Pop-ups, text ads or interstitials - contemporary brands have a wide spectrum of choice when it comes to online advertising. Staggering price does not always guarantee a high effectiveness of an ad. The latter should first and foremost fit the advertised brand or business to be truly compelling.

 It is hard to come up with a reliable ranking of most effective online ads for a number of reasons. Ad potency depends to a large extent on the type of an advertised product, the host site, the user's preferences and mood and many other factors. Nevertheless, there are some research-based rules of thumb worth further consideration.
With online advertising world undergoing constant changes, advertisers must be wary of user ad rejection. Intended to attract consumers, many ad types have the opposite effect and put off users. Interstitials and pop-ups belong to this category. Some advertisers seem reluctant to grasp the basic truth: often the fastest way to destroy user experience and discourage potential buyers is to take over their browser with an ad that users cannot control or did not wish to view.

Consumers Grow Banner-Blind

According to research, animated ads, pop-ups and interstitials have the highest visibility. At the same time, they register the lowest click-through rates. Target audience of banner ads and text ads falls prey to so-called banner blindness. Consumers grow so used to the presence of these ads that they virtually stop seeing them. Animated ads also have an early point of diminishing returns. When there is too much animation in an ad, users tend to quickly tune it out. Simple text ads, such as those served by AdBrite and Google AdSense, appear to be the happy medium when it comes to cost versus click-through rate. Studies also show that up to 85 percent of ad conversions take place as late as two weeks after the ad was viewed.

Focus On Brand Fit

The global music streaming mogul Spotify made £370m in revenue for 2012 with increases in both users and advertisers. How did they do it?
Spotify has a selection of ten main advert formats, ranging from interruptive ads, adverts popping up during extended terms of no-use of the application to clickable ads. Each of formats fits a specific type of business. Light boxes and homepage takeovers are tailored to the needs of the high-end or those desperate for last-minute promotion (e.g. movie studios, album launches). Small-time businesses with modest budgets may do well with trendy playlists.

Top Five Spotify Ad Formats 

Ultimate goal of each marketer is to create positive experience and rewarding content where consumers want it, and when they want it. Therefore, it is important to know how to communicate a brand in a way that supports business and how to deliver content that adds value to consumers. Choosing a right ad format is crucial. Here is an inspiring list of five most often selected Spotify advert formats:

Audio ads: these adverts play in between ten to twenty minutes worth of music for a time ranging from sixty seconds, to two minutes. Replacing an album cover is a solitary image or GIF. The audio ad is limited to thirty seconds per brand/product. A click of the GIF or image provides a hyperlink to the brand's requested link that can lead to a home page, Twitter or Facebook.

Homepage hijack: full home-page takeovers provide sponsored playlists, GIFS, hyperlinks to product pages. As the most pricey option, homepage takeovers are not hugely popular among advertisers, but they generate the highest amount of consumer interaction. Audio is not allowed, though video is occasionally seen via an embedded YouTube clip. 

Branded playlist: this ad format is most prevalent due to the fact that brands can create their own playlists with Facebook accounts for free. Clothing stores such as H&M and Abercrombie often put up seasonal playlists featuring the same music as heard in their stores. Brands such as British TV Channel 4 have launched playlists that feature music heard in recent television episodes.

Lightboxes: Spotify lightboxes are an overlay window that opens up within Spotify, containing anything from image galleries to flash videos, games to interactive competitions, live streaming and more. The lightbox is a user-initiated format. It's triggered when the user clicks on a display ad, audio ad or homepage takeover images.

MPUs: mid-page unit ads are displayed on the Spotify homepage each time the user activates Spotify, restarts it, or returns to the homepages. This advert format is commonly seen, yet not blocking any important features of the site.

Sources: http://www.allbusiness.com; http://econsultancy.com; www.forbes.com
Photo: http://community.spotify.com