StyleBlueprint Display Advertising Guide

What makes a good ad for StyleBlueprint?

Please note – all ad inventory on StyleBlueprint.com is only available directly from us. We do not accept any outside programmatic ads. This means ads on StyleBlueprint.com are not available via DSP’s or other ad platforms.

We track our ads and make updates to these recommendations as needed. When tracking Click Thru Rate (CTR), our readers typically respond best to a beautiful image without a lot of words.

Remember, you have only a few seconds for anyone to see and remember your ad. Ads should be simple and beautiful. These ads are “top of the funnel” in marketing, so they need to brand your business well.

One quick note: Ads with white backgrounds MUST have a border around the edges. 

Examples of ads that perform well on StyleBlueprint that our graphic team created:

Sidebar ad examples, size (300×400):

Mobile ad examples, size (1080×180):

In-article ad examples, size (640×250):

Leaderboard ad examples, size (1800×320):

Seeing these examples, it becomes clear that if you think about your ads as a billboard on the highway, they will perform best; we want your ads to be memorable, clear, and easy to read.

Our three simple guidelines:

• Your image should be visually appealing.
• Your ads should have your business name or logo and should be easy to read. You want someone to see an image and your business name even if they only notice it for one second. But, getting their attention for one second leads to two and three seconds and this leads to positive reinforcement of your brand.
• If you include a call to action it needs to be a very clear and simple one. “Book an Appointment”, “Call Now”, “Shop Now”, “Find Out More”, etc. 

What NOT to include:

• Do not include your phone number, email, social links, and full address UNLESS there is a legal reason to do so (in some states, this is true for real estate).
• Do not include an image that does not represent your business well or feels very much like a “stock image.”
• Do not include a lot of words.

That’s it!

If the StyleBlueprint team is creating your ad, it will typically be an ad like the ones above where it is very easy to swap out the images and text, without affecting the overall template of the ad, for an updated ad. If you are looking for more extensive changes or for ads that look different from these, we ask that you submit ads that your team has created. All ads must meet our brand style. We typically will push back if we feel the ads are not legible or appropriate for digital. This is most commonly a case when an ad that would work for print is submitted for a digital ad. 

Now, for the details:

A note on image compression as ALL ads must be no larger than 1MB. Usually, this doesn’t matter. However, for websites like ours it is a huge issue. We serve millions of pages per year and every extra bit of size in files slows us down. It is not good for our readers and our standing with search engines like Google. However, image compression for files like ads is free from many places. We highly recommend TinyPNG!

StyleBlueprint Mobile Ads:

Mobile Leaderboard Ad:

• Silver, Silver+, Gold and Platinum Local Business Partners, Regional Business Partners, Standard Ad Campaigns (every level partnership except Bronze).
• Send (1) 1080×180
• Must have a border if any part of the image is white that touches any side of the ad
• Must have your company name in the file name
• High-res .jpg or .png file that has been compressed
• Each file must be less than 1MB

StyleBlueprint Desktop Ads:

Desktop Leaderboard Ad:

• Optional addition by invitation only (Available as an add-on to run of site ad rotation or Local Business Partnership)
• Size: 3200×640
• Must have a border if any part of the image is white that touches any side of the ad
• Must have your company name in the file name
• High-res .jpg or .png file that has been compressed
• Each file must be less than 1MB

Sponsorbox Ad:

• Gold & Platinum Local Business Partners, Gold Regional Business Partners, Standard Ad Campaigns, Private School Guide Premium Partners, Camp Guide Ad Partners
• Size: 640×250
• Must have a border if any part of the image is white that touches any side of the ad
• Must have your company name in the file name
• High-res .jpg or .png file that has been compressed
• Each file must be less than 1MB

Sidebar Ad:

• Standard Ad Campaigns, All Local Business Partners, All Regional Business Partners, Private School Premiums, Static Ads, Camp Guide Ad Partners
• Size: 300×400
• Must have a border if any part of the image is white that touches any side of the ad
• Must have your company name in the file name
• High-res .jpg or .png file that has been compressed
• Each file must be less than 1MB

When ads are ready, please use this upload form to send them to our team.

We will get these uploaded to Google Ad Manager once we have the assets in hand. They will begin to show once your campaign start date has begun.