Before I ever built one, I thought ad units were annoying, boring, nuisance for users/visitors and for some designers to make them was a hairy thing to handle…

It’s been a year since I’ve made my first ever real ad unit (Sky Scraper) - and I never knew how much thought and work is put into an ad.

Behind the Scene

It’s quite a small space and a short period of time to work with, you’ll receive a “novel” of a copy to place (I’m just kidding my copywriting brethren, I still love you!), you have the imagery or materials to include and you basically should have only less than 2 seconds to really capture the users attention - and how many times have you been really intrigued by an ad unit…. and I mean REALLY intrigued? And I don’t mean those Apple ads with the Mac and PC guy going through their usual conversation like the ad on the tele. There’s no copy to read on it so that’s cheating, just playing, I love it.

Wax-on Wax-off

It is a challenge working on an ad that really has to hit the mark while maintaining the target deadline. In that small confined space creativity gets stifled really quick - But I can tell you one thing, after working on an ad, working on a site layout suddenly isn’t as difficult as it seemed initially… It seemed like sort of a creative warm-up or exercise.

Ever since creating my first online advertisement, I browse yahoo!, MSN or CNN (or the other news websites for that matter) I actually enjoy watching and analyzing the art work and finesse other designers have in placing the copy that has been handed to them together with the images and graphics they are supplied with.

Having said that, ads are little inspiring creative snacks on the side, for me when they are well done!