Graphic Design Research: Advert Specifications
Advert specifications are extremely important as they are the foundation of providing a suitable advert ready for whatever you're trying to put it on. This could be a website, a magazine, YouTube videos, etc.
They outline the specific dimension in which the image rendered needs to be submitted. Anything outside of these boundaries will be cut so there is no room for error.
As my adverts will be centred around computer peripherals and that sort of technology, it will be important to place these adverts in to some place that is relevant to this subject.
For a physical advert, magazine adverts are a safe option, and I would choose PC gamer. It's the largest gaming news journalism platform in terms of relevant publications for the target consumer. The fact that its specifically gaming is important because these peripherals are designed to appeal to that spectrum of those who use computers, rather than say computer scientists or other designated fields which require the full time utilisation of a computer. Other forms of physical advertisement exist as well, such as billboards for example at train stations, on the side of bus stops, huge billboards on motorways, and smaller options such as leaflets and newspaper adverts.
Digital adverts are much more accessible and flexible. You'll notice that the same imagery is used for several advert specifications across websites, however they may be shrunken down, increased width wise, and some may even add animation to capture the eye of the user. Because of this, there are many more pathways to go down whilst designing a digital advert, and this is something i can address in my ideas in future, especially the use of animation (which has proven to be extremely effective). GamePedia, PCMag, Gizmodo, Kotaku, and IGN, would be extremely good options. Using a website called https://www.similarweb.com/, I am able to see a list of how much traffic these websites gain as opposed to other websites in their category. Website traffic is extremely important when choosing a platform to advertise on. Websites that are more popular (have more traffic / interaction) will likely cost more to advertise on, however in the in terms of an investment in will prove worth it because more users will be exposed to our adverts than on say, a smaller website. Then of course it has to be relevant to the topic at hand. Games, game news articles and trending topic websites are great for this and will end up getting our adverts the most engagement as it provides relevant information for our target consumer.
Websites such as https://specle.net/ help make the advertisement boundaries and specifications accessible to anyone who wants to create adverts for these domains both physical and digital, as well as validate that these adverts are in check so they will not be declined. They also list contacts of the relevant workers in said companies so that communication can be established.
Gamepedia, being 2nd in the most visited site in its category would be the best first point of research for a target market. What people visit this website? Age Range? What countries are most prominent? Etc. Luckily for me i'm able to determine this from the analytics they freely provide on their father website, Curse, the company which owns Gamepedia and the domains.
It is with these sites;
1)
2)
They outline the specific dimension in which the image rendered needs to be submitted. Anything outside of these boundaries will be cut so there is no room for error.
As my adverts will be centred around computer peripherals and that sort of technology, it will be important to place these adverts in to some place that is relevant to this subject.
For a physical advert, magazine adverts are a safe option, and I would choose PC gamer. It's the largest gaming news journalism platform in terms of relevant publications for the target consumer. The fact that its specifically gaming is important because these peripherals are designed to appeal to that spectrum of those who use computers, rather than say computer scientists or other designated fields which require the full time utilisation of a computer. Other forms of physical advertisement exist as well, such as billboards for example at train stations, on the side of bus stops, huge billboards on motorways, and smaller options such as leaflets and newspaper adverts.
Digital adverts are much more accessible and flexible. You'll notice that the same imagery is used for several advert specifications across websites, however they may be shrunken down, increased width wise, and some may even add animation to capture the eye of the user. Because of this, there are many more pathways to go down whilst designing a digital advert, and this is something i can address in my ideas in future, especially the use of animation (which has proven to be extremely effective). GamePedia, PCMag, Gizmodo, Kotaku, and IGN, would be extremely good options. Using a website called https://www.similarweb.com/, I am able to see a list of how much traffic these websites gain as opposed to other websites in their category. Website traffic is extremely important when choosing a platform to advertise on. Websites that are more popular (have more traffic / interaction) will likely cost more to advertise on, however in the in terms of an investment in will prove worth it because more users will be exposed to our adverts than on say, a smaller website. Then of course it has to be relevant to the topic at hand. Games, game news articles and trending topic websites are great for this and will end up getting our adverts the most engagement as it provides relevant information for our target consumer.
Websites such as https://specle.net/ help make the advertisement boundaries and specifications accessible to anyone who wants to create adverts for these domains both physical and digital, as well as validate that these adverts are in check so they will not be declined. They also list contacts of the relevant workers in said companies so that communication can be established.
Gamepedia, being 2nd in the most visited site in its category would be the best first point of research for a target market. What people visit this website? Age Range? What countries are most prominent? Etc. Luckily for me i'm able to determine this from the analytics they freely provide on their father website, Curse, the company which owns Gamepedia and the domains.
It is with these sites;
That i will gather the relevant information to move forward in the process of graphic design
Physical:
Digital:
Gamepedia (Curse): https://www.curse.com/advertising/ https://www.similarweb.com/website/gamepedia.com
Unfortunately the specifications for the ads for these sites remain unspecified. In such case i went out of my way to disable adblock and find the specifications for the ads that were most frequently appearing
1)
2)
1 = 300 x 250 px
2 = 726 x 90 px
It is up to assumption that their high impact site skin advertisement follow the requirements of 1920x1080, as that seems to be common with these adverts, as they are even an option provided by Pedestriangroup, the father company of Kotaku and Gizmodo.
It is important to note that IGN lists all of their ad specifications specifically on a directory on their website. It's extremely long and in depth, so posting screenshots would take a while and take up a majority of this page. Instead i will post a link to it here for future referral when i need specifications for ads: http://ads.ign.com/specs/
It is important to note that the second link, ZiffDavies, states that ad specications provided for IGN are also the same for other neighbouring websites it provides for, such as PCMAG. Count the IGN specifications as two when trying to summarise what ad specs are the most common and thus ads should be created in this format, for PCMAG comes under those same specifications.