MSNBC.com Puts on the Banner Ban

The banner isn’t dead, but MSNBC.com is doing its part to cut off the much-derided ad unit’s oxygen.On Monday (June 28) the news site will roll out a sweeping redesign that encapsulates what publisher and general manager Charlie Tillinghast called “a major rethinking of what a news site is.” At the heart of that redesign is a philosophy that Web pages needn’t be text centric, and that Web ads should be large and not relegated to the periphery. “We don’t start with the premise that this is a newspaper online,” said Tillinghast. “In the past we’ve bolted on video and photos and commentary to text pages. Now all of those elements are equal.”But even more radical is MSNBC.com’s decision to no longer serve banner ads, long the Web industry’s bread and butter. “The banner is dead on our site,” said Tillinghast. “They’ve become too commoditized,” particularly when they are served every time a user clicks to a new page, no matter how quickly they depart or whether they even see the whole page. But the new MSNBC.com is designed to be anti–page view to bring more content to the surface and require far less navigation by users. “We looked at all the stuff we have,” said Ashley Wells, the site’s creative director. “Video, photos, comments, that stuff was all disparate. When you bring it all together on the page, you need to load things dynamically, it’s no longer about page views. But page views were always a proxy for ad impressions. So you have to figure something else out.”Thus, Tillinghast said the site will only charge for ads that users actually see. And those ads—primarily premium oversized placements-—will be rotated to different slots on the new site, allowing for up to 30 different layouts to prevent user tune-out. Ad industry execs—none of whom had seen the new site—embraced MSNBC’s new direction. “We need innovation in this space, so I’m thrilled,” said Lincoln Bjorkman, evp, executive creative director, Digitas. “If someone says they are going to stop running banners, the question is why? If people have told you by their activities or communications that they don’t like banners, that’s wonderful reason to stop doing that.”Andrea Kerr Redniss, svp, managing director Optimedia, said that buyers, used to receiving tonnage impressions via banners, will have to adjust their thinking. But she called MSNBC’s approach ahead of its time.“This is definitely where the industry is headed,” she said. “Hopefully a lot of other sites will follow suit.”

Performance Marketing

MSNBC.com Puts on the Banner Ban

Mike Shields

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