Popular Banner Ad Sizes (Display and Mobile)
The Most Popular Banner Ad Sizes
Banners – The Lifeblood of the Internet
As you surf websites on the ever expanding billions of pages of the internet, you are sure to come across a display banner advertisement. Digital display advertisements come in many shapes, sizes with varying functionality. The following banners are the most popular sizes that make up the majority of desktop display ads. These sizes fit easily on most website templates and tend to generate the highest CPM’s due to large advertiser demand buying into them.
Popular Banner Ad Sizes
728×90 Skyscraper – The 728×90 skyscraper is a long and prominent creative size that generally sits at the top of a page or above important content.
300×250 Medium Rectangle – The 3oox250 medium rectangle is a very popular ad size that fits well into multiple sections on a website. Popular places to embed a 300×250 is within the text of the page, at the end of an article or in it’s own place within the sidebar of a page. 300×250’s tend to have a very large variety of creatives.
300×600 Half Page – 300×600 units are rising in popularity due to a recent increase in advertiser demand. The size is prominent and allows an advertiser to display a large and memorable message to a user.
160×600 Skyscraper- 160×600’s are wide skyscrapers with a large amount of advertiser demand. These unit’s are generally placed on the side bar of a page.
468×60 The 468×60 is a size that publishers have been using more often in spaces where a 728×90 will not fit. This small and sleek banner ad generally has less advertiser demand then the larger sizes but still a great addition for an ad unit.
A solid ad strategy is not to overhwalm a user with ads and distract them from the main content, but to complement your site with relevant advertising and while providing great brand awareness and engagement for the advertiser.
Optimized ad layout strategy – the common mistakes made
Webmasters today make a few major mistakes when placing ad placements on their websites that cause lost revenue. Here is what should be avoided:
Bombarding with ads – Some publishers place as many as 6 or 7 banner ads on a page in hopes that this strategy will draw the attention of a user. Over saturating a site with advertisements not only obviously frustrates a user who is interested in your content, but most of the time makes them leave the site for the greener pastures of the world wide web. Having too many ads is a double edged sword a
Unconventional Sizes – When placing a banner ad on a page it is important to make sure the site still looks aesthetically pleasing and focused on the content. The cardinal rule that can make or break publisher success is to remember that content is always king, and a website overall should concentrate on giving the user the best experience possible. Users become turned off and confused when strange banner sizes appear in random places. stick to the standard ad sizes because they also always give the highest CPM’s due to more advertiser demand and programmatic pressure.
Not analyzing performance data – It is very easy to implement an ad tag, sit back and never dig into granular data to understand why you are making X amount of revenue when you really want to be making y amount. Digital advertising platforms have evolved to provide actionable insights to better optimize ad placements to ultimately better understand your ad stack at a granular level.
Which ad format is the easiest to create and edit?
If you are really looking for the most popular size on all devices that you can easily create and use in multiple locations, you should consider going with a 300×250 square unit. The 300×250 will always fit any device, is not really intrusive and has strong advertising demand.