Should You Deploy Larger Format Online Ads for Your Exhibitions?

Don’t let price scare you away from using larger format ad units!

While they can cost substantially more than the “Big 3” (728 x 90, 300 x 250 & 160 x 600), you may find that the richer creative canvas and performance metrics justify the cost.

For example, we routinely see CTRs for 300 x 600s, one of the larger format ad units that we have deployed for numerous exhibitions and events, that are 2x the average of our clients’ Big 3 ad units, and have seen CTR deltas as high as 6x the industry average for standard banners on our clients’ best performing 300 x 600 ad units.

Consider this point from Google… “Clicks and interaction rates correlate strongly with ad size. The larger the ad, the more people will interact.” Want to see how your ads perform vs. industry benchmarks, and how various ad sizes/formats perform relative to one another?  Check out Google’s Display Benchmarks Tool.

While click and interaction rates can vary widely depending on creative, placement, etc., we want to give you an inside look at some data from a recent online ad campaign we ran for an exhibition client in Q1 2015 so you can see the potential benefits here.

The campaign was run on a top 50 U.S. desktop web property, using premium ad inventory purchased on a CPM basis, 100% above the fold, across two Big 3 formats (728 x 90 & 300 x 250) and one larger format ad unit (300 x 600).

The 300 x 600 cost over 50% more than the average CPM of the two smaller ad units, which was a big difference considering this was high-CPM ad inventory.

However, the 300 x 600 had a CTR 2x higher than the average CTR of the smaller units so the 300 x 600 CPC was actually 22% lower than the average CPC for the smaller units.

So in this case, though our buy-in cost was a lot more for the 300 x 600, it actually had a lower CPC.

While KPIs for larger format ads are not always better, and/or the KPI lift may not justify their incremental cost, this example clearly demonstrates why you should not ignore them just because they cost more.

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Posted on April 24, 2015