What digital ad size should you use for a campaign?

There are a lot of different kinds of online display ads available for advertisers. One of the most common questions we get is what is the best size to run? It really depends on the campaign, the objective, and the measurability. Are you tracking success as clicks? Viewability? Conversions? A new report discusses the ad sizes that tend to have the highest in-view rates.

The research comes from Moat Analytics and reports that the following are the ad sizes ranked as far as in-view rates for desktop computers.

·        65.8%: 970x250

·        62.1%: 300x600

·        55.0%: 160x600

·        52.6%: 300x250

·        49.5%: 728x90

Breaking this down, it’s not surprising that larger ads tend to have the highest viewability on site. These ad sizes tend to be set in positions above the fold on websites.

Also, eMarketer reports that the longer ads typically have longer viewing time. Meaning ads like 300x600 and 160x600 are viewed approximately for 21 seconds vs. the wider ads like 970x250 and 728x90 that are viewed from 16 – 17 seconds. Again, this is not surprising because a user may scroll down a page to read content, and the longer ads can still be seen on the screen.

When looking at the mobile ad display units, 320x50 has the best in-view rate of 64.6% and the 160x600 ad size has the best time viewed with 18.6 seconds.

Overall, our recommendation is to run multiple ad sizes for your campaign. As the campaign matures, look to see which ads are getting you the best results. Once you have established what results you are looking for, you can optimize and funnel more impressions towards the better performing sizes. Additionally, for the ads not performing as well, pause or remove them.