Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Near the end of 2002, just in the middle of December, the IAB made an announcement regarding creative unit standardization.

Through its Ad Sizes Committee, the IAB announced the recommendation of a new larger sized unit which, when taken into account with three other existing IAB recommended ad sizes, will create what is being called a “Universal Ad Package.”

The idea was to create online advertising units that would help to “template” the creative process agencies currently go through to accommodate the nearly endless myriad of creative unit options currently offered on a site. Advertisers, after years of escalation of the creative unit arms race, have demanded simpler, more cost effective units and a more substantive creative palette.

Of course, it was only a couple of years ago when advertisers seemed to want MORE creative options, not less. Advertisers were at a loss as to what to do to increase the effectiveness of online advertising. Or, better stated, advertisers were looking to improve results according to the admittedly simplistic metric of effectiveness used, namely, clicks. Many publishers responded to this desire by pumping out more creative units.

Now, not only is the IAB recommending a selection of new ad units, but they are also, in effect, suggesting that we do away with other units, such as the 468×60 or the 234×60. There comes a point when, as a group, a decision is truly made about standardizations. Continuing to add everything that is produced to the cannon eventually renders the cannon meaningless. Are there standards if everything is a standard? No.

So, it is time to minimize and simplify the number of ad units available to us in order to accentuate rather than dilute the value of advertising on a particular site.

The number of available ad units on a single page has passed into the realm of the absurd even Ionesco could not address. This holdover from the days of VC mandate “Monetize Everything” has got to go.

At one point, publishers in the digital space forgot that the purpose of advertising was to help advertisers make money and nothing more. If the publisher could demonstrate value as a vehicle to help accomplish that, it worked out for everyone. If not, the publisher disappeared. In the digital space, the publisher became a solipsistic singularity, sure only of its own existence and modifying itself to become only an opportunistic black hole for the dollars of unsuspecting and unwary clients. The publisher never sought to realize itself in a larger world of audiences and advertisers — one with needs and desires, the other able to provide them — and serve as a medium for them to come together and engage each other.

I mean, we call it a “medium.” A medium is a means of effecting or conveying something, it is a substance that serves as the means of transmission of a force or effect to an ‘Other.’ The deluge of buttons and tiles and banners and pop-ups and pop-unders and interstitials, et al do not transmit effect, they distract, and in their distraction, diffuse any meaning at all. Has anyone repeated a word so often you no longer knew what it meant and could no longer even remember how it was spelled? That’s what this plethora of units is like. There are so many of them that they don’t do anything at all.

MORE standard units seemed like a good idea for the purposes of templating sites, but I’m not convinced it means much in the way of more effective advertising.

This most recent move by the IAB to simplify, minimize, and adopt new ad size standards bode well for everyone. Inventory on sites become more valuable in their rarity made through limitation, advertisers make greater impacts on an audience because of a less cluttered, more arresting environment, and agencies can work more creatively yet efficiently by having fewer canvases of higher quality.

By Jim Meskauskas
Courtesy of http://www.MediaPost.com