By Adam Geller
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK — The bigger, the better. At least that's what Internet advertising executives are advocating.
Renewing their bid for the eyes and minds of consumers, a panel representing the beleaguered online advertising industry announced new guidelines yesterday for bigger, bolder ads on the World Wide Web.
The new ad formats, supplementing the widespread and oft-criticized banner ads appearing atop many Web sites, call for advertisements in seven new shapes and sizes. Executives say the formats, devised by the Internet Advertising Bureau, will give marketers potent tools for reaching Web surfers.
"We think the advertising agencies needed a little better palette to create their advertising messages on,'' IAB Chairman Richy Glassberg said. "It (the new ad formats) is going to allow you as a marketer to do so many more things.''
The new formats include ads dubbed "skyscrapers'' that run vertically along the edge of computer screens, rectangular ads in an assortment of sizes and a roughly three-inch square pop-up ad.
As they are apt to include more data than traditional banner ads, many of these bigger ads will take a bit longer to load into computer memory.
The experiment with new formats comes as the industry struggles with challenges including the demise of scores of dot-com businesses that were among the most enthusiastic Web advertisers. Click-through rates, the figures measuring how many Web viewers click on banners, continue to drop.
Just a few years ago, banner ads were attracting click-throughs from more than 4 percent of all Web users. But that figure has since dropped to less than 0.5 percent.
Something clearly needed to be done to invigorate Web advertising, but the new formats may not be the answer, said Allen Weiner, vice president of interactive services at NetRatings.
"This is truly a case where bigger is not better. In fact, I think in a lot of ways, this is going in a different direction than advertising needs to go in. It's not about the space, but about what goes into that space,'' said Weiner, whose firm tracks Internet audiences.
Larger Web ads run the risk of further annoying Web viewers, who will be even less likely to click for more information, he said. Instead, the answer may be smaller ads with simpler, more direct messages presented more creatively, he said.
Glassberg discounted the value of the click-through measure yesterday, and insisted that the banner ad remains an effective means of reaching Web surfers. But it has become clear that Web sites must offer additional means of reaching consumers, and more advertising space is a key to doing that, he said.
The new ad formats will create their own set of challenges. Online publishers will have to redesign Web sites to fit the new ads. To get the most out of the new formats, advertisers and agencies will have to develop more interactive features that will draw in viewers, said Glassberg, CEO of Phase2Media, an online ad broker.
"It's not just bigger,'' he said. "It's got to be bigger and interactive.''
It's not clear yet if or when the new ad formats will become commonplace. While some Web sites have experimented with new ad sizes, the IAB's formats are just recommendations, Glassberg said.
The new ad units were agreed upon by an IAB task force including AOL Time Warner, CNET Networks, DoubleClick, ExciteHome, Microsoft, New York Times Digital, Phase2Media, Snowball.com, Terra Lycos, Walt Disney Internet Group and Yahoo!
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