Cross-device Portability Demands, Part III
Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 at 11:07 AM
Selling ads in a world where space has lost its usual meaning, step 1.
By
William Dunkerley
"Online ad sales teams are not selling
responsive ad packages. Online advertisers don't even know how to spell
responsive," is how one observer put it.
The advent of
cross-device portability has presented publishers with a number of
challenges. In Part I we discussed the emergent consumer demand for
cross-device portability in accessing a publication's content. Part II
dealt with making content fit and serving reader needs no matter what
device is used. We discussed the concept of responsive Web design.
Now
we turn our attention to ads. If the above quote has merit and
advertisers don't really understand responsive design, then the job of
selling ads for a responsive publication will have an added complexity.
Some
publishers employing responsive design have simply carried over the
standard digital formats that have been in use all along. Here's an
illustration of standardized digital formats.
Standard digital ad formats.
Staying with well-known ad
formats obviates the need for advertisers to understand anything about
responsive design. It is perhaps the path of least resistance.
But
shoehorning in old-style digital ads has some downsides. Here's an
example from Folio:, a publication that has been at the forefront
of adopting responsive design. Note the Wright's Media banner at the top
of the page.
Full screen view.
When we narrowed the browser window, the editorial content nicely and
responsively reformatted itself. But the ad didn't. See here:
Content responded but the ad didn't.
The result makes the
Wright's Media ad virtually useless.
That's why perpetuating the
old standard sizes isn't a good idea. Note that the package of formats
shown above includes pop-up sizes. Additionally, Web readers may
encounter auto-start video and audio advertising, and various
hover-initiated forms of advertising.
Together these techniques
constitute digital formats that really seem to annoy readers. That's led
to a great consumer demand for pop-up blockers, which in turn has led
advertisers to employ means to circumvent pop-up blockers.
Where
will this end? We have some historical examples. At one time
telemarketing was viewed as an up-and-coming way for a seller to reach
out to prospective customers. But in the absence of an effective
industry response to abuse, telemarketing proliferated to a scale that
made consumers irate. They began practicing call screening. Ultimately
laws were established that lawmakers claimed would solve the problem.
(The laws didn't solve much, but that's another story.) Email
advertising is another example. It became so annoying that a
spam-blocking industry was spawned, and (ineffectual) laws were put into
place too.
I've never seen any evidence that a good way to gain
the favor of prospective consumers is to annoy them. Yet advertisers
have bungled their way through one annoying scheme after another.
And
the banner ads? They're not so annoying, but they don't work well. They
don't produce good results. That's why so many advertisers have hung on
to print media for as long as they have. Print ads are less annoying,
and they embody advertising techniques that produce better results. I
can't imagine that any experienced advertiser or marketer invented and
promoted the banner ad. It looks to me more like something that came out
of the world of programming and coding. It was something that in the
early days of HTML was practical and easy to do.
So where does
that leave us in selling ads in a responsive Web design publication
today?
I think what we have now is an opportunity to change
course, cut out the annoying and intrusive forms of advertising, and
give advertisers and our audiences a better deal.
In a future
issue we'll explore what that better deal might be.
William
Dunkerley is principal of William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, www.publishinghelp.com.
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