The Creative Possibilities Are Endless With the New MSN UK

The newly re-launched MSN UK presents advertisers with an incredible canvas for creativity & design. In fact, design was at the heart of all the changes made to the site, ensuring MSN’s new editorial ethos around original content & editorial opinion, site navigation & content signposting and social & cross platform strategies are all offered in the best possible light.

A streamlined design and strong use of white space on the MSN page enables both the editorial promotional units and the ad format to really have prominence.

Increasing the range of creative formats available for advertisers

In addition, in line with the re-launch of MSN, there have been great strides made in increasing the range of creative formats available for advertisers. The over-riding principles of the experience we aim to give our readers on MSN is one that is informative, innovative, social and fun and we feel that the range of ad formats available enable our advertisers to contribute to that experience.

Over the past four months we have launched three new ad formats for homepage takeovers which offer fantastic opportunities for creativity.

Filmstrip

First up we launched the Filmstrip in August, a brilliant format that encourages deep levels of engagement in a very intuitive style. It has 5 separate panels that the user can scroll through to explore all different types of content. That’s the opportunity for 5 individual creative formats in one execution The 5 panels mean this is actually a 300x3000 pixel ad unit, housed within a 300x600 pixel window. You can take users through the purchase funnel, you can introduce them to 5 different aspects of an individual product or you can showcase 5 different products from a range. Each panel can contain video galleries, image galleries, social network feeds, interactive games or any other type of rich media experience you can think of. Watch a video of Filmstrip

Billboard

Next, we launched the Billboard in September. This is a huge canvas that sits as not only the largest image on the MSN homepage but also the first image a user will see, sitting above the editorial content, just below our site navigation bar. It offers a perfect extension of any large format offline campaigns, in particular outdoor and press but then, with all things online, it’s up to you how the canvas comes alive with video, games, galleries, and the like to engage users in a format that needs no expansion to give creative agencies the space to think big! View a Billboard video

Sliver Pushdown

At the beginning of November, we released our most recent format , the Sliver Pushdown. This is another format that offers a vast amount of creative space and invites but does not interupt. On load it expands to billboard size for a short period of time, giving advertisers the chance to grab their audiences attention via rich media animations, video or galleries and invite then to explore the ad. It then retracts so as not to interrupt the users’ experience, leaving a banner and MPU companion which offer a wonderful hockey stick format in which to display impactful brand images. Of course then, once they have accepted your invite, they can expand and the possibilities for creative execution become numerous once more. Watch out for the first Sliver Pushdown live on the MSN UK homepage 19^th December 2011.

Two new formats coming soon

Microsoft Advertising is extremely proud of these innovative ad developments so far. We think we have a beautiful looking new MSN homepage and strongly believe we have increased the opportunities for advertisers but we are not stopping there. We are currently developing two additional formats which will be available before the end of the year.

Next, we will be releasing The Slider, a takeover which toggles a slider bar to the bottom of the users page and allows them to slide our homepage completely out of view and slide a full screen advertiser experience onto the page. After that we will be working on the Portrait ad which takes over over the right hand column of the page giving the advertiser even more space to work with.

Not just innovative the MSN Homepage

In 2012, we will be looking to move some of these new formats into our channels so that the beautiful creative work that you as advertisers produce can be extended across the entire MSN user experience.

We believe passionately in ad formats that provide advertisers with the best platform for creativity and we are certain they will enhance our MSN offering.We are always working hard to increases these opportunities for our clients but we are always open to your own ideas and encourage you all to work with us to continue to create new, pioneering creative formats that suit your advertising needs and present them in the best way possible.

Look forward to hearing what you think about these ads.

Jonny