Davidcard[Posted by David Card]

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Last night, colleague Nate Elliott tweeted about a cool Apple rich media ad on ESPN’s home page. That inspired me to take a quick morning tour around major media sites, to see what everyone’s doing. The unscientific homepage summary below shows who’s doing branding deals, and gives some hints at how tough things are for different segments. Sports site are rockin’. Traditional news media and portals at least have fixed-placement sponsors that own the page for the day. CBS seems to be doing something interesting.

Portals and Social Networks

  • Yahoo – fixed placement AT&T rich media ad
  • MSN – fixed placement Clorox ad
  • AOL – fixed placement Disney rich media ad
  • MySpace – rotating a lot of house ads, a couple rich media, one that integrates a sweepstakes with the MySpace page promoting Dreamworks’ "I Love You, Man" movie
  • Facebook – no home page. Rotating Match.com ad on my page

News Sites

  • CNN – rotating rich media house ads
  • MSNBC – fixed placement (?) spot for an online weightloss program. Possibly contextually targeted (there’s a story on weight loss)
  • Yahoo News – no ads above the fold
  • Wall Street Journal – fixed placement IBM rich media ad
  • New York Times – fixed placement VW rich media ad

TV Network Sites

  • CBS – interesting integrated ad/programming rich-media promotion with AT&T, a lead sponsor for March Madness, that rotates with house promos
  • ABC – no traditional ad units. Rolls video automatically, and shows TV spots every three clips or so
  • NBC – rotating rich media ads
  • Fox – rotates some rich media units with house ads

Women’s Sites

  • iVillage – rotating rich media units for mostly online-only advertisers, but some traditional advertisers (Procter & Gamble)
  • AOL Women/Lifestyle – rotating rich media, traditional advertisers
  • Yahoo Shine – rotates rich media, house ads, and smaller text units. Some are targeted

Sports Sites

  • ESPN – rich media takeover by Apple that’s integrated with the site’s overall design (not content this time): the ad "interacts" with ESPN’s nav tabs, etc.
  • Yahoo Sports – rotating rich media ads, some targeted
  • CBS Sports (Sportsline) – frequency-capped rich media takeover by Pontiac, later visits show Pontiac sports-related sweepstakes
  • Sports Illustrated – fixed placement rich media Mobil ad that has Nascar news tie-in