Banner Advertising Explained

Banner advertising is the embedding of ads into web pages, these ads are usually images or animated gifs, Javascript of other multi media files onto websites, generally using an ad serving network.

The pages that include ads are usually interesting pages such a newspaper and the ads will have some bearing or link to the content. Banner advertising is largely ineffectual, with click through rates on ads in many cases running at less than 1% and in fact a reasonable rate is around 0.025% click through for a good campaign. Those selling banner advertising will tell you it builds brand awareness. Others will tell you web users are becoming increasingly blind to these ads. In fact so much so that that most networks will charge on a CPM or cost per 1,000 impressions. If you can, get pay per click through rates. Affiliate partners may also use banner ads.

Some agencies are now touting banner advertising under the guise of performance marketing, but the only real way of measuring performance is through a click. Many publishers are finding it harder to justify their business models when relying on banner advertising. Ultimately cost per conversion or cost per action should be the measure of the effectiveness of the banner ads. This is not always the way they are priced. Google blog has an interesting take on banner advertising here.

Benefits of Banner Advertising

• Usually renders on quality websites, potentially associating you with quality sites
• Large and somewhat established industry
• Potentially great for branding and awareness building. Gets people to see your brand or product and you can build numerous touch points.

Common issues and considerations

• Click throughs are low
• Many web users find them annoying, and a distraction. While pop ups can be blocked, banner ads are not easily turned off by a web user, so banner blindess is becoming an increasing factor
• Banner ads waste some of the web users bandwidth, another added annoyance
• Hard to measure the benefit other than for the click throughs as above. Ideally the measure should be the click through rate
• CPM rates for banner ads can vary widely, depending on the site, reach and audience. Try work from a basis of around $35 per 1,000 impressions, or compare the cost per click to your paid search or Adwords campaigns
• Almost impossible to verify what is reported to you, so ensure you only work with trusted networks
• No search engine optimisation (SEO) benefit at all

Common banner advertising options

• Ask the ad network about whether you are charged for a web page refresh as an impression. In many cases, especially newspapers the page refreshes every couple of minutes, even if no one is present, resulting in a new impression every refresh. If a person leaves the page open and your ad renders, you could be charged for impressions no one is even seeing.
• Make sure your ad is catchy, large, eye catching images, bold text or pretty girls or boys get attention, small images with lots of text are generally ignored
• To use a banner ad generally you can either approach websites direct, get an advertising agency to do this on your behalf or join a banner serving network direct

What makes a good banner ad?

• Must be placed on targeted sites or pages with content relating to the ad
• Advertise a product or service rather than your website
• The higher on the page and to the left the better
• Keep it simple. Simple messages, images can attract the users eye
• The ad must load quickly
• Get your viewers curious. Too much and there is no need and to obscure they will not bother to click

 Read more on the background of Internet marketing