More eyeballs
Last month I rolled out two new features on the website to help grab the attention of users and readers.
The first is a new set of advertising units and the second provides a way to promote any content you really want to be seen
Floating ad units
Floating (or out of page) ad units are now in place on the homepage and stories pages for all sites on mobile, tablet and desktop versions.
The floating ads come in two forms, the first lays itself over the top of the page content for a set amount of time (usually 15 seconds) or until closed by a user.
Here is an example on a mobile site:
And here it is on a desktop browser
You can see a good way use the floating ads in the above example. Here the floating ad (which is served at max 2x an hour to any user) is combined with a standard leaderboard banner (visible behind the floating ad) which will display even when the floating ad disappears.
The second type of ad unit is a “cling” unit, which adheres to the bottom of the screen even as a user scrolls down. This type is available on mobile devices only. Her is an example below:
The ad gets more views and more interaction than a standard banner because it stays on screen even as the user scrolls down the page. Like the floating banner it can be paired with standard display ads to be a powerful part of an advertising campaign.
Addthis tools
I’ve integrated tools from Addthis a service which places social sharing buttons and audience targeting tools on websites. The audience targeting tools allow you to display messages to all of your visitors or specific segments that you want to target (users arriving through social media, new visitors, returning visitors, etc.).
The free level of Addthis (which is currently in place for our papers) allows for two such targeting messages to be used at any given time.
For example you could have a box encouraging new visitors to follow you on Facebook to receive more news and updates from your paper.
Or you can use the targeting tool to promote content on your site, such as contests, special publications or even a story that you want to feature.
Below are two examples of the targeting tools being used to promote on site content.
The above example is a box which lays over the page content and displays a message. In this case it is promoting a contest on the site. Clicking “Yes” will take you to the promotion page and “No” will close the box and not display it again.
The example above is less intrusive. It is a simple bar which can be displayed at the top or bottom of the page. In this case the bar promotes the Hood River News weekly football pick’em contest.
Using analytics tools on addthis.com you can track how many users are interacting with your targeting tools.
