I’m unabashedly excited about responsive design (see my review of Ethan Marcotte’s book). I believe that it has the potential to take web design in directions we haven’t considered. At Mule we’ve been applying some of the principles to recent project, seeing where things work and where they don’t, and we’ve run into one big hurdle that we haven’t yet figured out how to clear:
Advertising.
Advertising online has been pretty much the same since day one:
- Take a block of space on the page
- Put something eye-catching (animated and/or garishly colored) in that block
- Count the clicks
- Count your money
The only things that have changed are the size and delivery technologies to take advantage of bigger screens and bigger pipes. And that’s the problem. The general pitch behind web advertising depends on there being a block of certain pixel dimensions that is sold along with position and number of clicks. The web advertising world is not set up to deal in percentage widths, and they’re certainly not going to deal with ads that may or may not show up depending on the width of a user’s browser window.
Nope, it’s going to take a major, fundamental shift in strategy to include advertising in a responsive site. Go look through the sites at Media Queries and count how many have ad space on them. Then count the ones that have more than one or two sizes of ad.
Now go look at the current list of IAB ad sizes.
There are ways that we as designers can work around the current limitations in web advertising:
- Instead of a 728x90 leaderboard in the banner, put a couple of smaller ads.
- Make sure that there’s a column with a minimum width of 300 pixels to take those medium rectangles that everyone loves.
- Don’t load certain ad spots for touch devices, based on the assumption that they won’t fit.
But each of those will affect the sales that a client’s advertising department can make, and they’re not really long-term solutions. Is the client willing to shoulder that burden? A change like this will take clients who are ready to look at the long-term success of their site and who are willing to let the ad revenue dip for a little bit while they figure out a new strategy. And whatever that new strategy is, it has to be something the ad people can sell. (Fellow Mule developer Jim Ray pointed out the example of MSNBC’s ServeView, which takes a sort of Ajax-y approach and serves ads only when the block containing them is actually on screen. It results in fewer impressions, but each impression is more valuable because you know the user has scrolled to where the ad is. While it doesn’t specifically address flexible sizing, this kind of approach makes a lot of sense for a responsive site.)
This is as much a business problem as it is a design problem, if not more so. As a design problem, this is pretty simple to solve, once we have some parameters to work with. But the advertising business is a big ship with a lot of barnacles and doesn’t turn quickly. If we sit around and hope that responsive ads will just show up one day, responsive design will be relegated to the edges of web: company sites, personal sites, portfolio sites.
What we know at Mule now is that if a client expresses interest in responsive design, that client has to be ready to discuss how that design will affect their advertising strategy.
How are you handling the intersection of advertising and responsive design?
Do you know of an ad network that is actively pursuing responsive ad formats?
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5 comments so far. Add yours below.
Devin Reams says:
This is the same discussion we've had more often with potential clients, too (add it to the "have you *really* thought about the implications of 'responsive' design?" list).
Unfortunately, we've found even more challenges (beyond the business requirements) but not many good technical solutions. To your point, the web's ad industry a big ship to turn but there's *so much* technology and "innovation" around advertising out I can only assume this will come around in short time in order to remain competitive.
January 17, 2012 11:45 AM
Travis says:
"But each of those will affect the sales that a client’s advertising department can make, and they’re not really long-term solutions. Is the client willing to shoulder that burden? A change like this will take clients who are ready to look at the long-term success of their site and who are willing to let the ad revenue dip for a little bit while they figure out a new strategy. And whatever that new strategy is, it has to be something the ad people can sell."
Perhaps a better way to look at the situation (from a business perspective) is that responsive ad views are better than no ad views. That is, a responsive site (which has some form(s) of ads) that is at least usable on a mobile device is better (worth more) than a non-responsive site that is not usable on a mobile device, because the latter site (and thus the ads on it) simply won't be viewed by people using mobile devices, and will thus ultimately have fewer page views and thus less sell-able ad inventory.
January 17, 2012 12:56 PM
Sean says:
The model i've been toying with recently and discussing with a couple of clients is based on Mark Boulton's excellent article on his blog. For anyone that hasn't read it, his model works on the idea that a client buys a package of advertising positions and their creative supplies a number of different ads for each size in the package they have bought.
However, when designing a responsive design using flexible grids and media queries, I don't see why you can't sell ad positions between different media queries as separate ad units. For example regardless of how you determine the 'break points' of your layout (device width, bandwidth, screen resolution etc doesn't matter), why not sell a wide skyscraper ad unit to an advertiser on the condition that their ad will only be served to a user visiting the size from a certain context (i.e. they are on a phone or a touch screen on the back of an aeroplane seat), and they will need to buy different ad units if they want impressions in other contexts, and naturally your ad pricing would reflect whatever advertising contexts your.
client was buying.
January 17, 2012 4:40 PM
matt says:
really interested in seeing how the bigger providers for advertising handle this (for instance: buysellads.com).
with responsive design, the stops for adjustment to layout are flexible in some cases, and not always consistent so having a company have to create new ads each time per each site they wish to advertise on might be a big change that not all advertisers will accept.
great post
January 27, 2012 12:23 PM
Luke Turner says:
The business issue and tech issues appear to be larger then it seems. One component of this process appears to be overlooked often. This is the adserver, along with its technical draw backs...
The business issue really isn't what to sell, I think we would all embrace new ad formats, or a perspective on selling, the issue is how do we implement the change that provides advertising in a format that the clients will be able to swallow. At the end of the day, the salesman and the buyer will reflect the clients requirements.
There is a second consideration here, digital advertising is split into two separate propositions, "DR" advertising and brand. Direct Response deals with advertising which primary purpose to drive traffic. The latter, brand is high impact advertising which serves to increase awareness, impact and if it drives some traffick along the way then all the better, It's the latter that concerns me.
DR is easy in some respects, different ad shapes, based on browser size works, and although the traditional sales model is an issue, there are various established methods of selling that aren't reliant on set sizes, to give examples you can sell by click, in the same way that google does, by engagement, interactions with the ad or by conversion.
These are all well established sales models, amenable to buyers and planners alike. Direct advertising doesn't however generate much revenue. About 15-20% of an average medium scale website. It also doesn't offer the best user experience, and certainly no room for creativity.
So my question is, how do you provide a platform that allows high impact, high value advertising, taking advantage of responsive design without effecting the user experience. This is the real issue at hand...
April 30, 2012 12:45 PM