The Billboard: Premium Display Advertising
The 970x250 billboard is one of the IAB Rising Stars ad formats, designed to provide advertisers with a large-format canvas that delivers the kind of visual impact traditionally associated with outdoor billboard advertising. At 242,500 square pixels, it offers more than three times the creative area of a standard 728x90 leaderboard. The billboard format is typically sold as a premium placement, commanding significantly higher CPMs than standard display units. It is commonly found on major news sites, entertainment portals, and high-traffic publisher homepages where brand advertisers are willing to pay a premium for above-the-fold dominance.
Layout and Placement Considerations
The 970-pixel width of the billboard means it requires a wide content area, which effectively limits it to desktop layouts. At standard viewport widths of 1024px and above, the billboard spans nearly the full width of the page. Most publishers place it at the very top of the page, above or immediately below the site header, where it commands immediate attention. Some implementations use a pushdown behavior where the billboard initially displays at full size and then collapses to a leaderboard after a few seconds, giving the advertiser a high-impact introduction without permanently consuming page real estate. Ensure the ad container has no horizontal scroll issues by testing at the 1024px breakpoint.
Responsive Fallback Strategy
Since the 970x250 billboard cannot display on mobile or tablet screens, publishers need a fallback strategy for smaller viewports. The standard approach is to configure the ad slot to serve a 728x90 leaderboard on tablets and a 320x50 mobile banner on phones. In Google Ad Manager, this is achieved by setting up multiple size mappings on the ad slot. Advertisers should create companion creatives at all three sizes to maintain campaign consistency across devices. When designing the billboard creative, ensure the core message and brand elements work when scaled down to leaderboard proportions, even though the creative itself will be different for each size.
Creative Specifications and Best Practices
The billboard's wide landscape format favors cinematic compositions and panoramic imagery. Take advantage of the full width to create immersive scenes that feel more like editorial content than advertising. Use the left third for branding, the center for the hero image or key message, and the right third for the call-to-action. Static images should be under 200KB, and HTML5 creatives should keep initial load under 200KB with polite-load assets capped at 2MB. Rich media billboards can include video backgrounds, parallax effects, and interactive hotspots. Always include a fallback static image for environments that do not support HTML5 or rich media rendering.