Analysis of Display Ads in a Browsing Session

Digital Advertising is one of the most high profile ways to advertise your company. If your company advertises on a high profile website, like Google or Facebook, there is a potential that millions of people will see your ads. This blog’s purpose is to analyze the ads I encounter during a browsing session and hold them up to a few industry standards while comparing the desktop and mobile versions of the ads.

Desktop Ads

First, we will look at some desktop ads. These were the first type of digital ads created, and during my browsing I discovered that there seemed to be quite a bit more ads on the Desktop versions of websites versus the mobile versions. I’m not sure if it was simply because of the types of websites that I visited during my browsing or if this is a more general trend. I will have to do more research on this.

Facebook’s Desktop Ads

One of the first websites I visited was Facebook, because I remembered they had a lot of ads that I had seen in the past. On my visit to Facebook’s website, I noticed that there were two main kinds of ads.

There were sidebar ads next to the newsfeed as well as sponsored posts in the newsfeed. Here are some examples of the two: These ads do follow the standards that I found for IAB. These ads are not obtrusive to the user’s experience, and therefore do not require a close ad button. The images do not take long to load, and are not overly large in size. They have no flashing animations and do not expand in any way. They also all indicate that they are sponsored content. I believe that both types of ads on Facebook can be effective. The sidebar ads seemed targeted towards me, especially as a Hurricane Harvey victim. The furniture ad was also effective, and included multiple pictures that were attention grabbing.

 A Beautiful Mess’ Desktop Ads

 I found a fairly large amount of digital ads when navigating to one of my favorite lifestyle blogs, abeautifulmess.com. There were mainly two types of ads on this website.

There were Adhesion banners at the bottom of the page as well as sidebar ads. The adhesion banners were not animated, but the sidebar ads did have some animation. The bottom banner had a close ad button, but the side banner did not. I believe that both ads followed the guidelines in the same way that the facebook ads did. The animation in the sidebar banner loaded quickly and the animation did not last more than a few seconds. I believe that these ads were effective because they worked together. The animation in the sidebar ad definitely got my attention.

 Amazon.Com’s Desktop Ads

The last Desktop ad we will be discussing are from Amazon.Com. I am a loyal user of this website and visit it fairly often. I know that they often show you items from their own website, but I didn’t remember whether they had outside ads or not, so I decided to visit the site and see for myself. On the homepage, I only noticed one ad, which you can see below.

The ad seems to follow advertising guidelines, it was unobtrusive near the side of the page, but it was also pretty effective. I saw the phone and was expecting it to be an Amazon listing, but then saw that it was offering the phone for free. So that definitely got my interest.

Mobile Ads VS Desktop Ads

Next, we will be analyzing mobile ads vs. desktop ads for the three sites that I just mentioned. It’s important to view mobile in addition to desktop, because the majority of internet use now happens on mobile devices like phones or tablets.

Facebook’s Mobile Ads

When using the Facebook mobile site, I only encountered sponsored posts and not any other kind of ad. These sponsored posts are basically the same as the ones I encountered on desktop, except the image takes up more of the screen. Here’s an example: This ad is not one of the mobile rising star ads, but it can be very effective if the image is targeted towards the user. As a fan of Disney, this ad is pretty targeted to me. I would at least browse their store after seeing this ad.

 A Beautiful Mess’ Mobile Ads

 A Beautiful Mess seems to have a very similar setup with mobile and desktop ads. The ads I saw on mobile get basically the same review I would give their desktop ads, except instead of being in the sidebar they sometimes take up most of the screen. This can be annoying as a mobile user, but we see them so often that we seem to just scroll on past. The Adhesion Banner is one of the mobile rising stars, which is important to point out.

 Amazon.Com’s Mobile Ads

I wanted to talk about this website, even though I didn’t see a single mobile ad for Amazon.com’s homepage while using my mobile device. The fact that Amazon isn’t using digital advertising on the mobile version of their homepage can both be seen as a benefit and a drawback. For the user, it can really be a benefit. Everything you see on the homepage is something produced by Amazon, and possibly something that will interest you or that you might be looking for. But for Amazon, this may be a huge loss of potential revenue.