Prepare yourself for bigger, harder to miss web advertising

A huge number of web site publishers make most of their money from advertising. That's true of this site, and it's true of the 27 major web publishers that have come together in an effort to find some form of advertising that's more effective than the old fashioned banner ads that populate many web sites today.

The 27 publishers are part of the Online Publishers Association, and they've each agreed to try at least one of three new units before July. The units are a 336 pixel by 860 pixel ad that scrolls up and down the page, a wider 468 pixel y 648 pixel box with page turning and video features, and a Pushdown box (pictured above0 that is 970 pixels wide by 418 pixels tall and which can be minimized.

In other words, all three ad units take up a ton of screen real estate. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing for readers. If you look at most web sites today, you'll notice a fair amount of space is dedicated to advertising. It's just that you typically see ads from many different companies. If these new ad units wind up being more effective at grabbing your attention, advertisers might be willing to pay significantly higher prices, which means that while the future could be filled with enormous ads on web pages, you won't find nearly as many ads on each page.

Or the whole experiment could end in failure. Download Squad publisher AOL isn't currently involved in the experiment, but the 27 participating companies have a combined reach of over 100-million page views a month. So odds are you'll see one of the new ad units soon enough.

[via Techmeme

Tags: advertising, news, web-publishing