25 Jul Mad Men or Mad Math? The Decline and Rebirth of Online Advertising
Posted at 15:05h
in Digital Marketing
[caption id="attachment_5754" align="alignright" width="300"] Credit AMC TV[/caption]
By Satish Polisetti
As more sites like Facebook, Twitter and Buzzfeed blend ads directly into a user's content stream, the future of online advertising is quickly shifting. It's a brave new world defined by content, not dimensions; mad math, not mad men. Science and data, not merely creative endeavors.
Where are we today? Currently, online ads are defined primarily by size and dimensions -- with IAB ad unit guidelines describing leaderboards (728 x 90 pixels), skyscrapers (160 x 600), and full banners (468 x 60), to name a few.
These very basic but widely accepted standards are based on the artistic perspectives of a previous generation - from the minds of creative geniuses you might see on Mad Men. These have more to do with traditional ad buys, and print ad dimensions, ones that have not really changed much in the past few decades since the swinging 60's of Don Draper. When we jumped into internet advertising, the look and feel of advertising changed, but standards failed to get with the times.
And then there were banners:
