White Space Ads – Taking Advantage of a Fixed Width
by Ryan - September 14th, 2006 1:30 pm
I’ve noticed a trend lately that I find to be pretty interesting… As technology improves and the masses buy better computers and more up-to-date monitors, we as web developers make a decision to either grow with the masses or stay safe and design to strict low resolution standards. For anyone unaware of what I’m talking about, Jennifer Krynin at About.com does a nice write up on the subject in “A New Resolution”
So, how does this relate to advertising? The trend I’ve noticed is interesting to me because many High Traffic news sites and other high traffic sites looking to monetize their freely given content seem to be bucking the trend of upgrading with the times… Instead of making the decision to design for a higher resolution, they are sticking with their fixed width sites built for a minimum 800 X 600 user and using the extra space outside the right and/or left borders for advertising and branding. I’ve noticed this happening for a little while now, and the trend seems to be growing.
A few examples:
Here we see sportsillustrated.cnn.com taking advantage of the extra screen space and utilizing it to further push the brand Miller Lite wants to portray. In the top banner advertisment you’ll notice a grainy wood background behind the images and text… this wood background is then used vertically along the left and right borders to further seer that image into people minds. I’ve also noticed SI doing this when banner ads go up for movies. The latest example I saw was for the movie “Invincible”. Unfortunately, I wasn’t bright enough to get a screen shot of it at the time…
In this example we see MSNBC doing much of the same, except this site is fixed to the left and only has space to do so outside the right border. But again, notice they are using the ‘outside the width ad’ to compliment an ad that exists within the fixed width site. This reinforces the ad and brand a great deal.
So there we see two example of the trend I’m talking about… I hope to add more to this post as I find them. Have you seen anything similar to this? If you do happen to come across an example, take a screen shot and send it on over. It would be much appreciated.
What are your opinions on such a tactic? Is it worth the extra ad revenue to give this the new found real-estate? Would it be more effective to design to a higher resolution and utilize the extra space within the borders? Or is this a reactionary tactic taken by these big name sites because a) re-designing is a huge task and b) they are fearful that by increasing the design parameters they are not taking into consideration all of their users. Maybe this is just a happy medium for now…
Either way, I find it very interesting and a potentially powerful way the give their advertisers a value added service and an extra branding push.
technorati tags: white space ads | fixed width advertising | online marketing | off border ads
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