Types Of Online Ad Formats

There are various different kind of ad formats used in online advertising in today’s market. Due to a tremendous growth in the number of internet users in last few years, there is also a certain increase in the types of ad formats. As people are ignoring conventional ads so the advertising companies are coming with new innovative ad formats to attract visitors.

There is another reason for the increase in the types of ad formats, since internet is growing very fast and therefore, people have also started to create various different kind of websites on which conventional ads cannot perform good for example today there are various image sharing and video sharing sites available online, so, on such sites conventional banner ads will not perform better and therefore, advertising networks use video ads or flash banners for these type of sites.

In today’s world we have seen various different types of ads like in-text ads, banner ads, rich media ads, interstitial ads, link locker ads, pop ups, pop-under ads, in-text links ads, video ads etc. So, in this article i am going to discuss about these ad formats so that you can get a better understanding of these ad formats and can select best ad network for your site.

Types Of Ad Formats:

Banner Ads
Video Ads
In-Text Ads
In-Text Links Ads
Rich Media Ads
Pop Up Ads
Pop Under Ads
Interstitial Ads
Link Locker Ads
Contextual Ads

Banner Ads:

Banner ads are basically display ads which are in the form of banners. A banner could be rectangular or square in shape. The very popular banner ads which are normally used by sites are Leaderboards and skyscrapers. Usually banner ads are image based ads but sometimes you may see them showing text ads.

Some Good Banner Ad Networks:

Google Adsense
AdSoid
PropellerAds
Clicksor

Video Ads:

Video Ads are basically short videos about any product or services. These short videos are embedded in any video, which we see online such as on YouTube videos. These short video ads run at the start, end or at the mid of the video. You can see an example of video ads on YouTube. Usually we see video ads within an online video but sometimes display banner ads also show some video ads.

Some Video Ad Networks:

Videe.Tv

In-Text Ads:

In-Text Ads are basically a form of contextual ads where some keywords from the webpage are matched with the advertisements and when visitors hover their mouse over these selected keywords then ads which are in the form of small boxes are shown to them and if visitors want to go to the advertisers site then they can click the ads to visit the advertisers site.

Usually these selected keywords are marked with dotted, double line or underline. You can see an example of in-text ad on Infolinks, which is a very popular in-text advertising network.

Some Good In-Text Ad Networks:

In-Text Link Ads:

These ads are also in-text ads where some keywords from the webpage are selected. But the major difference is, in in-text link ads no ads will be shown on hovering the mouse over marked keywords. In this format an affiliate link will be added to a selected keyword and the link looks like the other original links present on the site. So, the visitors click these advertisement links on their own will by thinking that they are original link given by the author.

Some In-Text Link Ad Networks:

Viglink

Rich Media Ads:

Rich Media Ads are basically display banner ads but these ads involves some kind of user interaction. You may have seen many flash banner ads that ask you to do some activity. Usually these ads attract visitors to click on ads by showing some game or video that ask them to click on the ad.

Some Good Rich Media Ad Networks:

PropellerAds

Pop Up Ads:

Pop Up Ads are ads which are shown in a pop up window. This pop up window pops up above the active browser window and therefore, they are considered more intrusive. Pop Up Ads are losing popularity whereas its alternative Pop Under Ads are taking its place because they are less intrusive in nature.

The major difference between Pop Up Ads and Pop Under Ads is, Pop Up Ads pop above the current browser window whereas Pop Under Ads pop up behind the window.

To get a better understanding of the difference between pop up and pop under ads you can see the below image.

Pop Under Ads:

Pop Under Ads are basically ads which are shown in a pop up window. Usually Pop Under Advertising networks provide a script to their publishers that they have to install on their websites. On a pop under ads activated website, when a visitor clicks anywhere on the website, a new browser window pops up which includes an ad and is hidden under the active browser window and therefore, doesn’t interrupt the users experience immediately.

Some Good Pop Up And Pop Under Ad Networks:

Interstitial Ads:

Usually interstitial ads are used by paid URL shortener websites. Before describing the term interstitial ads lets first understand the term interstitials, Interstitials are the webpages, which are displayed before or after an expected content page. So, interstitial ads are full page ads which are shown to visitors before they will be redirected to the actual destination page.

URL shortener websites use this ad format, where you can short your long looking link into a short link which contains ad. So, whenever a visitor clicks on the shorten link then he/she will be first shown an interstitial ad for few seconds before redirecting him/her to the destination page.

Some Best Interstitial Ad Networks:

Link Locker Ads:

Link Locker Ads are variant of interstitial ads. These ads are also like interstitial ads but they ask visitors to complete a task before redirecting them to actual destination page. If a user successfully completes the task then he/she will be allowed to see the content or visit the original destination page otherwise not allowed to visit the destination page.

Some Best Link Locker Ad Networks:

Contextual Ads:

Basically Contextual Ads could be of any type, that is, it could be banner ads, pop under ads or any other format. But the thing that makes it different from other ad formats is, in contextual advertising the ads shown on a website are relevant to the content of the site.

Contextual ads increase the CTR by a huge margin. For example: Suppose your website is about handbags then the ads shown to visitors will be about handbags or related to it. You can see contextual ads on the right side in Google’s search results.

Some Good Contextual Ad Networks: