Display advertising, just like most other forms of online advertising, is an ever evolving animal. It can easily be compared to Darwin’s theories on the evolution of life. That is:

1. Evolution did occur
2. Evolutionary change was gradual
3. The primary mechanism for evolution was a process called natural selection (survival of the fittest)
4. The millions of species alive today arose from a single original life form through a branching process called “speciation”

The only part where display advertising is not similar to this Darwinian Theory is that change is happening gradually. The pace of change in digital marketing is break neck, it’s happening within our lifetimes, before our eyes and it is often hard to stay up to date with the latest trends. Consider the very first banner advert of about 16 years ago, compared to the options and opportunities we have available to us today.

An Example of a Primordial Banner. 

AT&T was the first to dish over some money to HotWired to display the beast they created; a 468x60 banner that came to life on October 25 1994.

So what’s the latest from the world of display advertising?

First off, the lines between Social Media and display are blurring. Not only has it become harder to define display advertising, but the design trends in display advertising are also changing. Barry Salzman, Google’s Managing Director for Media, says he expects 75% of more of online display ads to be social in 5 years time - social being defined as interactive ads that users on Facebook and Twitter can “like” or “retweet” or even subscribe to. 

Secondly, display advert sizes are constantly changing despite efforts to standardise ads. Yahoo! has introduced a new rich media size. See an example here: Invictus. The size is 468x648 and expands to 936x648.

Thirdly, previously successful ads are no longer as effective as they once were. Consider video ads. Once viewed as the format most likely to deliver high engagement measures, video ads are increasingly losing their edge with certain brand metrics when compared to other ad formats. To be clear, video ads are still an effective form of advertising - but their once more than 100% lead in online ad awareness has diminished over the past three years and is now on par with overall norms. Fortunately new possibilities  are popping up daily.

Fourthly, new and exciting alternatives are emerging. Type-in ads, for example, are the coming together of CAPTCHA security with brand messaging. Instead of a random word or phrase being presented during a log-in process, users are presented with a brand name or tagline, or both. To proceed, they must enter that text. In addition, we are seeing more and more display ads in social games.

But what are the rules? We believe these fundamentals need to apply to most display ads:

1. Be relevant
2. Add value
3. Offer choices without interruption
4. Create a dialog
5. Give something back

Giants like Google are investing significantly in display ads and advertising. They are not only keeping up with the latest developments but also contributing to these. Just like the folks at Google, we think display advertising has a pretty exciting future! Watch this space.

Also check out:

• The Accelerated Growth of Display Advertising
• Time to Play with Display