They're bigger, they're bolder, and soon they'll be covering up large swaths of some of your favorite Web pages.
The Online Publishers Assn. on Tuesday released several new in-your-face advertising formats designed to be both more obtrusive and interactive.
Twenty-seven top Internet publishers -- including the New York Times, CNN, CBS Interactive, ESPN and the Wall Street Journal -- say they'll try the supersize ads in an attempt to get the attention of Web surfers who have learned to ignore banners.
The websites, which collectively reach two-thirds of the U.S. Internet audience, must walk a fine line so they don't bug visitors so much that they stop returning.
"Studies show we ignore banner ads," said Jose Castillo, a new media consultant in Johnson City, Tenn. "Making them bigger and more intrusive won't work. We will tune those out as well."
The new formats represent an effort to boost an ad market that has grown dramatically in recent years but is suffering in the slumping economy.
Research firm EMarketer Inc. predicts that the Internet is the only advertising segment that will grow in 2009. But most of that growth will be in Web search, while spending on so-called display ads is expected to fall.
EMarketer said in November that U.S. online ad spending would reach $23.6 billion in 2008 and $25.7 billion this year, but senior analyst David Hallerman said those figures would be revised downward soon.
To some extent, the inherent nature of advertising is to annoy people enough so that they pay attention. "Advertising rarely doesn't irritate," Hallerman said.
But what Google Inc. and other search firms discovered is that people don't mind ads as much when the marketing message is related to what they're already doing online, such as searching for something.
J.D. Lasica, president of Socialmedia.biz, a consulting company in Pleasanton, Calif., said publishers needed to be innovative in more than just the size and shape of the ads.
"All of these news publications are in a tough spot because the print publications are dwindling away. So they have to figure out how to make money in the new medium," he said. "I don't think the answer is in-your-face ads."
The publishers say they think the new formats will provide a canvas on which advertisers can be more creative. And they certainly don't intend to turn off Web surfers.
