The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the New York Times is planning to have larger banner ads on its site.
The new banner ads will take up about half the page on most resolutions, and the article did not mention if they would be GIFs, rich-media or a combination of the two.
I applaud the New York Times for making a move to bigger ad sizes — the traditional banner, box and button ads are awfully small.
While it is often uncouth to compare mediums, consider what an ad in a newspaper would look like if it took up the same percentage of page real-estate as a banner ad does on a Web site. It’d be pretty small and wouldn’t have much impact.
While I think the failure of most online ads, so far, can be attributed to a multidue of factors, size is one of them.
I know some people in the online community will be put off by the new, larger ad sizes. Some will say it impedes getting to the content — I say, if done right and targeted well, advertising is content.
Some will say the bigger ads are more annoying. What’s more annoying to me is having to pay to get content.
