As I am working my way on thestar.com’s new redesign. We encountered one major issue with the new advertising sizes that are aligned with Online Publishers Association.

Push down  – 970 pixel x 418 pixel

XXL box – 468 pixel x 648 pixel

Fixed Panel – 336 pixel x 860 pixel

We contracted out our new design to an outside company. Great, the new design already taken place, so how are we gonna implement the new design without disturbing the existing template?

Take a look of the new design layout wireframe.

new thestar.com layout

The new design will be a 3 column layout. We will always have a leaderboard and a big box on the page.  The content will follow by a major headline story and then a list of story line up. Everything looks good except the new humongous ads sizes break all the layout rule.

Problem: The new ad sizes does not fit with the new design! As always that advertiser wants their ad above-the-fold to get exposure.  Our design was created and built before those new ad sizes. And of course the outside company is not gonna go back to the layout mode unless we slap them with more cash.

Solution: Tweak the layout in the most minimal way and keep everything on the page identical. In order to cut down the developer’s work, I had to take the existing layout and tweak the most minimal way so that we won’t need to touch the majority of the existing CSS stylesheet.

Push down advertising is the easiest to mock up because all you need is to push down all the content below navigation. Then again, it’s so huge that you can’t ignore.

Push Down 970pixel x 418pixel

Here’s a real example from businessinsider.com for push down advertisting.

Push Down Ad closed mode

Push Down Ad open mode

XXL Ad gives me a headache. Ideally, we want to keep our 3 column layout, but this nasty size literally takes up half of the website width!!! So I had to reorganize the headline story content and have it share space with the XXL ad in it’s own box and push everything down.

XXL Box Ad (468 pixel x 648 pixel)

Finally, the fixed panel. The width of fixed panel is 336pixel. It is literally 36 pixel wider than our right rail, which has our big box ad and all the related contents. And with 860pixel in height, there’s no way the headline story abstract can show that much copy to accommodate the height. Therefore I had to bring some story line up and shrink the width in order to accommodate the odd width size.

Fixed Panel Ad 336 pixel x 860 pixel

So why those large ad? I guess the advertisers are now aware the demand for premium inventory, and not just blinking skyscraper anymore.

businessinsider.com believes the following reasons why advertisers want to move away from just banners:

• If advertisers really want to buy banners, they’ll do it for cheaper through an ad network.
• Banners are too easy to ignore. Demand-generation ads need to interrupt content (like they do everywhere but online).
• When people think of the banner, they think of a blinky, subprime mortgage ad where you have to shoot the duck.

After years of working as designer in the corporate environment, you will notice couple things

• Always design around advertisement
• Always provide the best above the fold exposure for advertisement
• Making online banner ads and sponsored by logo are like daily chore

I am not a big fan of advertisement, but what can you do? it pays everyone’s salary!