Digital Ads Designed for Marketing Books

Six things the digital ad for a book should do:

Showcase the artwork and design of the book
Include a visual link between animation frames like the trombone slide in the Little Melba sample ad
Show the book cover
Link to purchase or find out more
Fit the online publications specs for dimensions and file weight
Set frames to display long enough to allow reading the text

Digital ad specs for publishing industry publications

These links are up-to-date as of April, 2019. Before creating and sending artwork, be sure to confirm the current requirements.

Animation frames:

Animated gif:

Design Strategies

Showcase the title

A successful digital ad has a dynamic layout and a pleasantly paced animation (if you’re using animation). Longer text needs a longer delay before the animation changes, for instance. The ad should include at a minimum the book cover and a to link to order the book or get more information. If you have the space include title, ISBN, and price.

Fit the available space

To be sure your ad is effective for marketing books online, you must make your file the right dimensions, measured in pixels (px). A medium rectangle ad is 300px x 250px, a mobile leaderboard is wide and not very deep at 320px x 50px. Google has an adsense reference here:
Google’s Guide to ad sizes
If you are planning to place an ad with a specific online publisher or newsletter, confirm the ad requirements with them.

Don’t slow things down

To ensure pages load quickly, it is key to minimize the ad’s file size in kb, sometimes called its weight. Google Adsense limits display ad file size to 150kb, other online publishers have their own size limitations. Keeping the file weight low can be a challenge for animated ads, some successful tactics are limiting the color range in your layout, and minimizing the number of layouts in your animation.

Kirkus accepts animation with restrictions for its website. However, not for the newsletter ad placements

File formats for online ads

Google accepts the following ad types: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif for non-animated ads. Kirkus will also accept a .tif. A .gif file is the standard for animated ads. Animations can be written in html and controlled with CSS transitions, but I haven’t seen a publication yet that accepts this.