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In the early days of the Internet, banner ads quickly became the
prime advertising method. Most major companies still pour
millions into banner ads, but results have steadily dropped.
Banner ads that once pulled in business now get ignored. And so
it often goes with advertising. The first rule of making a sale
is for your ad to get attention. Once banners became commonplace
and consumers got used to them, they stopped noticing them (and
clicking on them) altogether.
All that was turned on its head recently with the creation of
very large skyscraper ads. Just like the name implies, a
skyscraper banner ad extends up and down along the right side of
the web page. They are usually 120 pixels wide by 600 pixels
tall.
The use of skyscraper ads has exploded, nearly tripling to 6
billion skyscraper ads being put to use every month. Major sites
like Yahoo Finance, CNET, MSN, and Alta Vista routinely feature
them.
Why? In this case, bigger is definitely better. While more than
half of all the ads on the Internet are still the old 468 x 60
banners, the much larger skyscraper ads get noticed. Thus,
click-throughs and resulting purchases are dramatically higher
than traditional ads. We have seen some sites experience click-
through increases of nearly 1000 percent.
Skyscraper ads let you give more information. It's the
difference between a one-inch display ad and a quarter-page ad
in your local paper. Skyscrapers give you plenty of space to
include product photos and more detailed text. Aside from that,
they're just plain easier to see.
One benefit that generally isn't mentioned is that skyscraper ads
look like a regular part of the web site. Many of them could
easily be mistaken for a highly attractive menu. This phenomenon
takes clever advantage of the way users naturally perceive and
use web sites.
Be careful, however. Bigger can also mean slower to load. Tests
show that users will wait for large skyscrapers to load, but it
makes sense to keep your ad as fast-loading as you can, without
sacrificing too much quality.
Use a headline that gets attention and relates to the most
important benefit that your product, service, or idea gives
people. Have a graphic that helps people immediately understand
what you do. List several of the other benefits you provide in
bullet style.
