Banner standards, why can't the adult industry follow them?
 

In the advertising world there are some very specific ad banner sizes laid out by the IAB to help streamline the ad creation/submission and site design processes.

http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_...1421/1443/1452
http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_...76/508767/1461
http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_...767/Rich_Media

If you look at every mainstream media outlet they are running some combination of these banners.

However, as I'm grabbing banners from the various affiliate programs I'm finding that very few even support the most basic of standard sizes and instead have dimensions that seem to have just been randomly chosen.

Why?

never came across that problem, pretty much all sponsors I've seen use standard banner sizes... which sponsor are you referring to? what sizes do they have?

I think there are some fairly standard banner sizes in adult already

468*80
120*60
720*90

Really? How about 468*60?

Of those, only the 120x60 is a standard size. The others would be closest to 468x60 and 728x90 but aren't standard ad units.

I'd rather not sit here and name names, I've signed up for numerous programs. While they can usually muster a 468x60 and perhaps one or two standard sizes, in some cases of the dozens of other sizes that they offer, none are a standardized ad unit.

how do you think new standards get introduced? adult industry supplies them)

Same here

No, I'm quite sure that they don't.

By your logic all of the regular sizes listed in the IAB links, especially those in the Universal ad package, and 336x280 and 300x250 (the 2 most common ad units on EVERY major news site and main stream media source), should then be readily available, but they're not.

Welcome to the past!


anyway, adult sites are different froim mainstream, so thebanners are different too

I have never seen guidelines but I always make at least:

468x60
468x80
468x100

Very much so.

yeah it seems like there are never enough good banners out there...

to me those are the standard

120X60 is the one I use most commonly.

Adult seems to be more diverse than mainstream for banner sizes and I must admit some sponsors I strugle to find one that fits my sites.

its pretty easy someone wants to push us and we dont have the right sizes - one email to nick and its taken care off

easy does it

Going away from those standard sizes is also a way to avoid extensions like AdBlock - if set to avoid standard sizes, they will display 466x78 at least once :)

Any time I find a banner that is sized to a standard I change it. Following a banner size standard is extremely stupid since most of the ad blocking software looks at image sizes to help determine if they are ad banners.

If you want a better chance that your ad banners will not be blocked, don't follow some standard.

Hugs,
Danielle

i have a boner for the 120x720 tower

O, no... i think no...:error

Thats not how AdBlock works

I wish more places would start offering 125x125s.

Last time I checked such plugins, but I admit it was a while ago, they were blocking both adservers (predefined and user defined) and standard banner sizes. Maybe they work differently now, I wouldn't know, but back in the day using non-standard banner sizes worked also for this exact reason.

That was good 10 years ago when people were browsing in 640x480 and 840x600 resolutions.

These days you should make them 2x that size.

Just to add my little :2 cents: (AND I MAY BE WRONG)

I have the belief that a 468x60 Banner is an English / European standard...
& a 468x80 Banner is more of an American standard...

:2 cents:

Yeah, you're wrong. There's no such thing as a 468x80 in any standard ad units specifications, and there's no such thing as "American or European standards", the web is pretty universal. Look at the first link I sent you...

http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_...1421/1443/1452

The IAB sets the standards, though admittedly voluntary, for ad units sizes so there is some consistency across the board. This makes it easier for big publishers to produce a set of banners without having to make 50-100 oddball sizes while missing the main stays and it makes it easier for site designers to define ad spaces on their sites with some predictability.

They've also defined a "Universal Ad Package" that consists of 4 sizes of banners "for the purposes of reducing the costs and inefficiencies associated with the planning, buying and creating online media. The result was the Universal Ad Package, a set of four ad sizes that all compliant member publishers have agreed to support."

http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_...676/508767/UAP

Those sizes are...

300 x 250 - (Medium Rectangle)
180 x 150 - (Rectangle)
160 x 600 - (Wide Skyscraper)
728 x 90 - (Leaderboard)

and the media outlets that support this ad package are...

24/7 Real Media
ABC
adify
Adtegrity.com
Advanstar
Black Arrow
Break Media
Burst Media
Cars.com
Casale Media
CNET
CondeNet
Disney
Double Fusion
Edmunds
ESPN
First Light Net
Fox Interactive Media
Google
Kontera
Myspace
Panache
Seevast
Sports Illustrated
TicTacTi
The Weather Channel
Thompson Reuters
Time
Value Click Media
Vibrant Media
WebMD
YouTube

I would also say the 336x280 banner, or Large Rectangle (aka "Big Ad Unit), is widely supported by most news agencies, like CNN, the BBC, New York Times, MSNBC, ect. ect. In fact, most have a space that can accommodate the 336x280 as well as the 300x250 with a slight border.

125x125 or "Square Button" is pretty much the norm for Wordpress side bar ads.

Larger sizes are supported in their rich media and popup (interstitial) guidelines.

http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_...767/Rich_Media
http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_...76/508767/1461

The benefits to following some standards should be obvious. As is the case with most things "standardized", it makes things easier to plan and it's more cost effective. If a publisher doesn't have a standard size, and 3 of his competitors do, then he's going to be left out. I shouldn't have to ask to have standard sizes made, they should just be readily available.

I don't think you're going to be getting lots of banner clicks from people with ad block in effect because they obviously don't like ads and are probably not the sort that have ever even clicked a banner.

some browsers addons blocking images whit standard banner size like is 468x60

Banners ads have trends and the sizes should change to mix shit up.

I would rather worry about being current and on top of these trends for ad sizes than what the mainstreamer's want to do with the same ole boring looks and feels.

You guys obviously don't understand the advantages to following clearly agreed upon standards.

You haven't read what has been said and haven't looked at the links to see that there are...

- 18 standard sizes of rectangle and square banners
- 4 additional extra large standard sizes of pop up

This gives you a nearly infinite combination of layout possibilities while maintaining some predictability in what can and can't easily be done.

You're not setting trends by using odd banner sizes. You're not some bleeding edge leet webmaster dodging conformity. You're only making things more difficult for yourself and for your partners by choosing to use non standard sizes of ad units.

Clearly someone with ad blocking in effect isn't a likely target for banner advertising, and even if you do get your banner to show on their system, they aren't likely going to click on it anyway. They are more likely candidates for text links and other text/photo based forms of conversion.

I started in adult back in '96, and at the time we were producing all kinds of whacky ad sizes as there were no standards. I then moved onto gaming (casino, poker, and sports betting) and while it took some time, the standards became the norm and I didn't have to make 200 different sizes of the same banner. Things became more efficient, and cost effective. It became much easier to provide 20 or 30 different styles of banners for our affiliates when we only had to create 30 sizes of each.

Now that I'm back to the adult biz, I can see that things haven't changed a whole lot in 12 years and that quite a few programs are still just producing random sizes.

If we don't have the size you need, one email to me and it's done in a day.