Jonathan Jeter

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Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 468×60 Banner

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Ah, the original banner ad. Now relegated to the description of 468×60 – Banner in the “Other – Horizontal” category of AdSense, it is the original banner ad that showed up all over the Internet in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This ad unit is the grandfather of Internet banners. The 468×60 reigned supreme in the days of 640×480 and 800×600 screen resolution, but has given way today to leaderboards and skyscrapers with the advent of larger screen sizes.

When was the last time you saw the small version of the classic banner ad? No, really. I have searched and searched across sites for examples to put in this article, but haven’t been able to find any on major sites anywhere. I did find a few smaller sites that still use the 468×60 banner, but they also plaster ads all over the page – not really the type of advertising you want to be associated with.

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Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 160×600 Wide Skyscraper

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160x600 Wide Skyscraper on mashable.com
The Wide Skyscraper works well in a side column

The wide skyscraper is another ad unit that has taken over as one of the most prevalent ad units visible throughout The Internet. This ad size is recommended by all of the major ad networks, including Google AdSense, Microsoft Advertising and the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau). Unlike most of the square ad units, the skyscraper is designed for very specific locations, as it is very tall and thin, although not as thin as its predecessor, the 120 x 600 – Skyscraper. The skyscraper is very useful for small columns, or rails, on your site, under menus, categories, tags or other, similar list-type content.

Because of this, the 160 x 600 – Wide Skyscraper has become harder to find, as wider screen have allowed the navigation columns to expand to 250 or 300 pixels, accommodating the larger square ad units. However, a lot of properties are starting to put the Wide skyscraper next to a list or menu in the wider columns that are now found in most modern layouts.

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Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 728×90 Leaderboard

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WebMD 728x90 Leaderboard
728x90 Leaderboard on the home page of WebMD

Ah, the Leaderboard – it is the younger, flashier cousin to the original 468×60 banner and is now widely used throughout the Internet. While the  728×90 – Leaderboard is one of the standard recommended AdSense ad sizes by Google, it is also a standard size recommended by Microsoft Advertising (Bing/Yahoo!) and the  IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau).

When used in AdSense, the 728 x 90 – Leaderboard ad unit can contain either text ads or image/rich media ads and is intended for the very top or bottom of a site and doesn’t usually fit in the constrained area of a blog content area.

An example of the text version of the AdSense Leaderboard can be found below. Leaderboards typically contain graphic banner ads and not text ads as shown in this example. However, if you click on the text (not the link) in the banner above and move your mouse to the right, the content area should scroll and you’ll be able to see the rest of the text that Google puts into the text version of the 728×90 Leaderboard in AdSense.

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Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 336 x 280 – Large Rectangle

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AdSense 336x280 Large Rectangle Example
AdSense 336x280 Large Rectangle Example

Google’s second recommended ad unit size for AdSense is the 336 x 280 – Large Rectangle. This ad unit size is not listed in the most popular sizes on the Yahoo! Ad Network, but is on the listed in the Microsoft Advertising PubCenter for ad publishers for small businesses, but not in the Standard Ad Creative Acceptance Policy for Marketers & Agencies. On the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Ad Unit Guidelines, this size is listed in the Delisted Standard Ad Units as of February 28, 2011.

While this size is available in AdSense for both text and image/rich media ads, it seems that this size is used mainly for small publishers and due to it’s size, is commonly used to take up a large area of the content. Google offer examples of the 336×380 Large Rectangle and they are all embedded in or below the content.

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Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 300 x 250 – Medium Rectangle

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CNN 300x250 Ad Unit Example
CNN Web page has 300x250 Display Ad in the right sidebar

This is the first of a series of posts on Google AdSense ad sizes. The main reason I’m doing this is for my own reference. There won’t necessarily be any great insight or advice on how to use these ads. It is mainly a test environment so I can see all of the current AdSense options in action. It will also compare Google AdSense ad sizes to standard agency ad unit sizes.

Four Recommended Ad Sizes

AdSense has four main recommended AdSense ad unit sizes, which are the following:

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  • 300 x 250 – Medium Rectangle
  • 336 x 280 – Large Rectangle
  • 728 x 90 – Leaderboard
  • 160 x 600 – Wide Skyscraper

SEO is Dead: Long Live SEO!

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Moderator:
Dana Todd, Vice President of Performance Innovation, Performics
Speakers:
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
Thom Craver, Web and Database Specialist, Saunders College (RIT)
Sam Michelson, Chief Executive Officer, Founder, Five Blocks

Regardless of what you think about Panda, it made site owners think more about content.

SEO has changed because what used to be about ranking is now about traffic. Local results have changed the game. Local results are now 35% of results and will be up to 70% in the next year. The rate of change within SEO has increased greatly.

SEO has become more complicated and one person can’t do it all anymore. If you can put the team together to do great in SEO, this is a great time for you.

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Navigating “The Dip”: Planning a Successful Site Re-launch

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Moderator:
Matthew Bailey, SES Advisory Board & President, Site Logic Marketing

Speakers:
Jonathan Allen, Director, SearchEngineWatch
Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board & President, Page Zero Media
Kevin Lee, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Didit.com

Kevin Lee

The good news is that if you follow the rules, you can pull off all sorts of site architecture pandemonium. They had a scenario where they had to simultaneously change subdomain and 301 redirect 16 million URLs and were able to pull it off successfully.

Google’s algorithm is tweaked almost daily. Once or twice a year the changes are significant and get a name, like “Panda”.

Panda was a zero-sum game. For each site that lost rank and free organic position, another site took its place. The business directory site that is a Didit subsidiary doubled in traffic, then dropped and came back. Be patient and take all also changes with a grain of salt. Changes can occur from day to day.

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Strategic Use of User- Generated Content for SEO

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By Michael DeHaven, Group Product Manager, SEO, for Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice manages User-Generated Content (UGC) for over 1300 brands.

Compared user reviews from the audience for a chocolate caramel square to the marketing text on the package. Some negative and positive reviews.

User-generated content

80%-90% of UGC on major brand web sites is actually written by users.

Language styles – the words that you typically think of (or marketers think of) are totally different than what actual users write when writing reviews.

7 Principles of User Generated SEO

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  1. Don’t forget the fundamentals of SEO – UGC will not fix a site with poor SEO
  2. Search engines get bored – they want new stuff. By leveraging UGC, you can keep content fresh.
  3. The Primanti Principle – a primanti sandwich has French fries in it. You want to have the right amount of fries. The same applies to search.

Information Architecture for Great Websites

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By Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director of Omni Marketing Interactive

Information Architecture & SEO

information architecture is the art and science of organizing and labeling website content to support usability and find ability. This is not technical architecture (301 redirects, canonical tags, robots.txt,meta.)

Why should we care about IA?

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  • lost customers
  • brand value – even if your site is # 1, if they can’t find the information they’re looking for they go to the next link in the results and they don’t go back to your site, even if you fix it, because they don’t know you fixed it
  • design and development costs – if you mess up the IA on launch, you have to start from scratch on a redesign. Use wireframes. You should never code a web site unless you’ve done wireframes or prototypes. It’s too expensive to go back and redo it.