When creating an advertising mix for your website, consider your potential advertisers and your audience. Too many ads can turn off your audience and your advertisers. (After all, who wants to pay $X/month to compete with fifty other button ads?) There are many types of direct advertising that you can offer, and it often takes some trial and error to find the right mix of advertising.

Below are the most common website sponsorship methods:

Banner/Button Positions: What’s old is new again. They offer color and sometimes animation. For best results, choose standard ad sizes.

Text Links: These can be static links. Sometimes they may have a sentence or two about the advertiser under them. Paid text links have come under scrutiny lately, but they still remain popular, and SEOs are still buying them. They key is to be smart with them. Contextual linking falls under this category.

Pop-ups/Pop-Unders: Intrusive and annoying, but they do tend to have a higher click-through rate than banners. (Or is that just people accidentally clicking on the ad when they are actually trying to close them.) Many users have blockers that keep standard popups from appearing.

Content Sponsorship: Advertisers have limited control and submit their own content to the publisher, as well as having their ad on the page. These sponsorships tend to be for fixed periods, and the content should be targeted to the publisher’s audience.

Interstitials: Sometimes referred to as Bridge Ads, interstitials appear as you move between pages on a site. Click-throughs are generally greater than from banner adverts or traditional pop-up ads.

Email Newsletters: An advertiser is prominently displayed at the header and/or footer of a regular email newsletter. The ad can be text-based or graphical in nature.

Text Content Links: A keyword phrase embedded within the content of a web page is linked to the advertiser’s web site. Bloggers are sometimes paid to specifically link content. Like text links, this type of advertising has also come under scrutiny.

Are we missing any direct ad types here?

With text link networks under fire and causing angst among webmasters everywhere, there are still ways for publishers to sell text advertising without relying on networks and with little risk of ‘paid link detection’.

This method works especially web for bloggers, but can apply to content on any website.

The idea: Offer to hyperlink specific phrases within articles or content. Offer permanent content links for a one-time fee. For a small website, you could offer a bundle of links for a set price, such as 5 links for $25 or $50 dollars. For the publisher, it’s easy money with no further commitment. For the advertiser, it provides inexpensive permanent backlinks.

The publisher can offer particular pages or sections that they are willing to backlink, and the advertiser can select what phrases they want linked and where. Sometimes the content may need to be tweaked a bit to get the proper phrasing in place. This can be worked out during the negotiation process.

In many cases, it’s better to sell links from older content that is already backlinked from other outside sources.

The key is that the paid links should be contextual. If an article is about buying commercial real estate, paid link should be a related term, such as ‘commercial real estate’ that links to a website or web page about commercial real estate. It’s better to reject inappropriate advertising than potentially compromise your search engine standings for a few dollars.

Tips: Only sell one or two links per page. Do not repeat the link throughout every instance of the term on a page. Do not employ the same text link phrase sitewide. And most important, make sure the contextual links are in the body of the content.

There are many ways Google can spot paid links. And whether paid links are evil or not is up for debate. Done properly, offering links through the above method is virtually undetectable.

In the early days, banner ads were the standard ad unit across the Web, with a size of 468X60 pixels. Over time, standard ad sizes changed. (Anyone remember microbuttons?) Nowadays, with average higher screen resolutions and larger monitors, ad units are larger than ever. Where there was once banner ads, now Leaderboard ads (728 x 90 pixels) reside.

So who sets these standards, and if these standard ad sizes change from time to time, where can they be found?

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is an association dedicated to helping online, Interactive broadcasting, email, wireless and Interactive television media companies increase their revenues.

IAB Ad Unit Guidelines are intended to create a set of standard ad sizes for interactive marketing and advertising. Almost all marketers and publishers use these standards when buying and selling advertising. In addition to banner sizes, they also list guidelines for email, pop-up and pop-under, and rich media advertising.

As an advertiser, these standards make it easier to offer similar creatives across different publishers. As a publisher, these standards in mind when determining your advertising opportunities.

While the standard banner and leaderboard ads will remain popular, ad sizes will continue to evolve. Who knows? Maybe the microbutton will even make a comeback!

Standard Ad Sizes (in pixels):

Rectangular/pop-up ads
Medium Rectangle: 300 by 250
Square Pop-Up: 250 square
Vertical Rectangle: 240 by 400
Large Rectangle: 336 by 280
Rectangle: 180 by 150

Banner/button ads
Full Banner: 468 by 60
Half Banner: 234 by 60
Micro Button: 80 by 15
Micro Bar: 88 by 31
Button 1: 120 by 90
Button 2: 120 by 60
Vertical Banner: 120 by 240
Square Button: 125 square
Leaderboard: 728 by 90

Skyscraper ads
Wide Skyscraper: 160 by 600
Skyscraper: 120 by 600
Half Page Ad: 300 by 600

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