Banner ads analysis

Posted by arlene

A German Internet company recently analysed the business impact of Internet banner advertising, looking at the behaviour of 500 Internet users in the UK, Germany, France, Sweden and Spain. In most cases banner advertising was perceived to have good informational value and to be an easy way to get access to the advertiser’s Web site. Up to 48 per cent of the sample described banner advertising as the ‘advertising medium of the future’. So, if you do any advertising on the Internet at all it would seem to make sense to start with banners.

Many ISPs offer Web site visitor analysis as part of their hosting package. There are a number of tools that can be downloaded, depending on what you want to know. Netlink provides raw Unix data that are easy to read and analyse. Direct Connection allows you to see your data as text or graphics. BT Internet tells you how to get hold of free analysis tools like Webtrends to help you monitor your online marketing. It can tell you how many ‘hits’ you received over any period, although this should only be seen as a general measure of your marketing effectiveness. More important for your marketing planning is how your visitors actually move around your Web site and what they look at and, of course, how many buy anything. Ten thousand hits a week is of no use whatsoever if they all leave your site on a reciprocal link after 20 seconds and never get to your order form page. In October 2000 the food site, foodoo.com, which was backed by a number of famous TV chefs, was recording 11,500 hits a week on its site. By November it had run out of revenue and went into receivership.

Comparing the costs

Whenever you consider paid-for advertising you need to know the comparative costs of different types of other advertisements. Your overall plan may be to become a household name through your new e-business, but buying the exposure that will drive visitors to your Web site can be expensive. Consider the comparative costs of using traditional media and a simple homepage banner ad on a major portal to run for three or four weeks:

• Homepage banner ad, major portal £40,000
• Black-and-white, full-page national press ad £90,000
• 30-second radio ad £380,000
• 30-second cinema ad £870,000
• National poster campaign £910,000
• Bus-stop poster campaign £1,300,000
• 30-second national TV ad £4,400,000

From this it is clear that paying for a banner ad on a major portal is relatively inexpensive compared with a national television commercial, although £40,000 is still a large amount of investment for a small business. Depending on your type of business you may want to launch your site with such a banner ad and perhaps the purchase of relevant keywords on one or two search engines for a short time to get exposure during the early stages of your campaign.

There may come a time when paid-for, traditional advertising makes good commercial sense. Local radio, for example, could be a cost- effective way to reach your particular market if what you sell online has a local dimension. But it is more likely that you will have to make use of all the complementary and low-cost deals the Internet has to offer before you go spending tens of thousands to get national awareness for your site.

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