Does Ad Size Matter? It Depends What You Do With It
Written by Alex Patriquin (contact - e-mail) -- May 12th, 2009 | Share - Save - E-mailIf you’ve visited the homepages of Yahoo!, AOL or MSN in the past couple of months, you may have noticed some really big banner ads. The online publishing industry has been experimenting with new ad sizes and formats lately, and it’s led to some very eye catching advertising.
On the left is the ubiquitous “Medium Regular” banner ad that Kohl’s ran on the MSN homepage. On the right is the same ad, which ran on AOL in larger format.
As you might expect the larger ad got many more clickthroughs, even as a percentage of visitors who saw the ad. But so what? Kohl’s doesn’t want to sell page views to people who see their ads, they want to sell blenders. And that’s where the story gets interesting. You might not expect it, but the small ad actually performed 1.7 percentage points better in driving purchase.
Perhaps that’s not surprising because once someone clicked through either ad, they ended up on the same landing page. In other words, the larger ad drew the attention of more would-be shoppers, but the smaller ad found a greater concentration of motivated buyers.
Which ad size worked better? That depends on Kohl’s objective – were they after attention or conversion? Both ads demonstrated strength.
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May 13th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Would have really made this comparison interesting if we could have known about the actual number of click-thru’s and conversions for the same number of page views for both ads. I mean, what’s it matter if the conversion rate for the bigger ad is less, if more people click-thru and end of the day – it results in more conversions than the smaller ad.
May 13th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I think this study is very interesting but not as enlightening as the post makes it out to be. Not only did Kohl’s not test the same type of ad but the ads were shown on two different sites. The target markets for AOL and MSN, although not hugely different do have some key differences that would account for the difference performance of each ad. Also the ad that was posted on AOL is in the format of an equation, where the smaller one is actually just showing boxes with the “things” you can apply to the original price to get the sale price. However it is not an equation like the AOL ad.
I believe because of the inconsistencies in the ads and target markets on the two sites this test is actually showing that AOL users will click on the large ads but won’t necessarily buy and MSN users tend to move forward to purchase what they click on. This is also up for debate as it is only one ad. Maybe there needs to be a study on how different users on different sites deal with different ads.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:08 am
Looking at this from a design point of view. I don’t really thing it matters what size the ad is, I thing it comes down to the design of the ad and whether or not it attracts your attention. If the design of the small ad is better than the design of the bigger ad, then I think more people will be inclined to click on the smaller ad as it attracts there attention more than the bigger ad.
May 18th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I agree with Jamie Allsop. The blender is more prominent in the smaller ad AND the sale price is better positioned.
The readers naturally would read the ad from left to right…. thus the smaller ad. The larger ad requires the reader to view the ad in a column from top to botton. Viewing left to right allows for instant comprehension.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:33 am
Nice And Great Post. Thanks For Sharing.
August 21st, 2009 at 2:20 am
Что то Автор почти совсем перестал писать посты и даже админить блог? Может что случилось?
August 23rd, 2009 at 7:42 am
Благодарю за информацию, буду юзать. :)
August 24th, 2009 at 3:21 am
It’s a fact that larger ads are developing ad blindness with the web users. However, they are still going for bigger and bigger ad sizes as screen sizes grow.
August 26th, 2009 at 7:16 am
Спасибочки, что просветили. Никогда бы не подумал :)
November 27th, 2009 at 1:57 am
you can buy the kids ugg kid boots.And may be you like theugg anniversary.
February 26th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Very good article very nice sharing