Banner Ads - How and Why
My Secret Massive Traffic Source for =>Applied Cash Flow.
Is not only Solo Ads....
Being extremely 'visual' (the optics)
is very important in a world steadily moving away from
dealing with individual alphanumeric characters, only.
Hence forth - The Banner Ad
What is a Banner Ad?
One of the most popular forms of Internet advertising is the banner ad.
Banner ads are images displayed as a box
containing graphics which link is directed to a url by hypertext.
A banner ad is similar to a traditional ad you would see in
a printed publication, but it can bring a potential customer directly to whatever url you specify.
Types of Banner Ads
Like print ads, banner ads come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) specifies eleven different banner sizes, according to pixel dimensions. A pixel is
the smallest unit of color used to make up images on a computer or television screen. However, the (IAB) are not the
only banner ad shapes and sizes, but they are a good representation of the range of common banner ads and account
for 80% of advertisers using them as a standard.
These are the IAB’s standard banner sizes and some are shown for size purposes only.
250 x 250
|
Square Pop-Up
|
240 x 400
|
Vertical Rectangle
|
336 x 280
|
Large Rectangle
|
300 x 100
|
3:1 Rectangle
|
720 x 300
|
Pop-Under
|
468 x 60
|
Full Banner
|
234 x 60
|
Half Banner
|
120 x 90
|
Button 1
|
120 x 240
|
Vertical Banner
|
125 x 125
|
Square Button
|
120 x 600
|
Skyscraper
|
250 x 250 Pixels
720 x 300 Pixels (Leaderboard-reduced in size to fit post)
486 x 60 Pixels (Full Banner)
This one is loud but an example of a way to grab attention.
234 x 60 Pixels (Half Banner)![]()
120 x 90 Pixels (Button 1)![]()
120 x 240 Pixels (Vertical Banner)![]()
125 x 125 Pixels (Square Button)![]()
The full banner (468 x 60) is by far the most popular, but you will see all these variations.
The simplest banner ads feature only one, static GIF or JPEG image,
which is linked to a specified URL.
An animated banner is a GIF file which displays several different images in succession,
to create the effect of animated motion. You can create on yourself, or hire someone.
Another option for beginners is to visit Make a gif website (http://makeagif.com).
It has a tool you can use to create one yourself.
What Are Banner Ads Supposed To Do?
You want your banner ad/s to do one of two things.
Ideally, a visitor who sees your banner ad will click on it
and go to your capture page or sales page,
and the destination appealed enough to them for you to gain a customer.
You have a conversion from a click to a sale.
A second effect of banner advertising is branding.
The more people see your banner ad/s, they start to recognize it.
When branding occurs, you have a higher chance of click throughs.
How Do I Measure The Effectiveness of my Banner Ad/s?
There are are several ways a banner ad can be successful and several ways advertisers measure banner ad success:
Clicks/Click-throughs: This is the number of visitors who click on your banner ad, which takes them to your capture or sales page, hopefully resulting in a sale. Publisher sites often sell banner ad space on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.
Click-through rate (CTR): This describes the ratio of page views to clicks. It is expressed as the percentage of total visitors to a particular page who actually clicked on the banner ad. The typical click-through-rate is something under 1 percent, however there are many ways to increase your click through rate, which is a topic for a different article.
Page views: Also called page impressions which is the number of times a particular web page has been requested from the server. Advertisers are interested in page views because they indicate the number of visitors who could have seen the banner ad. Although they don’t measure the effectiveness of a branding campaign, they do measure how many visitors were exposed to it. The most common way to sell banner ad space is cost per thousand impressions, or CPM (In roman numerals, M equals a thousand).
Cost per sale: This is the measure of how much advertising money is spent on making one sale. Advertisers use different means to calculate this, depending on the ad and the product or service. Many advertisers keep track of visitors using internet cookies. This technology allows the site to combine shopping history with information about how the visitor originally came to the site.
Different measures are more important to different advertisers, but most advertisers consider all of these elements when judging the effectiveness of a banner ad.
Who Makes Banner Ads?
Anybody with computer knowledge can learn how to make a very basic banner ad.
To code the banner, combine the HTML tag for a link with the HTML tag for an image.
You can create the necessary graphics using a simple computer art program,
or to a more professional platform such as Photoshop.
This code creates the banner image and links it to the url you specify.
There are many ad agencies and freelance banner ad designers,
and they have a wide range of experience, ability and success.
They also have a wide range of fees: You can go to fiver.com for a $5 banner ad,
or you can get a professional banner ad designed for $50 upwards of $1,000.
There are also websites that offer free banner ad creation but
you have to deal with advertisements and they have their limitations.
Here are a few free banner design sites you can try out.
Some are very easy to use and are great for those who are not graphic designers.
Like most forms of advertising, banner ads vary considerably in quality because
their creators vary a great deal in ability and experience.
The range is even greater with banner ads than with most other forms,
however, because it is so easy and inexpensive to create and post banners.
Advertising with Banners
The two most popular ways to advertise your banner ad is:
1) Pay publisher sites to post your banner.
2) Pay an organization, usually a banner network like DoubleClick to post the banner on a number of publisher sites.
If you want to get your banner ad/s on a lot of sites in a short amount of time (and don’t want to pay for it) then your best bet is joining a banner exchange program. However, keep in mind, “You get what you pay for.”
Buying Advertising
If you are interested in buying advertising space, here are three popular options:
1) Approach Websites and Publishers Yourself
2) Employ an advertising agency
3) Join a banner ad network
1) Approach Websites and Publishers Yourself
- Placing your banner ads yourself gives you a lot of control, however it can be very time consuming.
- Investigate potential publisher sites to decide if their content matches the internet marketing or making money online niche.This can be a relatively inexpensive way of advertising compared to hiring an ad agency, if you target small web sites that don’t attract a lot of other advertisers. If you choose such sites carefully, your banner ad can be fairly effective.
- A small website that caters to a particular niche may not have very high traffic, but the people who visit are all interested in some of the same things. A couple of niches for internet marketing.
- You have to approach each site individually, follow its particular procedures and purchase its particular advertising packages.
- Start by searching the site to see if they have a page for potential advertisers.
- If you can’t find anything online, call the site or send them e-mail. Shop around for an advertising arrangement that meets your needs and fits your budget.
- Larger sites will probably have a set advertising package with a relatively high price tag.
Employ an Advertising Agency
Another alternative is agency advertising,
however I will not go into detail for this tutorial.
but it is an available option.
Join a Banner Ad Network
- If you want to place your banner ads on a lot of sites and don’t want to put in the time to negotiate with the sites yourself, then using a banner network is a good option, however you will have less control. Banner ad networks act as brokers between advertisers and publishers. They take care of placing an advertiser’s banner ads and tracking all activity related to that ad.
- You definitely need to shop around to find a suitable banner network. For one thing, many of the larger banner networks primarily sell advertising space from high-traffic publisher sites, which may be too expensive for your budget.
- There are banner ad networks that specialize in more affordable advertising space on smaller publisher sites, and a few networks offer discounted “remainder” advertising space, also called excess banner inventory, which is simply ad space that didn’t sell at the regular price. You should also check out networks that specialize in a particular kind of site, as they may place your ads more effectively.
- Unfortunately, there are plenty of banner ad networks that promise more than they deliver and that fail to place your ads effectively, so be sure to research a network thoroughly before you join.
What Makes a Banner Ad Effective?
There are no concrete rules about what makes a good banner ad. As in all advertising, an effective banner depends upon many different factors. There is no sure way to predict how well any banner ad will do. A lot of successful banner ads are the result of extensive trial and error experimentation: A website puts a banner ad up and monitors the response it gets. If that doesn’t work, the site tries something else to get the desired results.
There are a few qualities that will help you generally increase your effectiveness with your banner ad/s. If you are posting a banner ad campaign you should keep these suggestions in mind:
- Post banner ads on pages with related web content — the more related, the better.
- Advertise a particular product or service in your banner, rather than your site generally.
- If you advertise a particular product or service, link the banner ad to that part of your web site, rather than your home page.
- Put banner ads at the top of the page, rather than farther down.
- Use simple messages rather than complicated ones.
- Consider animated ads for certain websites.
- Your graphic content should pique visitor curiosity, without being too obscure.
- Keep banner ad size small. If the page takes too long to load, a lot of visitors will go on to another page.
***Advanced Information
I debated whether to include some of the huge internet advertising networks
since this post is targeted for the basics.
I decided to include these for future reference
in case you decide that banner advertising becomes your major advertising method.
- Most banner ad networks sell their advertising by specializing in either impressions or click-through rates:
- Some major impression networks are:DoubleClick by Google- http://www.google.com/doubleclick/BURST! Media-http://www.burstmedia.com
- Some major click-through networks are:Value Click- http://www.valueclickmedia.com/Banner Space- http://bannerspace.com/
Most sites sell advertising space on a CPM basis, in a package consisting of a certain number of impressions.
CPM varies considerably — you can expect to pay anywhere from $5 to $100 per thousand impressions
on a fairly popular site.
There is such a wide range because
different websites have different levels of popularity and different audiences.
A site with consistently high traffic will usually charge a lot more than a less popular site.
If a site caters to a particular niche, it may charge more than a general interest
site because its advertisers can more effectively target a specific demographic.
The amount of impressions in an advertising package varies,
but 50,000 to 200,000 impressions sold at a time is typical of good-sized sites.
Smaller sites may not have any advertising plan whatsoever,
which means you might be able to work out a good deal with them.
There is an unlimited resource of information online about banner advertising.
I hope you are inspired to get started with banner advertising.
