I've spent way too much time and effort of late sitting in committee meetings to design workarounds for hideously giant ads within the content area of our story-level pages. The result: My 'there must be a better way' mentality has been thrust into overdrive.

Thus I present... a sexier twist on the tired old ad rail.

The trick, part 1: The ad teases have to look cool. One more time for emphasis, say it with me, they have to look cool. Maybe "cool" is not the right word. They must intrigue. They must appeal to the only sense readily available online -- vision. Use sex appeal, celebrity appeal, pretty colors, close-ups of things that are just plain weird or unusual, things that will pique interest. Uniformity of the design is key. If the teases are not visually attractive, you're straight back to the garbage that currently inhabits your ad rail.

In the beginning, this may mean a whole lot of squabbling with advertisers about what will shine through that square, more specifically, that it's not likely to be their logo or a sale announcement. You will have to convince them to settle for an entire screen's worth of ad space once they get that click. That's what they really want, they just don't know it yet. Once users click on a link, they are FAR more likely to read (or at least look at) the resulting page than one resulting from, oh say, random windows popping up at them. In their minds they have already invested time and energy (however slight) in that click and may as well see where it takes them so as not to think of it as wasted.

The trick, part 2: The larger ads your users click through to -- at least half of them -- have to offer something worthwhile, something interesting, something that will bring them back to see what's behind the next window. I just shoved up the full-sized ads which I tore out of the nearest magazine and scanned in, but if you're going to do it correctly, build a custom toolbar with the option to make the CK Crave guy your wallpaper, or to print an ad for free admission to Club X, or to send the ad to a friend. And since it's loading independently of your page, go ahead and allow that Flash application that shows the new Toyota inside and out, let them use the video of Honda's amazing cog ad -- or a video ad for a local club or restaurant. Since it doesn't affect your load time, the sky's the limit (though you should add a video or Flash icon to the photo teases for those items as a warning to low-speed users). I wouldn't make multi-media ads par for the course, however, or users may begin to view it as too time-consuming an endeavor. Try to keep a good mix -- the most important thing is to keep us entertained.

The trick, part 3: These are your only ads (save maybe properly targeted text-only ads). No pop-ups, no pop-unders, no banners. Those ads are a) being either ignored or blocked by more and more of your users all the time anyway, b) making everyone else angry and c) taking away from the value of your prime ad space: The attractive one that offers users something interesting.

The beauty of this solution (in my opinion of course):

It's eye-catching and otherwise non-invasive.

The teases don't take up much space (at least not much space that most newspaper sites aren't currently devoting to ineffective, junky-looking ads).

The same format can be easily carried throughout the site, targeting channels based on content.

A newspaper's own ads can be sufficiently "sexed up" to fit this format.

It's a lightweight ad solution. The code weight is negligible and all the images combined are only around 25k, yet the ad itself can be just about anything.

The dangers.

It's only as eye-catching as you make it and its power is only as great as the ads behind it. The format requires artistry and -- here's where it gets really scary -- regular creative thought to keep people coming back to see what's next. The good news is that your advertisers share that creative burden and given wide-open space they can probably do a much better job than they are right now.

And as always, use targeted ad space with care.

July 21, 2003

• My example: Ultimate Online Newspaper (PLEASE NOTE: Only the ads are linked properly!)
• What is the Ultimate Online Newspaper Project?