At first, when people talked about display ads, it used to mean nothing but the banner ads. And in fact, it had become quite a popular ad format for a few years. But after a while, in 1998, analysts started to coin a word: banner blindness. According to them, after seeing hundreds and thousands of banner ads, people were just simply avoiding them.

So, the researchers and market experts tried to discover other ways to capture the attention of the readers and consumers. As a result, they came up with various types of display ads as the years passed.

In this article, we’re going to discuss the top five types of display ads you need to know about and how valuable they are for the marketers.

Here we go…

Banner Ads

In simple terms, banner ads are just a form of simple static image that you see inside a webpage occupying a certain amount of space. And the standard banner ads usually contain a simple static image that has no audio or any kind of animation or GIF.

The website of the magazine HotWired published the first ever banner ad of the internet world in 1994 in its October Edition. That ad had a classic click-bait based ad copy with zero company logo. And it just said one simple thing and that is: “ Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? YOU WILL.”

And surprisingly, the ad that time had an amazing click-through rate or CTR of 44% which is phenomenal.

Now, many advertisers still use banner ads as one of their marketing tools. But the other types of display ads might do more justice to your costly ad space and get you better CTR than the current banner ads.

Animated Ads

When it comes to capturing the attention of your target audience, animated ads have the edge over normal banner ads. The movements of the animated ads naturally capture the attention of any reader surfing through the website countering both banner blindness and making the audience curious enough to check out what’s exactly going on with the ad.

Furthermore, advertisers can also combine audio with the animated ads to make them more lively and make them more interesting while explaining about the product or service of the brand.

One of the best things that sets animated ads apart from the banner ads is that it can make the ad fill with more humor. For example, the use of animals to narrate in an animated ad will help your brand connect with its audience with ease. It’s something that’s not possible with normal banner ads.

Interactive Ads

This type of advertisement typically comes with an integrated feature that lets the user or the ad viewer immediately interact with the product or the service. One of such interactive ads are the playable ads. For example, the ads from the mobile games are generally playable so the user can get a little demo of the game’s UI.

You can generally find these types of ads in the gaming websites or other games. Big brands such as McDonald’s are also utilizing this type of ad to increase the brand awareness among their target audience.

Other interactive ads may act like a poll or survey where you have to answer a certain question. While others may give you simple tasks such as coloring a place.

Video Ads

While these types of ads were normally used in the video content platforms such as Netflix or the Youtube, today, we can also see these ads in social networks or any type of websites though various display advertising networks.

Today, almost everyone has a mobile with HD quality video capturing capability. And thanks to that, more and more people are able to create and upload their videos in various networks and websites. And that makes using video ads even easier.

In fact, viewers just love the video ads. Nowadays, people use over 33% of their web surfing time watching various videos through both mobile and desktop. And this makes it quite easy to entice people with an engaging video ad. And the fact that these ads are easily shareable and have a sky-rocketing engagement rate, make this type of ad a great option for the current advertisers.

Interstitial Ads

Thanks to the advancements of mobile technology, the popularity of the interstitial ads has risen at a record-breaking rate. These are a type of full-screen ad that covers the whole mobile display which usually come to action when a mobile user tries to transit from one point or page to another.