The first instance of online advertising was a joint venture in the 1980s between IBM and Sears, known as Prodigy, which started displaying banners at the bottom of the screen to promote Sears (one of the top retail chains in US) products. The first clickable web ad was sold by Global Network Navigator (GNN) in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm. This was followed by Hotwired, which in 1994 became the first website to sell large volumes of banner ads to big businesses. One of the first ads was purchased by AT&T (480X60) pixels in size and had a 44 per cent click-through rate, which when clicked did not re-direct to AT&T’s website but ironically linked it to an online tour of the world’s most acclaimed art museums! But this was just the start of display marketing becoming a full-fledged industry by itself worth well over 22 Bn Dollars by 2015 (according to eMarketer—US Digital Ad Spending Statistics).
Types of Display Ads
Display marketing works on the premise that any web page in the world, which attracts decent visits, can put a section of it on sale for any brand or agency to display an advertisement (which has a context similar to the web page’s content or the site itself). The chosen area on the web page is called an inventory and a standard page holds not more than three to four ad inventories which can be let out for ads. Depending on the size, placement, and orientation of the ad, there are industry-wide names that are given to standard ad sizes. A 480X60 pixel size horizontal bar ad at the top is typically known as the banner ad and is used mostly to sell premium sponsorships on the homepage of any website. Other popular types include 120X600 vertical ad called the Skyscraper, 728X90 horizontal ad at the bottom called Leaderboard, and a host of other small-sized rectangular ads (300X250, 120X60, 180X150, etc.). Also, with new types of rich media and dynamic ads emerging, the design revolution and need to reinvent ads to make them more relevant and interesting has forced the natural progression of ad making.
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