Advertising Units
A digital image is made of basic units called pixels. Advertising Units on the Internet are called "Banners" and are measures & expressed in the same standard measuring unit - pixels. This is also the same unit that measures resolution / screen size of any Computer Monitor. The most commonly used resolutions in India are 800 x 600 pixels and 1024 x 768 pixels. The first number always indicates the number of horizontal pixels.
728X90
300X250
Indiatimes Home Page - 230 X 250
Sections
Advertising units can be placed in various sections of a Website – like Homepage, specific section pages etc.
ROS(Run of Site): This refers to placing ads across different sections on the site on a random basis. Websites take ROS ads for non premium sections / pages of their websites.
Innovations
Publishers offer use of various high impact & innovative advertising units in addition to the normal ad banners. Few such innovative options are:
Site captures / Interstitials: Ad formats that interrupt sequential content, forcing exposure to the advertisement before visitors can continue on their content path. Interstitials are a form of interruption marketing. This quality appeals to advertisers who feel Web advertising needs to be more like a broadcast medium to be effective.
Few Indian sites that allow Site captures are Indiatimes, MoneyControl, Exchange4Media etc.
Pop ups / Pop unders
Expandable Banners: See the following image for example of expandable banner. In this the banner loads as 4 times its contracted size (180 X 150 pixels) and then settles down back to 180X150 after playing the advertisement.
Shoshkeles / Floaters: Browser driven, platform agnostic, sound enabled, free moving forms. These do not require plug-ins, and there is no discernable download for users.
Click here for an example of Shoshkele on Indiatimes.com
In the absence of any standards each publisher is deciding their own sizes. As a consequence, there are just too many sizes of advertisements floating around. There is a need to have few standard sizes to make life simpler for Advertisers & Agencies.
