I find this article very helpful. I am a graphic artist myself, who is quite capable of making advertisements, but knowing i’m doing the right thing is always reassuring.
One thing I have not really gotten into, however, is where to go to advertise sites. Often my clients want to know where they can post their advertisements (aside from the places they already advertise), and I almost never know where to point.
Any pointers?
James, in order to figure out where your clients’ advertising dollars are best spent, you’ll have to do some market research to find out where their target markets are located. For example, I have a client who runs a national nanny locator and referral service. Her clients are upscale, professional, often dual-income families. Part of my job as her web presence strategist is to determine where such people go when they are online, as well as offline. What do they read, where do they visit, what do they like to see?
If you’ll think like a marketing manager instead of an artist when determining ad placement, you’ll see better results. 
Hope this helps,
Melinda Robinson, Partner
Rodeo City Technology Group
I’m currently working on making my freebies in Fireworks and CorelDraw! I’ll keep you posted!
Thanks for the insightful reasearch!
As for alt graphic programs, have you considered Gimp? The 2.x series are quite powerful considering the price!
Nice pointers, but is that to say that just because everyone does it is good? It would be interesting to see the number of clicks each ad gets depending on how they are designed… and placed… and are in line with other marketing communication tools from the same company…
Despite this I still find the article good in a Kotler cook-book kind of way.
Thanks for the article. In reference to trend #6, I think it is inaccurate to say that 468x60 is the standard banner size - 728x90 leaderboards are more in line with today’s online standard banner size.
I found this an interesting introduction to online ad design but would have liked a little bit more on technical details such as click-through rates as Thomas mentions above. This would help to provide a more ammunition for the conclusions. Saying that, the links provided are good and lead to places we can get a lot more information.
As a follow-up, it might be a good idea to tackle a few sites in different fields that use ads and show what they have done and the thought process behind each.
I think one of the most impressive things about this article is the general quality of the feedback.
Defining something as ‘a trend’ is always going to be subjective to some extent, but there have been some very insightful points made, some quite even-handed comments and some excellent suggestions for future tacks. Nice.
It is interesting to note that today (Oct 22, 2004) 2 of the 3 sites listed using curves no longer use the curves as a major part of their design. There are still rounded corners on boxes but no large half page ones.
OK I missed the part about this being an article about ADs and not websites.
Great article, thanks to the author for putting together a nice, digestable intro to the subject.
What I’d like to see in future articles, are sites that BREAK the rules and still succeed. Where are the mavericks who make thier own rules and wind up innovating or starting their own trends. Or maybe just stand out as being unique?
nice piece of work…thanx for your dedication
Thanks for the great color scheme links!
thanks
thats a big help for me
Great Observations. Funny how I see this stuff daily, but until it’s written in a clear format like this, I don’t give it much thought.
Great Tips! Now I know what to look at. Ads will never look the same to me again.
This is kinda noobish
Great tips!
I would like to view the IAB & PWC report you sited at the start of this article; the link appears to be broken.
This is a great article–you’ve provided interesting, accurate information that is easy to read quickly. Many years in advertising have taught me that it ALWAYS pays listen to what others have to say. Every perspective helps, and when it includes useful, factual information like your article, it’s even better!