Flash has faced a bit of controversy recently with Apple’s continued ban of the rich media technology in its products, including the iPhone and iPad. Because of this, many advertisers and media companies are looking to other technologies, such as HTML5, to serve video and rich media on these devices. Rich media ads are known to elicit higher CPMs, so advertisers and publishers are looking for ways to serve rich media ads on all devices. Today, comScore is releasing an online advertising report that shows that Flash and rich media ads represent 40 percent of all U.S. online advertising.
ComScore’s Ad Metrix Creative Summary report is designed to provide data on size, formats, and types of display ads being used by advertisers on publisher sites. For May, the report showed that JPEG display ads led the market with more than 42 percent of impressions in the U.S., while “leaderboard”-style banner ads (728 x 90 in dimension) were the most commonly viewed display ad by size.
In May, nearly 60 percent of U.S. display ad impressions were of the standard GIF/JPEG variety. JPEGs accounted for 42.4 percent of ad impressions, while GIFs accounted for 14.1 percent. Flash and rich media ads combined to represent 40.3 percent of all display ads viewed.
In terms of size, banners represented 23.1 percent of impressions, followed by rectangles (22.7 percent) and non-standard units (22.1 percent). The most common specific ad sizes were medium rectangles (300 x 250 in dimension) at 18.6 percent, leaderboards (728 x 90) at 18.3 percent, and buttons (120 x 90) at 14.7 percent.
Apparently, pop-ups and pop-unders now represent less than 1 percent of all display ad impressions, thanks to pop up blockers. ComScore says that new ad formats, such as the 970 x 418 pushdown and 468 x 648 XXL box, account for only 0.1 percent of impressions.
These types of metrics will no doubt be useful to advertisers and publishers that are looking to boost their CPMs and CTRs. Revenue for online advertising is on the rise, so serving the optimal type of ad could bring advertisers more money.