In
early days of Internet, banner ads quickly became prime advertising method. Most major companies still pour millions into banner ads, but results have steadily dropped.Banner ads that once pulled in business now get ignored. And so it often goes with advertising. The first rule of making a sale is for your ad to get attention. Once banners became commonplace and consumers got used to them, they stopped noticing them (and clicking on them) altogether.
All that was turned on its head recently with creation of very large skyscraper ads. Just like name implies, a skyscraper banner ad extends up and down along right side of web page. They are usually 120 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall.
The use of skyscraper ads has exploded, nearly tripling to 6 billion skyscraper ads being put to use every month. Major sites like Yahoo Finance, CNET, MSN, and Alta Vista routinely feature them.
Why? In this case, bigger is definitely better. While more than half of all ads on Internet are still old 468 x 60 banners, much larger skyscraper ads get noticed. Thus, click-throughs and resulting purchases are dramatically higher than traditional ads. We have seen some sites experience click- through increases of nearly 1000 percent.
