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By JON LAFAYETTE
When it comes to Internet advertising, ESPN is discovering that bigger is sometimes better.
Last September The Walt Disney Co.-owned cable network unveiled a new ad strategy for ESPN.com. Instead of the multiple banners and buttons that have long been staples of the Web, the sports site offered its advertisers what officials dubbed the Big Impression ad.
The big ad was 30% bigger than a traditional banner. For $87,000, advertisers were also promised exclusivity on the ESPN site for a 24-hour period and guaranteed 2.5 million impressions.
According to research centering around the recent Universal Pictures film The Mummy Returns, the big ad was three times more effective than traditional Internet banners in creating an impact with consumers.
Conducted by Millward Brown IntelliQuest, the study is significant because Web-content providers have been finding it increasingly difficult to sell ads during the current economic slowdown. And with just a small fraction of Web surfers registering click-throughs (those times when a consumer actually clicks on an ad to buy or learn more about a product), prices for online ads plummeted from $35 per thousand impressions to as little as $5 per thousand.
Other Internet sites have also been looking at larger-format ads. The Interactive Advertising Bureau recently compiled a new set of standards for Web ads that incorporate a bigger format. The trade group is in the midst of its own study on the effectiveness of larger ads.
?I'm looking forward to seeing the new IAB results,? says Duncan Southgate, account group director at Millward Brown. While only the ESPN-Universal study has been made public, Southgate says his company has done research for other sites and found a similar three-fold increase in impact with the larger size. With the IAB using a similar methodology, he expects the group to generate similar findings.
?It's not surprising that it turns out to be true. If you've got two to three times the space, you've got two to three times the chance of getting noticed,? Southgate says. ?It takes it closer to something more like a print ad.?
Once an ad is noticed, ?the branding potential is pretty clear, as long as you integrate your brand.?
Interestingly, the Millward Brown study was not geared to study rates for click-through. The researchers were more interested in studying whether ad size merely affected consumer awareness of a product.
?Click-through is a distraction? as far as measuring an ad's impact, Southgate says. ?We're not trying to ignore click-through,? he adds, although the number of Web surfers who click on ads is very small and not every ad is designed to generate a click.
?You measure branding with a branding study,? he says. There is some correlation between branding and click-through, ?but not in a strong way.?
But the big-ad approach may have its limitations. The relatively high price may keep some buyers away from ESPN.com: The site sometimes seems not to have a sponsor for the big-ad space. Some days it offers a promotion for other ESPN properties, and sometimes it carries the equivalent of a public-service announcement.
But an ESPN spokesperson says that since the program kicked off (with an ad from Compaq) other major marketers, including Ford, Dodge, AT&T, Levi's, JC Penny Gatorade and Nike, have jumped on board.
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