Bell Media’s French sports vertical RDS has redesigned its online home, making it less cluttered.

Patrick Jutras, VP, sales and marketing, RDS, tells MiC one of the biggest complaints about the old site from advertisers was they felt the pages were too crowded.

“There were a lot of images on the same page, the fact that it is now clutter-free will provide advertisers with greater visibility,” he says.

Launching with a site takeover from Toyota today, Martin Ceré, senior director, digital, RDS says the new design allows for much more space around content, which gives brands greater opportunities to go further with their page takeovers.

The old Rds.ca design.

The looser design structure also means videos on the site can be displayed more prominently, which makes for a larger pre-roll advertising experience, adds Ceré.

RDS’s target online is male sports fans aged 40 to 45, but Jutras adds there is a hope the site can expand that reach to a younger crowd with the new design.

“One of the big aspects of the new design is a stronger integration of social media feeds and a richer experience with social media, which will help us bring in the younger visitors,” says Ceré.

RDS had an average of 908,000 monthly visitors over the 2011-2012 hockey season, according to numbers from comScore provided by Bell Media.