The promise and peril of the custom banner ad

With the price of banner ads as low as ever and readers consuming more and more content on mobile, publishers are ditching the standardized banner ads for custom formats. Most recently, The New York Times released Flex Frames ads, which are designed to be more harmonious with the look of NYTimes.com.

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“It’s been done wrong for so many years,” said Stephani Estes, vp of digital strategy at media agency Cramer-Krasselt. “It’s why we’re starting to see things like ad-blocking come up.” Estes, who says she’s seen an uptick in non-standard display recently, noted that banners do still serve a purpose. “We think of it more like outdoor,” she said. “It’s about a very brief message.”
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That overabundance — there were more than 250 display ad types in 1996 — was why the IAB set out to establish guidelines in the first place, and it has been a problem the industry body has had to beat back again every few years.
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 But if these custom units help slow display’s slide, the thing that’s going to replace it — native — is growing quickly. More than 350 publishers have started selling some kind of native advertising in the past year alone, according to MediaRadar data, and the percentage of the native ads they’re selling has more than quintupled, to more than 11 percent.
http://digiday.com/publishers/promise-peril-custom-banner-ad/