Archive for the ‘Banner Advertising Basics’ Category

Some say banner ads don’t work so well. And that, at least to some extent, is true. There are many reasons why they don’t work, and almost always is your fault, dear marketers.

Since we don’t wish to bore you, we selected only the top 10 greatest mistakes EVER in banner advertising. Now let’s shoot them:

10. Make that banner look much prettier than our old, corny website.They’ll understand we’re in a hurry.
Well, we’ll tell you one thing: your prospects don’t care about you. That being said, neglecting your landing page is a very expensive mistake. The landing page is the first thing your prospects will see after clicking your ad, so it’s very important to make sure they won’t leave your website in the next second. Otherwise, your advertising campaign is no more than wasted money.

9. Size, length, weight? What are we talking about? Shoes?
No, banners. Not knowing the basic metrics of banner ads can put you in some serious trouble. And that’s because publishers require some clear specifications regarding the banner’s size (for example 120 x 600 px), length (for example maximum 15 seconds of animation) and weight (for example 40Kb). Follow the IAB standards and it will be less likely for you to be in the wrong.

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To make sure we’re speaking the same language, we need to put some things straight about banner advertising right from the start.  Let’s begin with the basics:

What is banner advertising?
Of course, it’s a form of online advertising through banners. Banner advertising is also called display advertising (as opposed to text-only advertising) because of the visual nature of banner ads.

What is a banner ad?
A banner ad, or a web banner, is an advertisement displayed into a web page. The advertisement consists of an image (.jpg, .png, .gif) or of a multimedia object (usually created using Flash). Thus, banner ads can be static or animated, depending on the technology used to make them.

Example of a static banner ad:

How do banner ads work?
Banner ads are intended to generate traffic to a website by linking to it. Also, web banners can function as regular, print advertisements: inform, notify about a new product, increase brand awareness and so on. However, most of banners are clickable and their main function is to get clicked on. But we’ll talk about banner effectiveness in a few moments.

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