Bigger ad formats aren't always the ones that get the most attention
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Christina Goodman, director of marketing and business development, Dynamic Logic
Many factors can drive the success of an online display campaign, including creative quality, format, placement, type of site and exposure frequency. Finding the perfect mix of these factors isn’t easy, but research from Dynamic Logic shows bigger isn’t always better when it comes to positively shifting brand measures.
Based on MarketNorms, our global online planning and benchmarking database, the research shows that ads integrated into the content of a web page, such as half banners (234x60 pixels) and rectangles (180x150), are the most effective at driving online ad awareness and purchase intent. Comparing the attitudes of people exposed to those of an unexposed group, rectangles generate the biggest increase in online ad awareness, or recall, driving the percentage of people impacted up 4.6 percentage points, while half banners on average show a 4.4 percentage point higher impact. Half-page ads (300x600), full banners (468x60) and buttons (120x90) were the least effective. When planning online campaigns, placement and format are important, particularly since ads that frame the page tend to be less effective.
The research is based on results from 2,390 online display campaigns that were measured within the last three years. The analysis showed that at a frequency of one exposure, online ad awareness increases by 3.0 percentage points on average across all industry verticals as a result of exposure to online advertising.
It also looked at campaigns using rich media, video and Flash formats. Rich media with video drove the strongest brand impact on awareness (up 1.9 percentage points), brand favourability (2.3), purchase intent (1.2) and online ad awareness (2.6) compared to campaigns that used Flash, which tends to be the format used most often.
Creative quality remains the most important factor driving the success of any ad campaign. As new ad sizes and larger formats are introduced and offered to advertisers, it will be interesting to see how they perform next to the more widely used formats.
