• by November 7, 2000

As you know, yesterday, AdRelevance released their newest intelligence report, which found that despite full banner popularity, other ad formats account for the majority of online impressions (63%) and garner greater exposure.

It's worth mentioning that AdRelevance also showed that all industries have different technological needs when it comes to animation. Generally speaking, every industry pundit out there is recommending the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" (KISS) philosophy when it comes to online ads, and it looks like advertisers are listening.

As the report authors said, it appears that while sites are making efforts to accommodate newer ad technologies (AltaVista adding SUPERSTITIALs to their rate card is a good recent example of this), advertisers remain grounded in the old standards -- simple animations and images.

The automotive industry, for example, uses image ads (50% of impressions) to show visuals of vehicles, while the b-to-b industry relies on form ads (60% of impressions) more than other industries.

Will those numbers change in the broadband future? Probably. For now, here are a few definitions to remember:

- Animation Ad: Ad created using the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) that allows advertisers to create simple animated images.

- Image Ad: A static ad that does not use interactivity or animation.

- Form Ad: Ad that allows advertisers to include the elements available in HTML forms including text boxes and drop-down menus.