Banner blindness. It’s a condition that afflicts millions of websites worldwide. But important media companies are working on a cure.
The Wall Street Journal has more:
AOL Inc., struggling to turn around its fortunes, is preparing to introduce a larger, splashier ad format that it hopes will attract more dollars from big brands and help revitalize its business, according to people familiar with the matter.
The new ads, which the company plans to unveil during the Advertising Week conference later this month in New York, are roughly four times as large as the ads that typically appear on the border of AOL Web pages.
I just clicked over to AOL.com and there’s already a large banner in place. One that’s four times its size will drown out 90% of the editorial on the page, effectively creating a “spread.” Pardon the analog language, but that’s what it is.
One day when digital natives are running AOL and everything else, they might get it right. Until then legacy ideas from more mature media will continue to provide only partial answers, at best.
