Re: Salon.com and taller ads

From: Michael Martinez <Michael_at_xenite.org>
Date: Mon 16 Apr 2001 10:13:05 -0600

Someone asked for anecdotes on these new ad sizes. One
of the forum communities I frequent, a very large one
with over 10,000 registered users, has started running
tall ads in the right-hand margin. They have too many
discussion forums for me to get a handle on what the
entire user community thinks of the new ads.

Here is a link to the subgroup of forums I visit:

http://vnboards.ign.com/default.asp?cat=5006#5006

This thread has some comments on the new advertising:

http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=10260966&replies=23

There is a shorter, but similar thread here:

http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=10615206&replies=9

Now, keep in mind that these comments are too few and
too isolated to represent a fair sampling of the whole
community. IGN's Vault forums are simply huge, and they
draw a wide variety of people (not just online gamers).
I don't have access to their statistics, and the ads
have not been running long enough (in my opinion) for
the newness to have worn off.

It may be that CTRs have increased (perhaps only
temporarily) and that some of those complaining now will
become used to the ads (perhaps even clicking on some
eventually).

It IS a relief to be able to scroll past the flashing
images as the threads grow. But some of the ads have
been attractive and have sought to appeal to the gaming
community.

I think forums are particularly hard to design ads for.
One of the best campaigns I ever ran on my forums was for
a Tolkien audio download page at MP3Lit.Com (long since
bought by Salon.com). It was standard 468x60 banner that
I hard-coded into my Tolkien forum (as a way of atoning for
deep-linking to an audio file -- I've never done THAT
again!). The campaign had a good CTR. Why? Because the
content was immediately relevant to the forum's topics.
It may also be that a static banner worked better than
a rotation.

My internal promotion banners are still outperforming
content-relative banners I'm running for other sites,
though. Some of our internal promotions are not working
well, but most are still getting between .7% and 1% CTRs.
Our 125x125 banner buttons, usually placed in the left-hand
margin or down near the lower right-hand corner of the
page, continue to get CTRs in the 1-2% range. I can almost
design 125x125 buttons in my sleep and they'll get decent
CTRs.

I have no plans to introduce tall banners (or any other
new sizes) on my domain at this time. I don't think my
user community would welcome them. The content-relevance
factor may be undermined by the intrusive nature of the
new ads.

I'm hoping Banner Tips will test the new ad sizes in the
next few months. Their standard banners have been getting
dismal CTRs anyway. I think they are down under .1% on
some of the designs. I'd like to see some hard numbers
of the new sizes myself.

Probably it will take a major push by one of the larger
free exchanges, like Microsoft's bCentral, to popularize
these new sizes. I don't think that's going to happen,
though. At least, I haven't seen anything on their entry
page about new banner sizes.

Michael Martinez
 Science Fiction and Fantasy info_at_xenite.org
  Visualizing Middle-earth, a book for all Tolkien fans
   http://www.xenite.org/



Received on Mon Apr 16 2001 - 11:13:05 CDT