In a never-ending avalanche of bad news regarding ad revenue from leading online content providers, it was great to see one company recently bucking the trend. Gawker Media has stated that their revenues are up 10% over the same month last year. A brilliant achievement considering how the market has completed collapsed over the past couple of months.

How have Gawker managed to grow their ad sales? Nicolas Carlson at SAI believes that the use of site takeovers have encouraged more brands to spend money with Gawker:

So what's Gawker doing right? Nick [Nick Denton, Gawker Media CEO] tells us that sponsored posts have been nice and sticking Google ads in clever spaces has helped, but that the major revenue driver has been branded site takeovers.

You've seen them. Built by Gawker's in-house graphic designer, Chrissie Lamond, they are the site re-skinnings wherein Gawker re-shapes the entire look of its sites after a advertiser's brand or product. On the site's navigation bar, it says that the title is "sponsored by" or "presented by" the advertiser. Sometimes the blog's own logo changes to the brand's colors.

Nick calls the units online media's closest equivalent to the back-cover ads on glossy, high-end magazines.

They work because unlike banners on the margins of the page, they are impossible for visitors to ignore. This turns out to be OK because as far as advertising goes, the ads are actually very pretty.

Site takeovers are not new: the leading portals already allow brands to do site takeovers. I believe that Gawker’s highly-engaged audience, and its clever use of ad inventory has lead to this growth in sales. It is a trend that is likely to continue in the industry, and you will see increasing numbers of advertisers opt for more high-impact online advertising. Display advertising revenues will suffer as a result, but campaigns like site-takeovers will gain popularity.