Azurii Article: Overview of Internet Banner Ads

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Online Promotions & Ad Support Network

I. Introduction to Online Banner Advertising

When people speak of banner ads, they usually speak in terms of "click through ratios and potential". CTM or Cost per thousand banner impressions displayed on a site are an industry standard for banner ad purchase on the internet. For example, you may go to a popular directory like Yahoo and pay $100 for 10,000 banner impressions. This means for $100 your banner will be displaye 10,000 times on a page of your choice in Yahoo's Directory. The cost is determined by such factors as the page you choose to place it on (specific pages cost more but are worth it because you can gear your banner to a more concentrated audience); and the size of your banner (a full page banner will cost more than a small button link.)

Places like Yahoo also have specific requirements for the banners displayed at their site. For example, they may require your site to be 10 KB or lower in file size. (This is how big the banner is in computer space.) They may require your banner to not loop if it is an animated banner. They may restrict your animation to 7 seconds total. They may only allow for certain styles of banners. (Audio and Streaming Video can be included depending upon the site. Channel 7.Com has an excellent reference chart listing which sites permit various alternative forms of banner advertisements.) Each site is different so check closely every place you intend to advertise before finalizing your banner design details.

Returning to Click Through Rates, you can easily measure the number of clicks to your site by setting up an efficient site tracker program that monitors where click thrus are generating to your site. Site Tracker , Better Counter , and Web Tracker are all free services available on the web which have this potential. These may also be upgraded to full service site monitor programs. Some site hosts like Free Servers.com also offer these services as a part of their package offering.

You can also visit Web Trends for a very nice downloadable program. But there is much more to a banner than just the numbers.

As with all forms of advertising, the increased name recognition generated from an effective banner ad campaign is also very important. They may not click through your banner at that time, but they will remember your name later. In fact, it is now being argued that the most effective results of an internet banner ad campaign are the branding/recognition rates that result from a well developed banner. Many top sites like Internet's Advertising Bureau are now reporting that although click thru rates are dropping, brand name recognition rates are significantly rising due to creative banner ad campaigns on the internet.

In fact, according to a recent study, online banner ads can be as persuasive as television advertising when it comes to product branding enhancement. See, NUA Surveys . The study polled members of an AOL audience who saw both banner ads and television ads. The results showed virtually the same results with 40% remembering the static banner advertisements and 41% remembering the television commercial ads later when surveyed. Arguably, internet banners can be even more persuasive as these now allow you the advanced capability of specifically targetting your ad banner campaign to a concentrated consumer market.

II. How Successful Are Ad Banners At Attracting Click Throughs?

Four Corners did a study to determine how effective different banner ads are at attracting visitors to your web site. They placed three Starship Trooper ads on Yahoo's web site. Two of the banners got one visitor for every 11 views. The third one got one visitor for every 5 views. This means these banners received 10 and 20% click through rates (CTR) respectively.

However, I would not get too excited about those statistics. These banners did very well for the internet industry. A quote from this study states, "Yahoo said their average CTR for keyword search banners is 3% to 5%." The average click thru rates for banners in general is running about 1%. If you want to see for yourself, Four Corners also provides a list of participating Click Trade banner ads and their respective click thru ratios.

When you review this list, you will see that the average runs closer to about one click through in every 30 views. This means, if you run approximately 10,000 views of your banner, you will get about 300 visitors. I strongly urge you to visit this site and review these materials, if you are contemplating the development of your own campaign.

III. How to Increase Your Banner's Appeal

But alas, do not fear. Click Thru doth not make the Banner. As indicated above, it doesn't matter if anyone click throughs from your banner. As long as your audience remembers your name. There are plenty of tricks of the trade to better enhance the branding factor of your internet online ad banner.

There are also plenty of sites that discuss this. For example, Four Corners also provides some helpful Tips from a Yahoo representative. In this article, they suggest information like the following: First, banners burn out after 2 weeks so change your look often. Secondly, adding text like "Click Here" helps alot. They suggested a blue border around your banner. Increase your banner's potential by adding "click here" text below it. They suggested you try presenting a variety of messages in the same visual style. They also noted that if someone has not clicked after three, they probably will not click at all. However, as noted above, that doesn't mean they are not remembering your name for later use.

They also provide some very helpful advice from Infoseek . Four Corners reports in this article that catching your viewer's attention by things like animation help. Involving your audience with interactive banners can make a difference. Brand appropriately when choosing where to place your ads. They stated the banners seemed to wear out after 200,000 to 400,000 impressions. They also suggested that if you are advertising in a place like Infoseek, you should focus your banners to related keywords. You can see more reports like this at Four Corners

For a complete list of banner design articles, See Azurii Design's Advertising Index

IV. Costing Out Your Banner Value

If you are also looking for some web sites on cost accounting for your banner ads, check out Sell It On the Web for two very helpful articles on how to cost out the value of your banner ad campaign.

V. Other Resources

We have found some excellent resources on the web that discuss banner making and setting up banners at your site. To see a complete list of these check here Banner Ad Resource Center by Azurii Designs . Because there are some many good ones already, we will not reiterate what they have already done. If you would like to see a whole web site of banner references, we encourage you to visit the Four Corner's site listed above. Another excellent source for banner links is Mark Welch's banner ad page. Yet another is Ad Resources by Internet.Com. Web Monkey's banner ad site provides a complete five part series dedicated to the how to's of banner ad serving for those looking for help display a number of other site's banners on their own web site.

VI. Chart and Samples of Online Banner Makers

What about sites that do all of the work for you fast and free? This was one area that we did not see a quick page reference for. So here it is:

Would you like to make your banners online??? CLICK HERE for a chart of places where you can go online for free banner ad creation and samples of their work.

If you would like professionally developed banners, please visit Azurii Designs.Com the sponsor of this article.

If you have questions regarding this page or wish to submit your URL for consideration, please send an email to azuriidesigns@yahoo.com . If you are submitting a URL, indicate which page you would prefer it to be listed. Also include a description and keywords if your URL lacks meta tags.

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