Web Publishers Branch Out Beyond Banners.

New data from Advertising.com indicates that banners are still the top online advertising capability supported by online publishers, but some others are making strong showings.

Over 85% of US online publishing sites allow advertisers to run Web banners, but a notable 69.2% support rich media ads. Based on interviews conducted among Advertising.com’s Web network of over 1,000 publications, the popularity of these ads has arisen from expectations that they will bring in higher revenues, despite the extra resources they require. Respondents believe rich media conveys the message better than images.

eMarketer predicts that revenues from rich media ads will continue to grow at a faster pace than other ad formats. “While paid search continues to draw the vast majority of online ad spending, traditional advertisers with branding campaigns are putting more and more money into rich media advertising,” says David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst. “Starting from a smaller base than paid search, there’s greater room for rich media growth. Those ads might be simple Flash-based productions, or more elaborate streaming video.”

Advertising.com finds that pop-ups and pop-unders are also popular, with over 60% of publisher sites supporting it, as is contextual advertising, which can run on 51.3% of sites. Contextual advertising is well liked because it delivers targeted advertising without much strain on resources, unlike behavioral targeting, which is perceived to be more resource-intensive. However, behavioral targeting has been shown to be very effective and publishers are becoming more interested.

An Advertising.com study from 2004 found that advertisers who switched to behavioral targeting reaped great benefits, with click-through, conversion and effective CPM rates all increasing substantially.

Additionally, MarketingSherpa found behavioral targeting to be the second best performing advertising tactic (tied with paid search), according to AD:TECH attendees surveyed in December 2004.

Looking ahead to 2005, the new Advertising.com poll determines that over 20% of publishers expect text links, the old tried-and-true text-based format, will be the greatest source of revenue growth.

For more information at http://www.emarketer.com