Google introduces new lightbox ad format at Advertising Week

We told you Google had a number of presentations prepared for Advertising Week and one of them included the introduction of a new ad format that Google is calling “Lightbox.” Google explained the new ads (pictured above) start “as a standard display ad, making it scalable, but after a two-second hover, expands to a super-sized canvas.”

According to Google’s Jim Lecinskihe, the benefits of the Lightbox ad format include: elimination of almost all accidental expansions, an increase in engagement by up to 6-8x, and advertisers only pay when a user is engaged.

Lecinski also provided some insights on the current ad formats for YouTube and the Google Display Network:

We also have some new insights on how our existing engagement-driven formats on YouTube and the Google Display Network, such as the TrueView family of video ads, have effectively helped brands reach their audience online. We looked at the sales impact during and two weeks after 92 different ad campaigns, and found that on average every $1 invested in YouTube delivered a $1.70 return in sales–2.4x more efficient than the television spend for these campaigns. These ads also help achieve branding goals: we found, on average, that ads on YouTube and the Google Display Network drive a 36% increase in visits to your website and a 36% increase in searches for your brand online (Google Internal Data, 2012).