This is how to do a site wallpaper

The Dark Knight wallpaper/companion execution on imdb.com is pretty rad. This is some great site wallpaper, people. All your typical imdb content is there, unobstructed, but you've still got incredibly effective advertising.

Yeah, it clashes with the imdb colours, so it's all a little ugly, but the visitor gets their content, and is served an ad, all at the same time. It might be a touch annoying, but nowhere near as frustrating and intrusive as a voken. Wallpaper's the way to go, ya'll. Keep that in mind when you're making your commercial websites.

Hardly anyone will tell you about a cool ad that started covering over what they were trying to read on a website. Almost no one will think it was pretty great that for up to seven seconds they couldn't read what they'd been trying to. At best people will think the ad was pretty silly. At worst they'll be pissed off.

With a wallpaper, at best people will think it was kind of cool. At worst they'll think it was ugly.

Pretty easy choice to make when you have to decide which to go with, right?

Well, it should be.

Skinning -- The Anti-voken

First of all, a voken is an ad that appears over top of the content that you're trying to view on a website. They're Top-Layer Animations, Flash animations that are meant to make it impossible to ignore the advertiser's message.

And they're really annoying.

Because people can so easily ignore typical banners (people have basically learned to ignore the first 100 pixels or so of a website, greatly reducing the effectiveness of top-of-page leaderboards), vokens are often used to seize the visitor's attention. It's usually hoped that if the creative is interesting or entertaining enough, the user won't mind that they're being content-blocked. Odds are greatly stacked against that happening, though.

Skinning, however, is like the anti-voken.

You get the same attention-grabbing effect without the outrageously annoying intrusion. Remnant space on either side of the page content is branded with the advertiser's message or colours, and the wallpaper may fill the whitespace within the content.

Skinning can make a website look like it's "brought to you by" the advertised brand. If the site is highly-trusted and has good visitor engagement, the brand may be looked on quite favorably.

Of course, the opposite could easily be true as a site's loyal visitors could see it as a takeover attempt, or an attempt to siphon some of their goodwill toward the site.

In either case, though, skinning is a better idea than a voken. Vokens, yes, can be interesting and entertaining, but always at the cost of the visitor's time.

With a voken, you aren't grabbing a visitor's attention, you're hijacking it.

So if you're a publisher looking to increase ad revenue and invite interesting executions from advertisers, offer things like skinning or wallpapers. Allow content to be sponsored, "brought to you by" the advertised brand, which is definitely not the same as allowing content to be controlled or affected by the advertiser.

People like me are always looking for new, interesting ways to advertise our client's brands online, and smart publishers with solid ideas for executions stand a much better chance of landing on a buy than a site that's just trying to pitch us on hijacking their users' engagement.

Glossary: Skinning

When you skin (or add "wallpaper") to a website, you typically fill the remnant space on either side of the page content with your branding creative. As well, the wallpaper may show in the "whitespace" within the content. Skinning allows all of the content of a site to remain unobstructed, while allowing for interesting, attention-grabbing branding executions. Skinning can make the site appear as if it's being directly sponsored by the advertised brand.

Of course, a bad skin (too busy, too ugly, too intrusive) can have a negative effect on a visitor's experience. While skinning is better than using a voken, it must still be handled carefully to create a good experience for the visitor, the advertiser, and the publisher.

Glossary: Voken

A voken, or "virtual token" is a Top-Layer Animation advertisement that appears and covers over content on a website. Not necessarily user-initiated, these ads, while able to seize the visitor's attention, can be quite annoying. Advertisers and clients have raved about their effectiveness on a click-through basis, but that's likely because they were tracking the "Close" button as a click, and thinking that accidental clicks on the ad count as being effective.

Skinning a website can have similar attention-grabbing effect without being near as annoying.