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Flipping
a website for a profit
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BANNER
ADVERTISING
INTRODUCTION
TO BANNER ADVERTISING
Banner
advertising is one of the oldest marketing techniques and
closely related to conventional marketing.
But how difficult is banner advertising and is it an easy
marketing strategy that almost anybody can use create an
extra income from your website? In a sense
banner advertising is relatively easy if you follow some
basic principles.
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According
to our research the first banner advertising was introduced
in October 1994 on HotWired, today they are part of Lycos
and are now called Wired News. The size of these banners was
468 x 60 pixels and is still a popular size banner in use
even today. According to Doubleclick’s “The Decade of online
advertising: Online advertising also provide one of
the largest spent of all advertising methods and is still
growing.
During the past 2 – 3 years a huge change has taken place in
the online marketing industry. Online advertising was
affected by this as well and it became clear that there
still is a larger demand by consumers than can be met by
advertisers. This in effect means that there is a transition
process taking place. In the South African market the same
growth and transition are experienced. According to World
stats we have more than 3,6 million internet users and
recent stats from World Wide Worx also states that there are
more than 5 million computer owners in South Africa. That
makes South Africa the 2nd largest in Africa, leaving large
possibilities for new online entrepreneurs.
It is a well known fact in the online industry that banner
advertising is not the most remarkable marketing strategy
and although many companies have performed well and returned
great results many that didn’t make use of it has performed
just as well or even better. However if you have the budget
it is worthwhile to make use of this strategy.
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One of the
greatest benefits of online advertising is the opportunity
to track results. By using dynamic website to track source
and conversion ratios makes it easy track success and
optimize your strategies. Even keeping track of the banner
types is easier. Experimenting can also deliver surprising
results and can be tracked easily.
Over the years it has become clear that in the online
marketing industry mostly focus on the amount of click they
received from the advertising campaigns to measure their
success. Recently it has become more and more complex as it
became evident that there are more factors involved than
just clicks.
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One of the
greatest benefits of banner advertising is branding.
Becoming a well known brand in the online community can
result into traffic that do not click through from banners.
Depending on your industry it can also result in sales lifts
in the offline environment. Associating your brand with
leading websites clearly cause a trusted association which
in itself has its benefits.
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With the
use of tracking software a new payment method has seen the
light for advertisers. CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) is one of
the most effective ways to place banner ads. Due to the fact
that it influences the profit of the site on which is being
advertised and the profit generated by the advertiser there
is much better cooperation for providing good results than
in the old fashioned Pay Per Click methods (PPC).
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One of the
key factors when tracking success of banner advertising is
to keep track of the amount of unique deliveries of ads. The
same visitor can receive the same banner being served during
a single session on the same website at regular intervals.
This can assist you in making design changes for your banner
in order to improve click through rates but it can also
guide you in ensuring the website you are advertising on is
worthwhile advertising on.
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Absolutely
one of the key indicators to ensure your advertising
campaign is running smoothly is keeping track of the
frequency at which ads are displayed compared to the amount
of clicks received on the applicable campaign. The following
can be reasons for an add campaign to have a bad frequency
to click through rate.
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Bad banner
design or lack of key features in the design compared to the
site the ad is being displayed on. |
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Bad call to
action. A call to action is one of the key motivators for a
visitor to click on a banner. “Click here” is not a call to
action but rather a prize or guidance on what to expect when
clicking on the banner. |
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Large file
size of image. It can happen that due to the large file size
of a banner the visitor to the site didn’t even see the
banner because it was still loading. |
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Information
overflows. A banner should never contain too much
information, but rather single words that entice the visitor
to find out more. |
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The ads don’t
stand out and becomes part of the website. |
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Bad display
position. |
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Theme of the
site advertised on
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This is the
key to a successful online advertising campaign. In order to
have a solid ROI you need to have a good frequency of Clicks
to conversions. A conversion is a visitor that registered
with your site, bought something or at least spent some time
on your site. If you notice that the visitors tend to leave
the site very quickly after entering then there is clearly
something wrong. Here is a guideline of possible issues
effecting conversions...
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Bad banner
design and wording. The user expected something totally
different when he clicked on the banner. |
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Use of landing
pages. Never use landing or splash pages to point traffic to
it from a banner ad campaign, unless the splash page is with
the structure of the original web site. Many so called
experts will disagree with me, but I will explain this under
its own topic next. |
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Bad website
design or usability. This goes hand in hand with the use of
landing pages. If your website is badly structured and the
user has an effort finding what he is looking for you will
loose conversions. |
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Bombarding
visitors. Many websites bomb visitors with entry pops and
advertising. This is not recommended at all, because the
visitor will leave your site immediately.
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I once
attended a workshop where the marketing manager of a large
online business told everyone that he introduced splash
pages to use with their promotions and that it improved
conversions considerably. I was amazed at this remark and
had a look at their website. Suddenly it all made sense. The
website was clearly badly designed and the information
supplied was purely one way, what they wanted the user to
see. The entire website bombed the visitor with the closing
techniques but didn’t supply the user with the reasons they
initially visited in order to be closed.
If you have to make use of separately designed splash or
landing pages you probably have bigger problems with your
website than you think. If the banner displayed is related
to a specific promotion then that promotion page which are
being linked to, should be located within the normal website
structure, that contains the relevant information but still
allow the user to navigate through to other information that
they might require before they convert into a customer.
General banners that purely advertise your brand should
always point to your homepage, however it is important to
know that it is much more effective to advertise a specific
product or service, in which case the banner should link to
the applicable page on your website. If the homepage proves
to be ineffective then you probably need to evaluate the
design and layout of the homepage. Ensure that the page that
the user lands on supplies the information that the user
will be interested in viewing based on the banner they
clicked on, not the information that you want the user to
see.
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This is a
term you have to get used to. Over the past few years rich
media has proven to be extremely effective and the click
through rates is amongst the highest in the online
advertising industry. Rich media is usually designed in
flash and because of the powerful features that Flash has it
can combine quality graphics with sound and fantastic
animation. This allows the advertiser to really get
attention focused on the user. On click or mouse over
actions also allows for more functionality and all of these
can ensure good click through ratios. Java, JavaScript and
DHTML can also be used for rich media but we recommend the
use of Macromedia Flash.
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Viral
marketing’s strongest feature is the amount of well targeted
referrals that it obtains. By combining a good viral
campaign with banner advertising, you ensure that you have
continuous publicity and ROI basically multiplies with every
conversion. The most powerful effect of a solid viral
campaign is the duration of supply. If properly planned it
can supply constant traffic for years after the ad campaign
has finished. Viral campaigns normally focus on
entertainment value for example a funny video or enjoyable
game, that gives the visitor the option to refer it to
friends.
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A fairly
new technique that is being used is to make the banner look
like link text that forms part of the design of the site the
banner ad is located on. The power lies in the possibilities
of providing more information for the user in the form of
informative link text to cause a click through. Although it
is an image the user is attracted to the link text. The
greatest benefit is most probably the fact that traffic
provided by a factual banner normally is much targeted which
means good quality click through and higher conversion
ratios.
Adding a human element also seems to work well. It makes it
more personal for the visitor and attractive to click on.
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By default
the most sites use similar banner sizes. Following are basic
information and examples to assist you in making a choice
with banner advertising.
Skyscraper Banners
Again there are many different sizes being used but the most
common size being used is 120 x 600 pixels. These ads are
normally located on the right hand side of the website.
These ads have proven very effective but it is important to
keep in mind that they are also more expensive.
Small rectangles
This is a very common size and can normally be located at
any position of the page. The normal size for these banners
is 120 x 60 pixels. The location is very important and once
again because the banner is so small you need to ensure that
the text being displayed is carefully selected.
Square banners
This is a very good sized banner that allows for cost
effective banner advertising and the chance to provide
enough information to invite click through’s. The size for
the square banner is 125 x 125 pixels.
Large squares
These banners are 250 x 250 pixels wide, and are normally
located just under the header of the page or amongst the
content of the page.
Anchor banners
These banners are normally located at the top of the page
and is most probably ideally located if that is the case.
The size of 468 x 60 pixels also allows for the display of
good quality graphics and information.
Leader board
This is one of the largest banners that can be used and is
normally located above the header of the page almost the
entire width of the page. Because of it’s size of 728 x 90
pixels. This banner can not be missed and allows for allot
of freedom in it’s design.
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Email
banners has proven very effective, but there are a few very
important points to keep in mind when you want to opt-in for
these type of campaigns. Ensure that you are provided the
correct information as far as the amount of people that the
email will reach. Many companies do not distinguish between
recipients that view HTML mail and those that receive text
mailers. This can have a drastic implication on your costing
if the majority only read text mails. Remember that only
viewers that receive their mail in HTML format will be able
to view your banners.
Banners designed for email campaigns must load instantly.
Therefore file sizes must be kept to a minimum.
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The largest
challenge involved when choosing a site to advertise on is
distinguishing between the truth and sales talk. Many sites
will provide you with the hits their site receives as if it
is unique visitors. It is important that you ensure they
give you the amount of unique visitors they receive. Hits
are the highest possible amount that the log stats will
display. It is the figure of all the files and images loaded
for every page opened and can be at least 10 times more than
the unique visitors the site actually receive.
Making use of Alexa is also dangerous as it primarily
indicates the amount of visitors with the Alexa toolbar
installed visiting the website. In my experience the more
webmasters visiting the site the better the chance that the
stats might be skewed as many of them have the Alexa toolbar
installed in their browser. Another important thing to
remember is that there are free tools available to improve
your Alexa ranking without providing real traffic.
Besides obtaining traffic stats for the site you want to
advertise on you will also need to profile your prospective
customer (demographics), in order to ensure that you
advertise on a site that mainly attracts visitors that you
target. Therefore you need to find out about the following.
• Geographic location
• Income group
• Age groups
• Interests and hobbies
There are many other factors that can be supplied by the
site that you wish to advertise on. Make sure you profile
your customer properly in order to know who you need to
attract and where you should advertise
Article by Digital Marketing
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