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In the whole online firmament, could anything be as underappreciated as the Internet ad?

I'll be the first to say that online advertisers haven't exactly made themselves lovable. Any Web-surfer can enumerate their pet peeves: pop-ups, pop-unders, interstitial ads that hijack you when you try clicking a link, ads for smileys, ads for casinos, ads that wait until you're not looking then start playing a video with the volume at full blast, leaving you to figure out which of your 15 browser windows it's playing in.

So the average Internet user might not have been thrilled this week when a consortium of online publishers including ESPN.com, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times announced a plan to turn things around - by making standard online ads even bigger. These new ads will be billboards stretched across the top of users' screens, or, in some cases, will pop down to reveal large-format ads that will retreat once you've finished with them.

I can hear you groaning already. But bear with me here. This could, in fact, be a good thing.

Online advertising has a problem: It doesn't bring in a whole lot of money. The irritating ads turn consumers off, and the less offensive ones have a tendency to go unnoticed. On Web page after Web page, banner ads and text links sit forlornly, hoping for a wayward click. There is a glut of supply, and the whole planet is having a bit of a demand issue at the moment.

There are always exceptions: Google hit upon a magic formula that works for search engines - which is great, if you're a search engine. But even giants such as Facebook and Google's YouTube operation are struggling to make ads pay their way. In fact, the online-advertising market is contracting - which isn't a good thing, when it's supposed to be the universally anointed medium of the future.

For the people who shoot the videos and write the words that fill the Internet, it's a conundrum that needs to be solved. More and more people are using the Web to read their newspapers and watch their favourite TV shows. Yet companies aren't willing to pay as much for online advertising as they are for ads in more traditional settings. Eyeballs are moving online in a hurry, but ad dollars aren't.

It's a stumper. Evidently, online ads just aren't being valued like their offline counterparts. You could chalk it up to demographics, or a slowly evolving understanding of this new medium among advertisers, but there's one problem in particular that jumps out at me: On the Internet, ads have been forced to play the bad guys.

Let me ask you a question: When was the last time you read a website for the ads? I'd guess never, and more's the pity. After all, it's not unheard-of for a reader to pick up a brick-like fashion magazine and flip through the perfume-scented pages, admiring the ads while glancing over the editorial. I myself always had a fondness for the giant ads for condos that fill up great swaths of newspapers' real-estate sections with pictures of gleaming fantasy towers.

The nice thing about newsprint is that the paper itself is big enough that the ads don't have to compete with the words for space. You can put a gigantic ad for a skyscraper next to an article about condos and still read the story without being distracted by the ad - or vice-versa.

But when you're looking at a Web page on a little computer screen, ads and articles can't cohabitate so peacefully. Either advertisers can adopt one of the irritating tactics that come between you and what you want to read, or they can sit quietly off to one side. And what's to admire about a text link, or a little banner ad?

That's where the new, bigger ad sizes can make a real difference. Advertising should make a publication better. After all, love 'em or hate 'em, advertising is a form of cultural expression, even if it's a form of cultural expression that wants to sell you a lawnmower. Giving advertisers more space gives them the opportunity to build a better ad - one that's not irritating, but engaging.

webseven@globeandmail.com