Greetings lovely people. As an engineer who recently had the joyous task of sacrificing the quasi-elegant, iPad optimized, probably accessible, centered look of Zoopla desktop site for the sake of a wider ad container, let me explain this magnificent decision. Forget user experience, forget your carefully balanced aesthetics—we’re here to talk about charge per mille (CPM), and the glorious, game-changing unit that is the 970px desktop ad.

The old guard, the trusty but tragically narrow 728×90 leaderboard, just wasn’t cutting it anymore. In the digital advertising space, size absolutely, unequivocally matters (even if we would love that to not be true). And when the price-per-pixel comes waving around with a potential double-digit percentage lift in premium ad demand, you don’t argue—you get out your CSS and you make the page wider. (Just … I hoped it will be only css, but wasn’t. Separate story incoming on why on earth React developers love css frameworks, but avoid plain css?)

We had a clean, content-focused page, capped at something sensible like 1265px wide (very sensible, right? riiiight?). But that beautiful simplicity was holding us back. You see, the 728×90 ad unit, which typically sits above the main content (the “above the fold” prime real estate), is only 728 pixels wide. That leaves a massive, unexploited chasm of empty screen space on modern 1920×1080 monitors! (and the users who can afford a laptop or a big screen, aka “people with money”)

Enter the 970×50 Large Leaderboard (or its even more intrusive sibling, the 970×250 Billboard ).

Why does a 970px-wide ad outperform a 728px one? The answer is brutally simple, and has nothing to do with art:

1. More Canvas, More Money: Advertisers are willing to pay a premium for larger canvas sizes. The 970px width allows for more complex, impactful, and rich-media creatives. They can cram more branding, more calls-to-action, and generally be more distracting—which, in the attention economy, is a win.
2. Increased Viewability: Because the unit is so wide, it commands a huge portion of the screen, ensuring a nearly perfect viewability score (the measure of whether an ad is actually seen by a user). High viewability directly translates into a higher Effective Cost Per Mille (eCPM), as advertisers happily bid more for guaranteed eyeballs.
3. The Rise of the Billboard (970×250): The truly disruptive unit is the 970×250 Billboard. Case studies, such as those cited by various ad-tech providers, show these larger formats generating engagement rates up to 2.5 times higher than the beloved 300×250 Medium Rectangle. One major platform even reported that their Billboard ad size (970×250) had a Click-Through Rate (CTR) 105% higher than the 300×250 unit. When a unit is that big, it literally shoves your navigation down the page—a minor inconvenience we can all endure for 105% better performance, right?

So, yes, I spent one and a half week (two working days in total, but tell me about the “coordination”) refactoring our core desktop layout. I had to increase the overall page width by nearly 200 pixels and meticulously ensure that the centered content didn’t look completely ridiculous. (I take it that I got there in the end in React as a massive win … and a learning opportunity 🙂 )

You might have to scoot your chair back a bit to take in the full, magnificent spread of the new layout, but consider it a small price to pay for the content you’re enjoying.

Remember you work for a commercial engagement and all you do should come first with a thought “I build it to earn money”.

You don’t like it?

The choice is yours.