Posted by arlene

A banner ad is a graphic advertisement, usually in the form of a GIF image, that appears on a Web site and is linked to a page on the advertiser’s site. Most banner ads measure 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels long and appear at the top of a page. Much smaller versions of banner ads, which are called boxes, buttons, tiles, or thumbnails, sometimes appear on the left- or right-most sides of pages, near the middle or bottom of a page, or perhaps even beside a regular banner ad.

The site selling the ad space determines its own ad rates. The rates are quoted in cost per thousand (CPM), meaning the cost for every thousand times the ad is served; each time the ad is served, an impression is said to have occurred. An impression is simply a pair of human eyes falling on the ad. CPM rates vary widely.

To determine ad rates, a site’s traffic is measured in impressions, which are also known as page views. High-traffic, nationally known sites may seem as though they’d command the higher CPMs, because they deliver more eyeballs falling on the ad. However, all those eyeballs may not belong to people who are interested in whatever the ad is promoting (for example, if you are advertising on a general-interest area of AOL). Smaller, niche sites that attract specialized audiences deliver more interested eyeballs and can justify charging high rates because theirs is a targeted audience. If you want to advertise to a group that is narrowly focused, with interests (golf, diabetes, classic Chevys) or demographic attributes (age, sex, geography) in common, you may go for advertising in a more targeted venue. If you want to reach a broad audience, advertise on a site that gets lots of traffic from a wide variety of people.

Unfortunately, no one has yet developed a precise or standardized way of calculating the number of users who buy a product or service because they saw an ad on a particular site at a particular time. But studies have shown that, although ads may not always prompt click-through, they do serve to establish and reinforce awareness of the identity and message of a company, a product, or a service. And people buy what they readily recognize more often than what they don’t recognize. So, friends, it appears that running an eye- catching, creative banner ad campaign can be worthwhile indeed.

Get optimum results

Running a banner ad campaign probably isn’t going to send your site’s traffic skyrocketing the way a direct e-mail campaign can. But banner ads, along with other, more traditional ads, are a valuable tool for creating and expanding awareness of your product, company, service, or Web site.

To get the best results — maximum awareness and even perhaps a respectable number of click-throughs — at a reasonable rate, you must create snazzy ads and buy the right ad space. You have to keep your campaign fresh, interesting, and appropriately targeted. Like people skimming through a magazine, Web site users often glance past the ads. And just as broadcast ads lose their appeal over time, so do online ads. Your goal is to snatch people’s attention while you can, and while you have their attention, insert into their psyches a quick dose of your message.

You have less than one second to do that. According to a study conducted by the Poynter Institute and Stanford University, users do see banner ads, and they focus on them for just about one second — long enough to get a message across. Your goal, then, is to make the most of the moment.

We recently had great success (a click-through rate of over 4 percent!) with an ad for a Linux-related content site. The ad was created with simple clip-art-style images and faded from one panel to another. The first panel showed a dark room with a barely visible lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and the second showed the lightbulb on, a penguin sitting in the corner, and the text message, “Shed some light on Linux.” The ad was placed in highly targeted, Linux-related venues and on other sites with tech themes. It led (when users clicked on the ad) to a subsite that provided Linux tips, tools, and Linux itself.

Create effective ads

To create effective banner ads, first get real about what you expect your ads to accomplish. Click-throughs? Awareness? Hire a professional designer (one with actual experience designing successful banner ads), and tell the designer what your goals are. Let the designer in on how you see whatever you’re promoting, any images you want to avoid, and the whole basic drill of information you defined when you decided what your site was all about. You almost certainly want your ad to be clickable. Tell the designer where on your site the click will lead, and make sure that anything the ad’s text implies will be there for the user is actually there and is easy to see. If the ad says you offer solutions, for example, the user had better find a solution on the first click from the ad to your site.

A call to action (”buy now”) is a fine idea. But forget the overused “click here.” Most users know they’re supposed to click. Use that teensy ad space and your oh-so-brief opportunity to say something more compelling instead. Here are more tips:

• Invoke mystery or leave a question unanswered. As in our Linux example, this intrigues the user into clicking through to find an answer.
• Create ads that are funny, sexy, timely, or topical to appeal to the universal desire to be entertained. But don’t let your advertising goals be overshadowed by the cuteness of the ads.
• Have several ads on hand. This allows you to target one ad to a certain demographic and another ad to a different demographic. Also, rotate the ads so users don’t burn out on them.
• Bandy about already established brand names. Whether you use your name or strategic partners’ names, brand names can pull in already loyal customers along with curious clickers. But make your own message more prominent than the name of any company or product that’s not your own.

One more thing: Keep the file size small. Tell your designer it has to be no more than 10K, whether it’s a postage-stamp-size ad or a standard 468×60 pixels. To avoid squandering that one second you have to get your message across, the file has to load very quickly indeed. Until broadband is as common as Starbucks, forget using Flash in your banner ads. Keep ‘em lean, keep ‘em simple, keep ‘em clever.

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