Banner adverts can be deployed to promote anything from your website, a product, a service, your blog, or an idea; just about anything you wish to bring to public notice.
It is cheap; it is easy to deploy, it is easy to monitor for effectiveness.
Choosing banner ads A complete understanding of banner ads is necessary for cost effective use.
A banner advert is essentially a hypertext link to the originating website, which is displayed as a JPEG or GIF rectangular box on the publisher's site.
These rectangular banners are either displayed vertically or horizontally and vary in size, based on the Ad Unit Guidelines issued by the Internet Advertising Bureau, from the small to the large format.
An advertiser needs to know what the following terms mean and how they apply: Conversion Rate, Cookies, Run of Site (ROS), Hits, Banner views or impressions, Click Throughs, CPM, and Click Through Rate (CTR) because they are measures of the cost and success of the advert.
Cost of banner ads Your advert budget and nature of product advertised will determine the size of advert you choose to use.
Cost, which is measured in CPM or cost per thousand, will generally be determined by the publisher/your ad agency and the type of payment plan agreed.
You can Pay Per Click (PPC), i.
e.
for every click of the mouse by a visitor on the banner the publisher site gets paid, or pay per impression seen, i.
e.
the publisher is paid by mere citing of the banner by a visitor to the site.
Your target should be to lower your cost per sale, which is your Cost Per Visitor to your site via the banner divided by the Conversion Rate of such visits into business.
A high cost per sale is not sustainable.
For instance, you could be paying as high as $30 or more for each sale.
How to lower cost of banner ads This starts from your product.
You should have a good product then build a very persuasive advert.
This combination could help change your conversion rate drastically.
Your advert brings visitors in and your product keeps them in.
Target high traffic sites for high click rate.
You can also reduce your CPM by negotiating a lower rate with your advert agency.
Pay per impression sites like ContentZone, DoubleClick, Flycast should be avoided; you want to be sure you are paying for people who had visited (PPC) Websites like ValueClick, BannerSpace, and eAds operate PPC.
An affiliate program is another great way to reduce cost, because you pay only when you get a lead and it is a fixed rate.
You may pay nothing if you can get other websites to enter an exchange with you.
How to get the best from banner ads To get the best mileage from your banner advert you must keep the message simple, be specific about the product being advertised and be sure the advert links directly to it.
Explain in the ad what you want the visitor to do and what he/she stands to benefit by doing so.
Size matters; a large file size slows down page loading, which may likely piss off visitors.
Animated adverts will grab attention faster than a static one.
Above all, a top-of-the-page banner advert is far more visible than one at the lower end.
Advertising using banners has come a long way and still has some way to go.
As you prepare to launch your next banner, a little care taken to get the best result wouldn't be out of place.
It is cheap; it is easy to deploy, it is easy to monitor for effectiveness.
Choosing banner ads A complete understanding of banner ads is necessary for cost effective use.
A banner advert is essentially a hypertext link to the originating website, which is displayed as a JPEG or GIF rectangular box on the publisher's site.
These rectangular banners are either displayed vertically or horizontally and vary in size, based on the Ad Unit Guidelines issued by the Internet Advertising Bureau, from the small to the large format.
An advertiser needs to know what the following terms mean and how they apply: Conversion Rate, Cookies, Run of Site (ROS), Hits, Banner views or impressions, Click Throughs, CPM, and Click Through Rate (CTR) because they are measures of the cost and success of the advert.
Cost of banner ads Your advert budget and nature of product advertised will determine the size of advert you choose to use.
Cost, which is measured in CPM or cost per thousand, will generally be determined by the publisher/your ad agency and the type of payment plan agreed.
You can Pay Per Click (PPC), i.
e.
for every click of the mouse by a visitor on the banner the publisher site gets paid, or pay per impression seen, i.
e.
the publisher is paid by mere citing of the banner by a visitor to the site.
Your target should be to lower your cost per sale, which is your Cost Per Visitor to your site via the banner divided by the Conversion Rate of such visits into business.
A high cost per sale is not sustainable.
For instance, you could be paying as high as $30 or more for each sale.
How to lower cost of banner ads This starts from your product.
You should have a good product then build a very persuasive advert.
This combination could help change your conversion rate drastically.
Your advert brings visitors in and your product keeps them in.
Target high traffic sites for high click rate.
You can also reduce your CPM by negotiating a lower rate with your advert agency.
Pay per impression sites like ContentZone, DoubleClick, Flycast should be avoided; you want to be sure you are paying for people who had visited (PPC) Websites like ValueClick, BannerSpace, and eAds operate PPC.
An affiliate program is another great way to reduce cost, because you pay only when you get a lead and it is a fixed rate.
You may pay nothing if you can get other websites to enter an exchange with you.
How to get the best from banner ads To get the best mileage from your banner advert you must keep the message simple, be specific about the product being advertised and be sure the advert links directly to it.
Explain in the ad what you want the visitor to do and what he/she stands to benefit by doing so.
Size matters; a large file size slows down page loading, which may likely piss off visitors.
Animated adverts will grab attention faster than a static one.
Above all, a top-of-the-page banner advert is far more visible than one at the lower end.
Advertising using banners has come a long way and still has some way to go.
As you prepare to launch your next banner, a little care taken to get the best result wouldn't be out of place.
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