IAB Recommends Larger Web Advertising

Chicane-UK writes "Popups, flash adverts, full screen adverts and all the other methods of internet advertising that make our daily drag through the internet have been deemed not effective enough. The solution, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau is the new Universal Ad Package which comprises a new 'large advert' and three other in page advert templates. Read their press release here. I know I for one am sick of internet advertising of this type - banners were just about right for me." For some reason advertisers never come up with new, smaller advertising formats. There's also a story on AdAge.

Comments

Mozilla's Bannerblind

[BlueStreak]

If you have Mozilla, I highly recommend you install Bannerblind. I've been using it for many months and it does a great job of removing adverts!

The way it works is that, when you finish downloading a web page, it goes through the downloaded page and removes images of a specific height & width (for both GIF and Flash ads). It works well since all ads are of a specific size.

In my experience, it rarely remove a non-advert and if it's a nuisance for a specific page, you can easily turn it off.

The actual removal of the image can either force your page to reformat or to leave it as it is, with the image space blank (I prefer the former).

Also, you can add/remove image sizes so it's easy to keep up with new formats.

Re:Internet advertising doesn't work, period.

[mpcooke3]

Speaking as a software developer that works for a company that does try to leverage the unique nature of the medium to make better adverts, trust me when I say that it doesn't always come down to who makes the better adverts.

We have developed software that can make adverts which are better targeted to the page contents, adverts which can pick up live data from feeds and which allows changes to be made to the adverts live - even once they are up on sites. And yes the clickthrough rates and purchase rates are higher.

However, we are competing with creative agencies that are often trying to cut us out in favour of pop-ups and annoying dhtml flying-pig style adverts. These adverts can also get high clickthrough rates, I suspect due to the fact that people accidentally click on them in an attempt to make them go away.

Basically it's difficult to reach the clients through their current 'protective' creative agencies. I guess we all know that it's not necessarily the best tech kit that wins, but I do hope we don't get dragged down to the level of some of the creative agencies, 'cos if I see one more flying pig on my web mail I will kill someone :)

Matthew (matthew@connextra.com)
http://www.connextra.com

Mozilla ad dimmer...

[SheepHead]

Posted earlier to slashdot, sorry I don't know who posted it... but here it is modified to include those new sizes... put it in your <profile>\chrome directory as userContent.css. For Windows 98 that is <windir>\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\<random.slt>\chrome; Win2k puts it under C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\etc.

Watch out for the slashcode bug that inserts an extra space on the 180x150 line... and on the 180x150:hover line.

---

/* makes ads almost invisible
* - taken from http://archivist.incutio.com/css-discuss/?id=13557
* slightly modified to include new banner sizes ... */

[src*="ads."], [src*="ads/"],
[src*="doubleclick"],
[href*="dou bleclick."] *,
[href*="rd.yahoo.com"] [src*="yimg.com"],
[width="60"][height="468"],
[ width="468"][height="60"],
[width="120"][height=" 600"],
[width="120"][height="60"],
[width="728"] [height="90"],
[width="160"][height="600"],
[wid th="300"][height="250"],
[width="180"][height="15 0"]

{
-moz-outline: medium dotted red;
-moz-opacity: 10%;
}

/* returns ads to 40% opacity when the mouse hovers... */

[src*="ads."]:hover, [src*="ads/"]:hover,
[src*="doubleclick"]:hover,
[href*=".doubleclick."] *:hover,
[href*="rd.yahoo.com"] [src*="yimg.com"]:hover,
[width="60"][height="468 "]:hover,
[width="468"][height="60"]:hover,
[wid th="120"][height="600"]:hover,
[width="120"][heig ht="60"]:hover,
[width="728"][height="90"]:hover,
[width="160"][height="600"]:hover,
[width="300" ][height="250"]:hover,
[width="180"][height="150" ]:hover
{
-moz-outline: medium dashed red;
-moz-opacity: 40%;
}

Re:Advertising doesn't work

[Nogami_Saeko]

I am a true AdShield (www.adshield.org) evangelist. I have it installed on every one of my machines, and encourage friends, family and students to install it on theirs.

I will support websites by not blocking their non-animated banner ads. Everything that's animated, (especially flash), or have non-banner format graphics get blocked immediately.

Sites that try to pop something up have all of their advertising removed, regardless of the format of their ads.