Blogging Banners, Ads and Other Nerdy Stuff

People tend to start questions to me with:

“It’s probably a dumb question, but…”

There are NO dumb questions when it comes to blogging, guys…I’d much rather you ask then just mess around. There are so many things to keep track of, and so many new tools available every day, that I am more skeptical of the people who think they do know everything.

And I wouldn’t have anything to blog about if you did know it all, so really…I should be thanking you, rather than the other way around.

So today, I’m schooling you in some slightly nerdy but hopefully helpful information — all of them questions that have been recently submitted to me.

Blogging Banners and Ads

There are a few terms we should probably define before we go any further.

Banners

Banners are typically graphics or ads that run on your site, and while they can be any size, there are a few accepted standards that organizations, media buyers and others look for.

These are updated and maintained in large part by IAB (http://www.iab.net/). I strongly recommend going to the Ad Unit Guidelines page when building your media kit or working with brands that want to advertise on your website or blog.

Commonly used sizes:

Banner/Leaderboard (728×90)

*note: on my blog this is cut off because it’s too wide for my content area, but you can see the full graphic here

source: IAB

Rectangle (medium 300×250; small 180×150)

source: IAB

Skyscaper (160×600)

source: IAB

When you receive an ad from a company, you may either be provided the HTML (the image and the affiliate link would be hosted on the company’s website) or just the graphic. If you get the graphic, you’ll have to host/upload the image yourself then use some basic HTML of your own to assign a link to the graphic (see w3 schools for a good tutorial).

Badges

These often look and act like ads — you may be provided HTML or you can create some on your own — but instead point to other blogs or websites.

For example, people taking part in the #Fitblog Challenges have been given a badge, or button, to put on their website to let people know what they’re up to.

It’s pretty easy to create a badge or button to share with your own readers, so you may want to make one and offer it to people who want to tell the world that they love your posts!

Thumbnails

Thumbnails have multiple meanings — they can reference the graphic that is used at the beginning of videos (the image you see before hitting play). Or, thumbnail may refer to the images that are associated with your posts — sometimes you do this manually in your theme; sometimes the post automatically pulls the image it thinks should be associated.

Example:

Thumbnails also appear when you post something to Facebook — you know how you can usually pick which picture you want to appear next to the short description? Those are thumbnails.

Specs

This one’s pretty easy — “specs” is short for specifications, and it just means … what the heck do you want?

Brands tend to use this word (and other jargon) when they want to get details from you about what ad sizes you support on your website, what links you accept, etc.

So if someone asks you what “ad specs” you accept, he or she wants to know that you have openings for leaderboards and skyscrapers, or only buttons or room in your sidebar, etc.