What Do New IAB Banner Ad Sizes Mean For Advertisers?

IAB unveils first new set of standard advertising units in 10 years

It's hard to believe a decade has gone by since IAB last blessed us with a banner ad size as part of its 'standard' set, but here we are with IAB's new official "Rising Stars" set of guidelines. And for more information on the exact sizes, dimensions, and interactions, Econsultancy has a great blog post that details them.

But what I'd like to talk about is what it means for advertisers. While some of these formats have been around for a while in one shape or another, what we're seeing with this new batch is several new sizes that offer advertisers a lot more space to play with. The IAB Filmstrip, for instance, offers advertisers a 3000-pixel tall (by 300-pixel wide) canvas.  What I'm seeing most here is that these ad formats allow ads to expand dynamically and let the user control if they are displayed at full size or not.

The opportunities for advertisers are great - the IAB Portrait, with 300x1050-pixel dimensions, and interactivity such as embedded video, etc. will certainly allow much more of a story to be told than even a standard skyscraper does now. The old standard sizes aren't going anywhere any time soon, so we will still be designing plenty of Leadboards, Rectangles and so on for quite some time, but looking at the capabilities of the Rising Stars, I think it might be just the thing to revitalize some creativity in the banner advertising space.

As these sizes become adopted more frequently, we're going to have to wait and see how this shifts the layouts, as well as pricing for advertising, on some of the more popular sites.

And if you are currently building a news site, blog, or any other site with a solid advertising plan, it's definitely time that you take notice of these formats and consider whether building some into your site plan makes sense. I like the opportunities that they present advertisers and I look forward to seeing how content providers adopt them into their layouts.

For the official description from IAB, read about the Rising Stars Ad Units here >