What is actually ... a parallax?

The easiest way to explain Parallax is as a commercial background image for a website. In contrast to a wallpaper or homepage takeover, however, the ad is located behind the content and not on the top, left or right-hand side. While the user moves through the website content and scrolls it off the top or bottom of the screen, the parallax ad remains static in the middle of the screen. It then becomes partially or fully visible through a kind of window in the text field - depending on the size of the ad. The scrolling movement makes a certain spectrum of the ad visible, but usually not the whole thing.

A parallax ad can be combined with other ads (rectangle, halfpage) on a website. The subjects give the user the impression of a pleasantly integrated branding.

As this form of advertising is not yet widespread, it encourages users to play with it. The effect that the website moves by scrolling, but the ad does not, is unusual and arouses curiosity. It also offers customers the opportunity to take the special type of embedding into account during creation - for example, a subject can be selected that gradually reveals the message.

Up to this point, it sounded as if the Parallax Ad was a display format - but videos or animations can also be used. A really innovative form of advertising.

Term explained by: Bastian SarottKey Account Manager at Goldbach Audience (Switzerland).