What new "supersized" web ads and the U.S. auto industry have in common

Recently a number of sites that belong to the OPA, or Online Publishers Association (ESPN, The New York Times, Forbes.com, Wall Street Journal, iVillage, and others) announced they're launching three new web ad sizes.  See MarketingVox article here, PaidContent.org article here.

From MarketingVox:

AdWeek reports that members of the Online Publishers Association — including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and ESPN — have agreed to avail the following ad units to advertisers:

• The fixed panel, a 336-by-860-pixel banner. Wider than standard skyscrapers, it follows users as they scroll down the page.
• The XXL, a 468-by-648-pixel box with an expandable video option.
• The pushdown, a 970-by-418-pixel unit that takes up over half of a page before rolling up.

In other words, web advertising is about to get a lot bigger.  I don't mean more popular -- just bigger in size.

I suppose these changes aren't much different than when larger ad sizes (including 728x90 leaderboards, 120x600/160x600 skyscrapers, and 300x250/336x280 rectangles -- also known collectively as IMUs) hit the scene in 2001-2002.  IMUs were the first major change since 468x60 banners were developed in the mid-1990s.

I understand why these new OPA sizes are being introduced in 2009.  Revenues are down, and online publishers are looking for ways to create excitement.  It's no coincidence the last time new ad sizes hit the market in 2001-2002 was in the middle of a big ad slowdown, and now we're seeing another new set of sizes during our current recession.

A few thoughts:

• Pam Horan, president of the OPA, said, "As we talk to the agency community, one of the things we hear is they need new creative ways to connect with our audiences on the page."  Of course they are!  At least 50% of the RFPs that come across my desk are asking for "new and unique placements" or "outside the box thinking."  Agencies always love new and bigger sizes, because they feel like they can get more creative with their creative.  The only difference is the economy.  When times are good, the majority of publishers don't listen to agencies' requests.  But when dollars are disappearing, publishers and agencies do whatever they can to convince advertisers that they're doing something new and different.
• Read any wish list for the online advertising business written by an industry analyst or expert in the past few years.  You'll usually see statements like, "Online advertising needs to become more standardized in its creative placements, execution, and reporting.  There are too many sites with varying standards and practices out there."  These sorts of blog entries and columns are especially common at the beginning of a year, as people are writing their predictions for the coming year.  Well, sadly these new web ad sizes won't help bring us toward greater standardization -- they'll take us farther away.  These new ad sizes are not being adopted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the industry group that establishes de-facto standards for online ad sizes and practices.
  
• More sizes equals less standardization.  More sizes equals more work for agencies to produce different sets of creative that will fit multiple websites.  More sizes equals more unsold inventory for many publishers.  Why?  Because publishers will have a wider variety of spots to fill on their sites, since it'll be hard to match up a greater number of sizes with the advertisers who have creative in that size.
  

The "let's make ad sizes bigger" and "let's keep throwing more sizes out there" mentality of the online ad industry reminds me of another business sector that isn't doing so great right now -- the U.S. auto industry.

• "Let's make them bigger" strategy sounds extremely familiar to the path General Motors and Ford adopted in the 1990s, by supersizing their vehicles and pushing so many SUVs onto the roads.
• And "let's give the market more and more choices" sounds exactly like GM's strategy of producing hundreds of different models and trim lines of its vehicles -- as opposed to Toyota's and Honda's philosophy of more standardization and fewer different models.

A few new ad sizes might put a few short-term dollars in a few publishers' pockets, but they certainly aren't the long-term answer the online ad industry still needs.