A new advertising plan that primarily depends larger, bigger ad formats has been unveiled by AOL as part of it’s “start-around” plan, thoughtfully led by the company’s own CEO, Tim Armstrong.
And as part of this same plan, the past year saw constant improvements and overhaul in the portal’s strategy for it’s content creation business, huge investments in talent, and quality improvements, all of this in order to attract more advertising dollars. The Wall Street Journal thinks so too. In it’s report on the matter, the journal said that “… the new ads will do a better job of grabbing and holding the consumers’ attention… which can boost AOL’s momentum in generating ad revenue as it tries to transform itself to an ad-supported digital-media business.”
Project Devil, the codename given to the new – and larger – ad formats, aims to draw more reader attention from readers, creating greater revenue dollars for the stakeholders. With up to four times as large as the current display inventory on AOL’s properties, the ads will carry a photo gallery, a video, coupons, Facebook or Twitter updates or maps, with a few including 3D product view capabilities as well as a click-to-buy functionality.
AOL may well need this plan to succeed, as in the last quarter itself, AOL’s advertising revenue fell 27% year-on-year. And with The New York Times too implementing premier roadblock ads, the industry needs these strategic plans to work. However, that remains to be seen, as big advertising inventories that are launched barely keep up the interest in the end.
But with new formats, and especially with display ads, there is always the concern of banner blindness, which may be somewhat neutralized by the added functionalities incorporated within these larger ads.
The idea is to include these ads within existing content thereby adding value to the overall page real estate. The concept has the potential to keep balance between editorial and advertising on the pages.
With an added interest in digital advertising, the real success formula rests on the idea of these advertorials to be successful for display advertising to move forward. And the digital advertisers’ growing interest in display can hold the key to this movement. As Kantar Media reported, the recent 2010 growth of 5.3% in the display market for the first-half of the year will hopefully continue.
Given that today’s consumers are smarter, this growth can benefit from keeping in tune.
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