Out With the Old, In With the New

And no, I am not talking about traditional vs social media. I’m talking about the new ad standards for display advertising from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). Every two years, the IAB’s Ad Sizes Working Group meets to review proposed new ad units and issue updated voluntary guidelines for publishers. The goal is to reduce and simplify the amount of work for agencies that may be faced with having to create several assets in several different sizes for multiple publishers. Publishers, take note. While it may be only one size to you, your non-standard ad unit means extra production costs for the advertiser.

Out With the Old
The 468x60 display ad size is retired from the IAB Standard Ad Units list, one I am happy to see go. Also retired are the 120x600, 250x250, 240x400, 336x280, 300x100, 720x300, 234x60, 120x90, 124x240 and 125x125.

In With the New
The new core standards include the following:
• 300x250 Medium Rectangle
• 180x150 Rectangle
• 728x90 Leaderboard
• 160x600 Wide Skyscraper
• 300x600 Half Page
• 120x60 Button
• 88x31 Micro Bar

Rising Stars
Judged for their potential to drive brand equity, this list of Rising Star ad units, will be added to the IAB Standard Ad Units following six months of in-market validation. These Rising Stars were selected (from a pool of 36 submissions) by a group of agency creative directors, media executives, publishers and ad operations specialists. The ad units chosen were based on the following criteria:
• Branding – How well does the ad format provide a canvas for creativity?
• User Experience – How well does the ad format positively impact user experience?
• Functionality – How does the ad format take advantage of online user behaviors and technologies?
• Page Integration – How does the ad format enhance the relationship between the ad and publisher page layout?
• Adoption – How easily could the ad format be widely adopted by publishers?

Here are the Rising Stars of online display:
Portrait submitted by AOL

Slider submitted by Genex

Billboard submitted by Google/YouTube

Filmstrip submitted by Microsoft

Pushdown submitted by Pictela

Sidekick submitted by Unicast