Survey unveils trends in online ad formats

Research by Right Media - creator of the Right Media Exchange - on the trading across its Exchange has found interesting trends in the popularity of different online advertising formats in 2007.

The Exchange, on which over 30,000 buyers and sellers globally trade over five billion impressions everyday, reveals that in March 2007 59 per cent of its global Exchange impressions were leaderboards, but this declined progressively over each three-month interval and by December had dropped to 36.9 per cent.

The continuous shift away from serving pop-ups also showed no let-up and although only accounting for 2.4 per cent of impressions traded in March 2007, this had fallen to a lowly 1.4 per cent in December.

On the other hand, the number of medium rectangles traded worldwide increased strongly from 11.1 per cent in March to 18.7 per cent in December.

These global exchange-wide trends were also reflected when analysing UK-only format popularity, but a much more marked rise in the serving of medium rectangles during December was observed.

In the UK in September 12.1 per cent of impressions were medium rectangles, in December this had increased to 30.5 per cent.

Denise Colella, VP - International at Right Media, said: "Obviously format popularity on the Exchange reflects what is available for buying and selling at any given time, but its global nature and size ensures it is a good barometer to what is happening industry-wide.

"With the greater use of pop-up blockers it's not surprising that this format is losing favour, as concern among advertisers and publishers grows as to the impact that these have on a campaign's success.

"As some formats lose popularity, others gain and this seems to be the case for medium rectangles.

"As this growth in popularity comes towards the end of the year, particularly in the UK, this could well have been driven by a desire to grow sales by employing a more visible in-text format in the run-up to the festive period".

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