468x60 Banner Size: Are they becoming obsolete?

The 468x60 Banner, in the old days of smaller screen resolution, was the dominant banner type. It was used in the header of any Website, and pretty much the standard of "Banner Advertisement" came from this size. As the screen size and resolution increased, the 468x60 gradually became smaller for a banner accross the page. Furthermore, the use of a banner in the Website header, that stretches across the screen, is no longer in practice today. Users quickly got programmed into ignoring the heading part of the Website, resulting in less and less click through. Also, the header is being used now to promote the brand, as well as to present the most accessible items common across a Website.

So the 468x60 size may have lost its purpose. Google's Adsense does not list this size under it's "Recommended" banner sizes, and I also saw some industry experts commenting it being obsolete.

We would think the same, unless there was some design contstraint that pushed us towards placing 468x60 banner size in areas other than the header of our sites. Because of it's relatively small size compared to large screen resolutions in use today, the 468x60 banner became the choice for us to embed within the content of some areas in our top performing Websites.

Here is what we found from our experience with this banner size: It is still one of the top performers, sometimes even beating the 300x250 rectangle, which happens to be the most common banner size today!

The advertisers seem to have noticed that as well, as we continue to see strong creatives being pushed in the 468x60 size from major brands.

So while it moved from the header to being embeded in the content, the 468x60 banner is not extinct, or even endangered by any means. At least we have no reason to think so.