banner ad blues

13Jun09

Most designers I know hate doing banner ads. For a while, I tried really hard to make them interesting for myself by making truly interactive pieces of advertising. But there are a number of problems with banner ads. So many I don’t know where to begin. I was prompted this morning to write about this because I came across a Telus ad, at the bottom of a Globe & Mail article I was reading on the current election in Iran. This is what it looked like… exactly like this:

Um, is it just me, or does this not make sense. Ok, I see some sort of USB thingy sticking out of a Mac Laptop and some messaging “With the Telus Mobile Internet Key” and a button “Find out how”. I can sort of deduce that this is some product that connects my phone to my computer. But that’s about it. Why in the world would I click on this banner? Could you imagine this as a print ad? It would hardly get past the intern. I’m SURE that had I seen the entire animation this end frame might make more sense to me. But I notice this with a lot of designers when they design banner ads…. they assume that like a TV spot, someone will have just seen everything BEFORE this frame.

And the reality is, that’s rarely true.

So here are the problems with banners, in general:

- they are weird and small sizes meaning you can’t really get decent messaging and imagery in them at the same time

- which leads to the fact that we ANIMATE them to get in the whole idea

- which means that they annoy people when they are trying to read

- which means that in 15 seconds you better hope someone is looking at your ad and not reading anything

- which means that you basically have to sum up everything you just said in 5 frames again in the final frame and hope that it makes sense

- which leads to the idea of an interactive banner which teases the user into playing with it

- which then causes two problems:

a) some users feel they are “tricked” by banners and avoid any kind of interaction
b) clients are terrified that if a user doesn’t interact within a certain amount of time, their message is lost and their money was wasted (which ultimately leads to the whole thing being forced to animate and we are back at square one)

Sometimes I think that banners need to get bigger and become static. They need to follow the same approach as print. In magazines and newspapers we have huge full page and even double page ads. There is paid content. All the same stuff that is happening on the web. But we have to stop ANNOYING people while at the same time creating compelling advertising that is relevant to the content someone is engaged in. I know that banner ad sizes are changing… a new 300×600 is coming into the playing field for Canadian sites. I hope that soon we can abolish the 160×600 skyscraper and the 728×90 leaderboard and make large static ads that are beautiful, funny, engaging and that MAKE SENSE if a user just sees it’s resting state.

No offense to the person to made that ad… I’ve caught myself a few times, doing storyboards for banner ads, where I totally forget (for a second) the reality of the user experience.

Filed under: advertising, design   |  2 Comments
Tags: advertising, banner ads, big box, design, leaderboard, mistakes, paid content, print, skyscraper, web design