4 Essential display ad formats that every Publisher should be using

Display advertising is an essential part of the digital landscape, with Display format ads growing in popularity year after year. So much so that, according to Statista, in 2024, Display advertising spending worldwide is forecast to expand by +6.9% to reach roughly 236 billion dollars. Display ads are a staple of digital Publishing and can help you successfully monetize your website traffic and unlock sustainable revenue streams by appealing to your end users with highly engaging visuals. Read this article to find out about 4 essential display ad formats that every Publisher should be using as well as ExoClick’s excellent Display advertising solutions for Publishers:

Benefits of display advertising for website Publishers: Essential display ad formats that every Publisher should be using

When we talk about the 4 essential display ad formats that every Publisher should be using, we are talking Banners, Responsive Display Ads, Fullpage Interstitial and Multiformat ads. The best thing about Display ads? Your Advertisers love them! Here’s why should an advertiser consider using responsive display ads:

#1 They are cost effective: Display ads tend to have a lower cost per impression, offering Advertisers more budget-friendly options. This means that they can experiment more with test campaigns and even with different pricing models, including CPM and CPC. By offering them this flexibility, Advertisers will instantly want to bid for your ad zones, a great benefit of display advertising for website Publishers.

#2 They do wonders for brand awareness: Display ads can significantly boost your Advertisers’ brand popularity across platforms with compelling and striking visuals of their products and services. Once again, this is great news for you and the long-term value of your ad zones.

#3 Lots of design options: With Display, Advertisers can use text, with which to experiment with copy, images, gifs and even video. This gives them plenty of flexibility when it comes to design options, as well as loads of opportunities for A/B testing, and more opportunities to target your ad zones with testing campaigns with various creative options.

#4 They can use Contextual targeting: With Contextual, Display ads will be placed on your website according to the relevancy of their advertised service with your site’s focus topic and vertical. So if your website is about Gambling, for instance, Sports Betting ads would be a good fit. This is great news both for your Advertiser and you, since you will be able to provide a great user experience by offering relevant ads that match your end user’s interests.

#5 Ideal for retargeting campaigns: With this form of Display advertising, Advertisers can target end users who have previously visited their landing or site but didn’t take a desired action. This means more possibilities to convert, and to bid for your ad zones.

#6 Excellent Display advertising solutions for Publishers! Implementing Display advertising through ExoClick you can access high quality Publisher features designed to maximize your ad zones’ results such as Ad Refresh, our fully Customizable data Dashboards, AdBlock circumvention solutions, and more!

So now that we know why you should be enabling Display zones for your Advertisers to bid for, let’s look at 5 of the main Display ad formats that you can offer through ExoClick’s Ad Network:

#1 Display Banner ads of all shapes and sizes!

One of the most popular forms of Display, and definitely one of the top essential display ad formats that every Publisher should be using is Banner; a creative rectangular ad that is shown at the top, side or bottom of your website. Banner ads are lighter than rich media formats, meaning that they load faster and are less resource consuming. This leads to more affordable bid prices for your Advertisers, attracting more of them to your ad zones. With Banner ads your Advertisers can use both static and Video creatives, which opens up more display options for them to match your website’s content type. Bidding is CPM and CPC.

ExoClick’s Ad Network offers several Banner formats including:

Classic Display Banners: They come in many sizes including 300×100, 300×250 Banner ad, 300×500 Banner ad, Banner ad 728×90, 160×600, and 900×250. Creatives are jpeg, png and gif with a maximum weight of 150KB.

Sticky Banner: This Banner can be made to ‘stick’ in a specific position on the end user’s device screen. There are 9 positions available and it comes in various sizes. Creatives are jpeg, png, gif max weight 150KB.

Video Banners: These are short Video content Banners with optimized playback for a fast and glitch free user experience. Creatives are 160×600, 300×100, 300×250, 728×90 MP4 files, max weight 1.5 MB.

Benefits of Banner ads: Excellent Display advertising solutions for Publishers

Cost-effective: As mentioned above, Banner ads tend to be lighter, which means that they are more budget-friendly for your Advertisers, who will happily bid for your Banner zones.

Easy to create and rotate: Banners are simple in design, which means that it is easier to create and build a layout that meets basic requirements, which makes them also swift and easy to upload and, if needed, to change.

Huge volumes: Because Banners have lower bid options, your Advertisers can target larger audiences, meaning that more eyeballs will be on your ad zones, increasing your website revenues and giving your Advertisers more chances to convert.

Great for testing: Because of the large volumes and the low bid prices, Banners offer a great chance to run test campaigns to your Advertisers, allowing them to discover your ad zones whilst running test campaigns to increase the reach of their offers.

End users are used to seeing them: End users have most likely encountered Banners before, so they are used to them and know exactly what they are. This generates trust, making them more likely to click if they find the ad interesting. And because they know it is an ad, these are qualified clicks, generating more chances to convert and increasing revenues.

A chance to test different creative types: As stated above, Banners support both still and Video creatives. This allows your Advertiser to test out lots of different creatives using ExoClick’s Variations Optimization Algorithm.

Various sizes available: Banners offer several size options to help draw attention to the ads across your website, giving you a chance to test out various placement and sizes. For instance, you could test a Skyscraper Banner placement against a Header Banner ad and see what is more effective.

TIP! Make sure to enable Responsive Display ads: Through Banner ads you can enable Responsive Display Ads on your ad zones, attracting more Advertisers to your ad zones.

#2 Enable Multi-Format ads on your Banner zones

Another essential display ad formats for Publishers; Multi-Format ads allow Publishers to serve Banners or Native in the same zone, pitching different Banner sizes and Native widgets against each other and serving the highest bidding ad. This ability to serve multiple formats can increase the number of eligible bids for your impressions, giving Advertisers access to ad inventory that was not available to them beforehand.

As an example, Desktop Footer is a typical large 900×250 display Banner zone. An Advertiser can’t target this zone with a smaller Banner or a Native ad, unless you use the footer as a Multi-Format ad zone. With Multi-Format Ads, the Footer now has different combinations of inventory depending on which won the highest bid for either the whole Footer zone, or parts of the Footer zone. Multi-Format ad Desktop Footer can display the following different combinations:

1 Banner 900×250

1 x Banner ad 728×90

3 x 300×250 Banner ads or 4 x 300×250 Banners 100% width

1 x 3 Native widget, 1 x 4 Native widget or 1 x 5 Native widget depending on the website layout.

Benefits of Multi-Format ads: ExoClick, an Ad network with Multi-Format ads

Favor the highest bids and increase eCPMs: eCPM rates are very competitive in comparison to standard ad zones, making it another essential display ad format for Publishers. The ad format rotation occurs in real time to display the most effective ad format. You can select different Banner sizes and Native zones by generating a single ad script, choosing multiple existing ad zones and letting them compete against each other, showing only the one with the highest CPM value.

Opening up more ad inventory: The ability to serve multiple formats in one same zone can increase the number of eligible bids for a Publisher’s impressions while giving Advertisers access to previously unavailable inventory, opening up new revenue streams for Publishers and Advertisers alike.

Highly customizable: Multi-Format ads can help you achieve a seamless look and feel on your website, providing a pleasant and cohesive experience for the end user. This is because instead of having strict dimensions, there is maximum and minimum width and height, offering further flexibility for the ads to fit in perfectly within their placement or widget. Also, by editing your Native zone’s CSS code you can customize your Native Multi-Format zones.

You are in control: Choose two or multiple ad formats you want to display on a specific ad placement. Configure each ad format’s look and feel and restrictions, individually. Use custom fonts, colors, and styles for your Native ads in Multi-Format ads rotation.

One script for each Ad placement: Multi-Format ads are easy to set up, all you need to do is to place the Multi-Format Ad script in your Ad placement, as any other standard ad zone.

TIP! Customize container sizes for seamless integration: Yet another one of ExoClick’s Display advertising solutions for Publishers; set the container of your MFA placement to automatically resize with the ad format winning the auction, to achieve a great aspect on your zone size to avoid spaces between your content or cropping advertiser assets.

#3 Make the most of ExoClick’s new Responsive Display Ad formats

ExoClick now offers more ad formats for Responsive Display Ads, expanding on great Display advertising solutions for Publishers: Instant Message, Sticky Banners and Fullpage Interstitial, on top of Banner. This allows you to offer more ad formats and placements to your Advertisers, increasing demand on your ad zones. With RDAs, Advertisers can upload images (300x300px) and texts (title, description and brand) to their admin panel and the system will automatically produce different creative size options for them. Here are the creatives sizes that RDAs are compatible with:

Static Banner sizes:

160×600

300×100

300×250

300×500

728×90

900×250

Sticky Banner sizes:

160×600

300×250

728×90

900×250

RDAs are enabled by default on your ad zones, which means that if you wish for your Advertisers to use them, you don’t need to do anything further. You can also toggle them off if you want to deactivate the option.

Benefits of Responsive Display Ads for Publishers: Why should an Advertiser consider using Responsive Display Ads on your website?

Aligned with IAB and Google: What’s an advantage of Responsive Display Ads? RDAs are guaranteed to meet the industry standard ad weight because ExoClick’s platform automatically generates them to be fully aligned with the IAB industry standards and Google Chrome’s recommendations, making them fully compliant and an essential display ad format for Publishers.

Higher eCPMs and revenues: Why should an Advertiser consider using Responsive Display Ads? With RDAs, Advertisers can quickly optimize their campaigns using multiple assets simultaneously, which will display in different formats and sizes across multiple sites, leading to higher CTRs and conversions. This contributes to your ad zones becoming more competitive, bringing higher bids, leading to higher CPM and revenues.

Attract more Advertisers: Some Advertisers have limited design resources for ad creatives. By enabling RDAs on your site you allow them to create a large range of ad variations and sizes to test out with minimum resources and time, which makes your ad zones more attractive, which is another reason why an Advertiser should  consider using Responsive Display Ads.

Enhanced end user experience: RDAs are fully responsive and they fit seamlessly with your different ad zone sizes, avoiding creatives that are squashed or pixelated, and providing a great browsing experience on your site as a result.

Tip! Update your website’s Async codes! Please note, to enable RDAs on FPI ad zones you will need to make sure that your website’s scripts are updated with the latest Async Admin Panel codes.

#4 What are Fullpage Interstitial ads and how much do Interstitial ads pay?

More benefits of Display advertising for website Publishers is that you can use Fullpage Interstitial ads,which are a full horizontal format that fills the full screen of the device, served whilst the end user is navigating a website. FPIs are Google and Better Ads Coalition compliant since they feature a ‘Close ad’ option at the top right of the ad. Creatives are 1600×900 jpg, png, gif (max weight 300Kb), video mp4 (max weight 1.5 MB) or iframe (responsive LP optimized to 1600×900). Bidding: CPM, CPC.

Benefits of Fullpage Interstitial ads: Essential display ad formats that every Publisher should be using

Google compliant: This ad format is Google and Better Ads Coalition compliant because it features a ‘Close ad’ option at the top right of the ad.

Recover Chrome audiences: Great alternative to the Popunder as Chrome sometimes blocks that ad format, so you can still monetize a large format ad zone with the Fullpage Interstitial. Or use Popunders on other browsers and Fullpage Interstitial on Chrome.

Great Google rankings: ExoClick offers great Display advertising solutions for Publishers and limits the weight of creatives at 300Kb for jpg, png, gif and 1.5 Mb for video ads, for fast load times on your website ensuring a good Google ranking.

Frequency capping Trigger options: The FPIs have great trigger options on how the format is shown to the end user along with frequency capping settings, so the ads allow for a non-intrusive user journey on your website and allowing you to show the Full Page Interstitial ad again to the same user after a set amount to increase revenue opportunities from the format.

Great for Video: The format is ideal for Advertisers with MP4 creatives which are great for converting Games offers, Dating, VoD to your users. And entertaining video content looks great on your site for your end users.

TIP! Interstitial ads best practices, introduce Video advertising: With websites that feature only static image content such as gallery sites it can be slightly more challenging to monetize with Video ads such as Outstream and Video Slider ads. Fullpage Interstitials can also host MP4 ad creatives, additionally because on mobile the FPI is viewed on the horizontal, this is similar to a TikTok or Instagram Reel, providing additional entertainment for your end users.

Do you want to start monetizing your website with ExoClick’s Display advertising formats? Or maybe you have more questions about our essential display ad formats that every Publisher should be using and our Display advertising solutions for Publishers? Make sure to get in touch with our Customer Success team now!