Flexible Reach through Display Advertising
Stop guessing where your ad will land. McHenry Life offers you extreme flexibility in display advertising, combined with extreme hyperlocal targeting to McHenry County. You don’t just pick the website; you pick the audience and the precise placement.
- Target by Topic: Select the content section that matters most to your business (e.g., Events, Articles & Guides, or Business Directory).
- Target by Location: Choose your desired on-page visibility—premium Top, engaging Middle, or value-driven Bottom—and price your campaign accordingly.
You choose the audience. You choose the location. You choose the price. That’s true advertising flexibility.
Display Advertising Features
| Feature | Display Ad (Flexible Reach) |
|---|---|
| Primary Goal | Broad visibility across a content section. |
| Ad Duration | 28 day increments (monthly refresh option). |
| Competitive Availability | Very Limited: Up to 3 spots per Ad Zone. |
| Placement | Rotating placement across multiple pages in a site section. |
| Position | Variable: 1-3 zones on a page to choose from (approximately near the top, middle, & toward the bottom). |
| Formats | Standard: image only. |
Ad Specs
Image:
- Sizes: Max size of 970px wide X 250px high (unless otherwise stated). Standard IAB sizes like 728×90 or 300×250 are acceptable.
- Formats: JPG, PNG, or GIF (non-animated). Ideally, 150KB or less.
- Format: Animated GIFs, ideally 150KB or less, 30 seconds or less in duration, and loop no more than the greater of twice or 30 seconds.
Destination URL: Please have your destination page created and ready to go before submitting.
All Display Ads are prepaid.
Ad Zones: Content Sections & Page Positions
Display ads are placed individually by zones. Each zone represents both a content section and a page position.
Content Sections: Major sections of the website, including:
- Events
- Directory
- Magazine
Page Positions: Page positions refer to the relative area on the webpage. Each of these positions is designated as:
- A = toward the top
- B = around the middle or between key areas of content
- C = toward the bottom of the page.
The individual positions are relative, as each position may vary in relation to the page content from one page to another. Each ad zone is run separately, even with the same ad. See examples below representing the various placements.
The Magazine section features local articles and is the home of all of the McHenry Life Guides. In addition to the Guide Sponsorships, this section is also available for Display Advertising, though not limited to individual guides..
Example pages:
The Directory section features business and organizational pages of McHenry County businesses. Looking for a restaurant, a general contractor, a chiropractor, or other business? This is the section for that.
Example pages:
The Events section is the local calendar or list of local events for McHenry County. Looking for live music, festivals, car shows, or something to do next weekend? You’ll find those things here.
Example pages:
FAQs
A free Lifer account enables you to see your Ads Dashboard. It shows you what ads you have running, their placement, and performance data for your ads, including impressions, clicks, and click-thru-rate.
We wanted to keep things simple and offer you the most value for your ad dollars, while keeping the advertising threshold low. 28 days is 4 weeks, which also makes tracking and comparing your ad campaigns easier.
28 days is just the minimum. We give you the flexibility to select increments of 28 days when you place your ad. You can also place it for 28 days, and then choose to renew your ads for another term.
Great question.
Ad rates are based on visibility using web analytics data. Unlike Guide Sponsorship, though, Display Ads span multiple pages across specific content sections of the website (i.e., Magazine, Directory, Events). In this case, we aggregate the views at the site section level to calculate the rates.
Zones are made up of two things…content sections and page placements.
Generally, the lower down a page, the less an ad may be seen. Theoretically, all ads on the page should receive around the same number of impressions. So, we use actual click-thru-data to help calculate rates for the A, B, and C placements.
Technically, though, zone placements B and C may receive the same actual visibility (people seeing your ad) as zone placement A.