someone like MySpace can be quite valuable to a blogger. Anything else exchanged is gravy.
Likewise, the Dashes and Calacanis posts/tweets exchanged were pretty lucrative to both.
I’m curious how MySpace, Dark Knight, and Dash measure the ROI on those blog marketing expenses, those sponsored posts/tweets are pretty effective — I have to admit that JC’s plugs for Dash put it on my radar.
interstitials blow – no one should run them
What would be great is to start to see publishers come together and create a group so that we can push for standards and practices around online advertising. The IAB does a good job but not sure they go far enough.
I agree with you – I won’t run ads that I object to when I browse the Web.
Thanks for your compliment on the post as well!
Great article! We try to be very sensitive when it comes to how the user experience is affected by advertising.
Popup and Popunder ads should not even be considered by any self respecting site. We tried out the inline text ads for a while and found those annoying as well. The payoff isn’t worth the sacrifice in user experience IMO.
Snapshots were used on our site for the preview function (any click revenue – hah! – went directly to a nonprofit). Recently we removed the Snapshots to speed up the time it took a page to load.
Interstitial (so that’s what they are called huh?) ads are extremely annoying as well. If I can’t stand this format, why would I subject our readers to them?
Right now we use only Adsense and Text Link Ads and I’ll be the first to admit we aren’t doing a good job of monetizing the site.
The Sponsorship ads seem like a good way to go. Does anyone feel strongly negatively about them? I guess the tough part is finding sponsors huh?
It is unfortunate that so many otherwise good sites are full of annoying ads.
Very nice article. I have been happy with google. One thing that has helped me with google is using channels. Also a color sheme that is neutral.
I don’t recommend popups they are very annoying to your visitors and I’ve noticed decrease in page views.
banner advertising is still one of the largest forms of advertising. Making sure your ads are in conjunction to the content that your page/website is providing. This will form better turn around on your impressions.
I, too, will not subject my readers to any ad types that I personally don’t like. My pages contain link and search ads by Google. I do use affiliate ads, but I keep them to a Resource page, separate from content. To increase revenue, I may have to add affiliate ads to content pages. If this is the case, I will only use text ads. Personally, as soon as I see an image ad, I tune it out – they are usually too flashy.
Sponsership ads are i think a good way of advertising…but pop ups should be a big no no…they are simply annoying.