Banner ads standards - why we need them

It is impossible not to notice the banners of all kinds and sizes while you are surfing the net. Every major website has got them on their main page and within the content pages as well. That is something we are already used to - they have to make money somehow. Nowadays also small blogs can easily publish banner ads of all sizes. There are many advertising programs that make it easier for them. One of the most popular ones is the Google's advertising program called Adsense. It is easy to enroll and everyone can start making money out of ads just after launching the site. There are no requirements about the minimum numbers if impressions so it is a very popular program among beginners. Many people who have just started a website put web banner ads on their sites.

The number of different types of web banners can be quite overwhelming at first. There are banners of all sizes available. If you need ads that span the whole webpage you can go for a full banner. If you plan to use a sidebar there is a banner for you as well.

Standard web banner sizes were introduced by IAB Ad Unit Guidelines to help publishers and advertisers find a common ground. Without this regulations every website could theoretically come up with their own sizes and formats of a web banner. Some of them could match with others but basically it would be a real mess. If you wanted to make an ad and publish it on the web you would have to prepare many different variants to be able to distribute it on many site. That would be very time consuming and expensive.

Standard banner sizes offer a nice solution to this problem. It is try that we need different formats of banners and ads but we can all agree to have just a few different options, a few different web color palettes. This way everyone is satisfied. The publishers may choose banners that fit their websites and the advertisers can limit the number of banners that they have to prepare.