TAKEAWAY: It’s noticeable, the greater experimentation with advertising display and positioning on news websites. It’s a good thing.
Better than a simple banner, this Rolex ad commands attention and provides for an attractive visual at top of home page
Newsweek innovates with an ad position, directly under its lead visual of the day, which is both discreet and powerful.
Sample of “fishtank” ad
Perhaps the world has had enough of those narrow, skinny “banner” ads that crown so many news websites.
Or the boxy display ads usually to the right of the lead item.
Instead, and without much fanfare, we are beginning to see advertising on news websites become more experimental, attractive and effective.
Here are two examples that do the job well.
The New York Times gives Rolex a spectacularly prominent spot right on its home page. This is banner like, but NOT a banner, as we know banners. Instead, Rolex’s ad commands robust attention with a large panel that changes messages and that sits right at the top of the homepage, but NOT above the newspaper’s logo. Notice that the ad is totally integrated with the news content below it. Because I am sure Rolex paid a large summary for this display, it also gets the small ears around the logo. Well done.
But perhaps the most revolutionary approach is that of Newsweek’s new website—-which, by the way, deserves that you take a look at it for how free flowing, clean, elegant and functional it is.
Here, the home page opens with a landscape image for the story of the week, but directly under it, in a rather discreet mode of presentation, an ad “hides”. If you touch it, it comes to life, but just as easily will retreat back to its cave.
Another interesting example comes from the “fishtank” ad from Vox Media (The Verge, Polygon, SB Nation). The fish tank ads adapt the full-page spread into a full-screen takeover, but rather than overtaking the page, they show up while scrolling, like how magazine ads appear while flipping through the pages. “Scroll is the new page turn,” said Vox Media COO Marty Moe.
Good to see this level of experimentation with ads. The 5.0 generation of online advertising has arrived, and not a moment too soon.
Finally we know: It’s a Boy!
Times of London: special souvenir edition
It was a long wait but the world is now celebrating the arrival of the Royal Baby—-still called Baby Cambridge. Some front pages from the UK newspapers are here, with The Sun changing its name for the day to the appropriate The Son.