Everyone is doing it – the new advertising craze on the internet is the simple text ad [article]. The idea of non-irritating, low-bandwidth, low-cost advertising is clearly very appealing to web-regulars, but whether or not it will actually prove to be particularly successful as a potential revenue stream is still in doubt. I’m watching this trend with considerable interest – as as far as I can tell, without the targeting facilities of Google’s adwords, text-ads continuing success would completely buck convention…
The trend seems very much to be in the other direction – the most successful adverts that I have observed in recent months have been large and bandwidth intensive (as seen at Wired and Salon. Even Time Out now provides a space for skyscraper-style advertising.