Advertising

Mediavine Display Adhesion: Introducing a New and Improved Ad Experience

Eric Hochberger

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March 26, 2019

As part of the new and improved ad experiences we touched on in our Mediavine 2019 road map, we’re excited to announce the launch of our new display adhesion design!

What is the Display Adhesion?

Adhesions are the ads that stick to the bottom of the screen on Mediavine sites. Today, we’re referring specifically to the adhesion units that run traditional “display” or “banner ads.” First, to clarify the sometimes-confusing terminology:

On mobile sites, we mean the display adhesion running a 320×50, NOT our video adhesion.
On desktop and tablet devices, we’re referring to the banner running the traditional 728×90 unit and similar ad sizes.

The home page of Stephie Cooks, showing the dark adhesion theme. — Display adhesion with dark theme

Furthermore:

According to official Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) specs, these are known as ad “mobile adhesion banners.” According to Google AdExchange, they’re “horizontal sticky ads.”
At Mediavine, we use the term “adhesion” for desktop and mobile ads of this nature; both adhere to the bottom of the screen, so we feel it’s the clearest description.

We feel this also makes it easier to differentiate adhesion ads at the bottom of the page with “sticky” units such as the sticky sidebar and the sticky video player. Regardless of what you want to call them, those ads at the bottom of your screen perform remarkably well, and we strongly encourage you to run them. Why? Because by design, and definition, they follow users as they scroll throughout your pages, and that translates to highly viewable, revenue-producing ads. Advertisers love high viewability, and in turn, display adhesions are likely going to be some of the top performing units in the Mediavine ad suite. Moreover, you’ll have the chance to serve multiple display adhesion impressions per user, since we refresh the advertisement after significant session duration.

Displaying the differences between the light and dark adhesion themes. — Mobile adhesion in light and dark themes

What’s NEW in the Updated Display Adhesion?

The biggest difference is a minimalistic, compact design. The new adhesions blend seamlessly and aesthetically into individual websites and will continue to respect your choice of a dark or light theme. Sadly, this means we’ve removed our signature Mediavine teal buttons. (I know, I’m more upset than anyone, but we think this is a great move overall.) The X no longer appears at the top right of the gradient banner; You’ll now find it moving inside the bottom gradient, right next to the display ad. A graphic designer working on a tablet, with a color palette beside her.

A graphic designer working on a tablet, with a color palette beside her.

Why the Design Changes?

Mobile Accessibility

First and foremost, the new adhesions are designed for mobile accessibility. We follow Google Material Design’s best practices and now provide a 48×48 touch area for the close button, while ensuring that it maintains the minimum distance from the banner ad and any other object.

No More Report Exclamation Mark

While we never like taking away any features, we’ve removed the exclamation mark, and with it, the ability to report adhesion ads. Ultimately, with this larger touchable area, plus the distance changes, there just wasn’t room left to include it without hurting user experience. According to our research, almost no one was reporting mobile adhesion ads to begin with. More than likely, this was due in part to limited space and lack of clarity on how to report those ads. We’re working on solutions for publishers to be able to report those ads, but for the end users, the exclamation mark ultimately wasn’t a viable solution at this time. We think the improved user experience provided by the larger close button is a net positive, and that should hopefully alleviate much of the concern.

The home page of Stephie Cooks, showing the light adhesion theme. — Display adhesion with light theme

Improved UX and Ad Performance

Making sure the adhesion is easily closable for users that wish to collapse it sounds counterintuitive for an ad management company, but balancing user experience and ads is always the goal. Crazily enough, that larger touch area has NOT led to a revenue decrease during testing. We’ve seen an increase in impressions, eCPM, and CTR (click through rate) of the advertisement, meaning users are preferring this new adhesion design and NOT closing it as often.

Consistent Mediavine Design

Mediavine’s new design team is slowly rebranding our products to offer a more consistent design across all experiences. The revamped adhesion is part of that bigger, ongoing process.

Sticky Video Player Changes

With the smaller adhesion and moving the clickable area, some pretty big changes to our sticky video player, as well as the video adhesion, will follow before long. We’re just going to save that as a teaser for now, but exciting things are coming!

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