The Future of the Banner Ad on it's 20th Birthday

The banner ad has long been a familiar sight to online users. However, with Google's announcement of full-screen mobile ads and Facebook's full-screen mobile formats, will smaller format banner ads stick around for long? Google and Facebook have a combined two-thirds of the global mobile advertising share and only promise to grow, so an obvious trend emerges. Here are a few reasons why traditional banner ads, particularly on mobile, will likely lose way in the near future: 1. Banner formats are too small when viewed on a small screen. 2. Existing evidence shows that bigger banner ad formats work better (with increases over 10x CTRs with ad size increases). 3. Active formats can offer more insight on user engagement; smaller banner ads don't produce videos or moving ads as well.

In Google's case, new ad formats include full-screen interstitials, engagement format ads (ad offers an invitation to expand to full-screen view), and anchor ads that stay on the screen even when the user scrolls down. Facebook has also demonstrated the evolution of banner ads with their native ads in the news feed. More and more are moving toward video-format. All-in-all, the big players are shifting mobile advertising strategies and the rest of the world will need to follow.

In other news today, Obama supports Net Neutrality! More on this topic next week.

Source: VentureBeat; BusinessInsider