Reads like CPM image ads, ( with interactive games* in them ..no less ..grief ! ) that have nothing to do with your site via "personalised" ads serving, if you are running adsense..are going to be rammed into whichever publisher's orifice Google can reach..

Today's logo* a portent of things to come in interactive ads ?

Whack-a-mole ads for "whatever" could be coming to every adsense site that runs image ads..:((

If any one sees Matt, they might like to pass on these words of advice from one who was there and can actually remember the 60's..;-)

memo to the plex;

"Sometimes you need to back away from the bong..and don't take decisions when wrecked..because, in the clean, clear light of day..they were not as funny, nor as nirvanically enlightening and cosmically good as you thought they were ..in fact they were weird and stupid"

whoooh! there must really be some strong stuff in the window boxes in the chocolate factory..

So just where is this wonderful video? Interesting that it's in the "sandbox"!

[google.com...]

So, to take point 1:

# The number of display ad impressions will decrease by 25 percent per person. Today, people are bombarded by online ads, but they don’t connect with most of these ads in a meaningful way. I believe the trend will be for people to ultimately see fewer, but better ads.

You're the one Google who let every Tom, Dick and Harry have an AdSense account.

It seems to me that whatever they're on they decided:

Suggest a meaningful % number and then let's try and make a proposed idea fit.

If a few of us sat on Leos patio with a nice glass of wine we could have have come up with something just as airy-fairy.

I think this seems like a pretty reasonable view of the future of online display advertising, and not necessarily a scary one. Display ads with get smarter, more engaging, more targeted, and more transparent to the end user. Sounds like a win for everyone.

Over 40 percent of online Americans will name display ads as their favorite ad format.

Okay, that might be stretching it.

Thank you for the video link, I watched it and took away 6 or 7 actionable things that I will be implementing on my site in the next two months.

<not really a moan, just a growing concern>

The only thing that worries me is what was talked about at around 30 minutes into the video. This is something that has been a growing concern for me as a publisher ... the 'primary engagement metrics' are changing for online advertising, we all agree on this, but the publisher is not benefiting in an increased revenue as a result.

We are still being paid by 'clicks' and 'impressions' (a pre 2005 reality) but meanwhile the advertiser (through google's push towards interest based adverts) is seeing a marked increase in sales off-line, later on down the road from an online campaign, (a post 2009 reality). I do not believe that this success is properly being shared (or rewarded) with the publisher who drew the audience in the first place.

The example google gave in the video (to illustrate this point and congratulate the advertiser) was Quaker Oats who experienced a 9% increase in sales in the supermarkets a week later due to an online marketing campaign. Now if the campaign was just 'brand awareness' and did not properly give any call to action (i.e. there was no reason to 'click' on the ad) and there was a low CPM for impressions, (lets face it they were selling oats, so who would complain) who benefited? Not the publisher who ran the ads through google adsense on their site. The only people who benefited in this case would be google and Quaker.

The trend, as enthusiastically hyped by google, is towards more and more advertising of this type, particularly as it is now being used as a ploy by advertising agencies to cut the costs for their clients ... (fine .... however, how does the publisher benefit from this 'metric' and strategy that is being used?)

I am seeing more and more adverts displayed on my site through google that are top quality brands, with really good eye catching adverts, but with a negligible reason to click on them (they also have a relatively poor CPM).

--- Although not many people seem to be complaining about this on this board, so I presume they run text based ads mainly? ---

More and more adverts are showing up on my site as youtube ads, some even play for 5 minutes! And in truth I am not really seeing the benefit. A good CPM should now be around $9 to $17 per thousand, and $17 to $25 per thousand (depending on the site, publisher and advert) and google is not getting anywhere close ... Basically if google want to run these type of ads in the future they need to increase the CPM from what it is today because it is not keeping pace with industry standards, and even google's own CPC averages.

The rest of the video I agreed with fully and I enjoyed what was said, and it has made me plan for the future ...

[edited by: JoePublisher at 6:31 pm (utc) on Jun 10, 2011]

Agreed, CPM "branders" etc ..are fine ( even off topic ones, on certain sites in moderation ) but only if the CPM rate is much better than they, Google, are offering now..

Totally Leo ... but getting the CPM raised is difficult with google because you do not deal direct with the advertiser; and google in this case, for their own reasons, seem to want to keep this side of their advertising income business low.

Fortunately these kind of CPM "branders" are usually produced by the companies or their ad agencies and they can be amenable to direct approaches to run them, rather than running via Google...CPM rewards and rates are usually better negotiated direct.

That said..I don't want to be running whack-a-mole or interactive ads ( whether negotiated direct or via adsense ) ..unless its on a games or entertainment site..or something for children..or unless I make the ads myself for the advertiser ..or I really like the ad they propose and consider it interesting or a good fit.

But I realise that not everyone has the technical background or experience to make ads for their advertisers, be they CPM banners or interactive..or "Branders"

We can do all that too Leo ... I deal with many direct advertisers and I can knock a really good looking ad up in minutes (or rather a few hours for flash/video etc.) for the smaller local advertiser who wants to chance their arm (or tilt at windmills) with online advertising ... therefore google is something I am happy to consider as a 'filler' for now, but I would prefer to use them more.

And I don't mind running new innovative styled ads, and google have some good ideas (and yes, some bad ones) but they just don't want to 'pay' me properly to run them. Quite why they charge less than industry standards, (or, rather, pay publishers less than industry standards?) is beyond me ... stupid pricing, sorry, smart pricing, I guess :)

Personally I see a 'subscription' based income (in whatever guise) in my future with advertising playing a supporting role ...

I knew you could Joe :)..but the majority reading here can't,or don't ,they don't even use PHP adserver scripts ( or commercial adservers ) which have other ads as possible alternatives( in spite of your and DaStarBuG's extremely good advice )..but run adsense as a "set and forget" easy money thing.

IMO makes them waaaaay too dependant on G..

tilt at windmills

;-)) agreed, online advertising isn't for everyone nor every business..and a small direct test on a local site or niche site will tell them with less risk than putting their credit card into G or Bing or one of the others.

Just to round the thread off in terms of interest ... some of the IAB 'Rising Stars' formats look to be coming into place soon as part of the 'standard' IAB formats package, which means this is an important future development for publishers, one that will be fully in place by the end of 2011.

[iab.net ]

The video in the IAB link is excellent in explaining and showing off these new formats and how the top ad execs and designers are anxious to start using them.

Rising Stars ad units were selected by a cross-disciplinary group that included agency creative directors, media executives, publishers and ad operations specialists, who judged the ad formats for their potential to drive brand equity at scale.

These new ad units were chosen from a pool of 36 innovative submissions by more than two dozen companies (not all will make it into the final set of 'standard IAB formats', some over the next 90 days will be tested then dropped). The six brand-friendly IAB ad units are :

Billboard – Developed by Google/YouTube
Filmstrip – Developed by Microsoft
Portrait – Developed by AOL
Pushdown – Developed by Pictela
Sidekick – Developed by Unicast
Slider – Developed by Genex,built by MediaMind and Unicast

This, alongside the google video, has made my site redesign finalised in terms of size for content and ad space. I know a lot of people run a 960px wide website (for very good reasons) but I always ran a 970px wide site, so it has been easy this past week to move up to a 970px wide content area with a neat 10px border making the site 980px wide in total (I also made the navigation points wider for easier touch screen navigation as well as the traditional mouse).

If you can run a 970px wide ad across the top in a leaderboard position (which also doubles up as space for 'centred' 728px wide ads) and have an ad space in your sidebar which can run a 300px by 600px advert (which also doubles up as space for the 300x250 ads - collapse the space down or expand it as required) you will be future proofed for the next three to five years, especially with the main 'Rising Star' advert sizes and formats. (FYI my sidebar is actually 336px wide so it covers every regular ad format request, but I am already seeing the 300x600 size becoming very popular).

Not everyone of the six sizes will make it into the final 'standards' IAB package but I can see the 'Billboard' (970x250/90) and the 'Film strip' (300x600 'visible') being very popular within google and with direct advertisers in particular and becoming standard. But the 'Sidekick' and 'Slider' is probably only going to be used on high end publishing sites, or dropped from the IAB 'standard' set of formats.

In terms of website design I think the future for top advertisers and agencies who want to advertise on sites is having plenty of white space to let the excellent content breath (content is king), advert areas outside of the main published/post content area so there is a deliberate choice of the user clicking on them, and more engaging adverts, of a larger design, but far fewer on the page, (I am running only two ad spots per page with a choice of 4 different spots to pick from) with a far higher CTR ...

Ads on mobile devices, (excluding tablets) and site design for mobile devices, is a whole other kettle of fish ...

Of course the new ad sizes may well fill you with horror and you have recoiled at the thought of any redesign changes, YMMV ...

I rarely run (Adsense) display ads on any of my sites. The exception is the sites that are mostly text, in which case I use the display ads just to dress up the page.

The primary reason I don't run display ads is, in many cases I am only going to get PPC revenue -- and the "message" has been crafted to not induce a click -- the ads are so complete, that simply reading them carries the advertisers message to the user, and nothing to me.

The same is true for advertisers who put a big 1-800-CALL-NOW phone number in their (Adwords/text or display) ads -- I block them.

Note to advertisers: if you want to engage users and get them to click through to your site, (and get publishers to carry your ads), design ads that engage the user BUT leave them needing to click through to know more, ("branders" should be paying CPM rates for every impression).

@lexipixel you are right there is a problem with "branders" and very low CPM paid by Google.

What the IAB want to do with these new sized/format/type of ads they call 'Rising Stars' is to increase the use of 'brand awareness' advertising using rich media, but also, through competition and adoption of these new sizes, is to eventually increase the CPM for the publisher.

This video part 2 (part 1 is worth a watch as well) ad futures.

[youtube.com ]

It shows you the view point of IAB, Google and a Creative Advertising Director. Their response is actually interesting, Google are wanting to see 'innovation', IAB want to see new format and rich media adoption, while the Creative Directors want to see quality ads placed next to quality content and integrates with the content ... however all of them agree CPM has been falling.

Perhaps this is all the proof a small publisher needs to make the decision not to 'change', to not adopt the new formats, to wait until there is an advertising market in CPM? At the moment CPM is still nowhere near the appropriate levels a good quality publisher would hope for, which is why CPC (particularly text ads) are still the best bet in the short term with google adsense (although if dealing direct with advertisers this alters) ...

That being said, and although at the moment only 6% of adverts are CPM rich media 'branders', while 94% are not, everyone agrees that quality websites are the only ones who are going to win in the end as the online advertising business works itself out over the next three years and 'interactive' rich media adverts become far more common.

In other words to capture the top CPM adverts you need to position yourself and your website into the burgeoning 20% zone (paraphrasing Peter Minnium) - good quality content on mid-sized websites, between 'premium' publishers and 'everyone else'.

The video (right at the end) also tells you where google adsense is heading ... Keri Millstien says that the 'data' (user background history) plus the 'choice' (of relevant ads) is going to drive future advertising revenue; whether you agree with her (google) or not, you will not hear it said clearer than that ...

Over 40 percent of online Americans will name display ads as their favorite ad format.

Okay, that might be stretching it.

Do they ever explain what kind of mathematical jiggery-pokery they're performing? The rest of the paragraph says:

Over 40 percent of online Americans will name display ads as their favorite ad format.... The number of people who said they preferred display ads trailed slightly behind the number who liked glossy magazine ads, cinema ads and even sky-writing--

Are those three separate groups, or is that the "other" category? Laborious counting on fingers leads to:
40% < 41%
40% + 41% + 41% + 41% > 100%

Is the secret in the phrase "will name"? Under what circumstances will survey respondents name display ads? If you first do something to prevent them from naming anything else? Whither the Goodyear blimp?