How to Get Your Banner Ad Noticed

Web Hosting Provider Tips

Hey, look at me! Click here!

Problem is, people see that message in various forms at so many websites that they hardly notice it. The term banner blindness was coined in 1998 to describe how website users tend not to see banner ads that are on the page in front of them. While click-though rates vary, they're often under one percent.

On the other hand, because of their lower click-through rates, banner ads can cost less than other forms of online advertising, making them a cost-effective advertising option when they work.

With the array of online advertisements competing for people's attention, how can you make your banner ads stand out? Web hosting provider explains...

Know your target audience

Teens, mothers, people in a specific industry or social group, and senior citizens, for example, will respond differently to different types of ads. Do you want your ads to be conservative? Sensational? Prestigious? What emotions and needs do you want to appeal to?

Start with what you already know about your target audience. Look at your company's advertising history with the same target audience and various types of advertising, and note what did and didn't work.

To learn more, recruit people who fit your target audience profile to look at various types of banner ads. Ask them what they like and don't like about each ad: layouts, fonts, colors, content, and anything else. When a pattern in their preferences develops, you'll have useful information to use at the banner design stage.

Know your advertising goal

Is your goal to sell a particular product or service? Increase brand awareness? Overcome any negativity surrounding your product or brand?

For the banner to help with sales, it needs to get people's attention, make them want to click on it, and lead to a relevant landing page. To help sell a particular product or service, it needs to focus on that product or service.

Banner ads primarily for brand awareness can be more general but still must convey a suitable image and message for your target audience. If the ads are to counter negativity, they should focus on the concerns that need to be overcome.

Decide how to advertise

As a banner ad advertiser, you have a few advertising options:

• Find individual banner ad publishers yourself and pay to have your banner displayed at their sites.
• Pay a banner ad network to have your banner appear on a potentially large number of websites.

These options apply if you offer banner advertising at one or more of your sites:

• Enter into banner ad agreements with other publishers.
• Join a banner exchange program.

Choosing who to advertise with yourself provides the assurance that your banners will appear at sites suited for your target audience, and you can also see what content your banner will appear next to. With a banner ad network, you risk having your banner appear at some less suitable sites. On the other hand, you have the convenience of having it appear at many sites without your having to research those sites yourself, and you can monitor its performance at all those sites at once.

Have your banner designed professionally

Unless your banner design skills are at a professional level, hire a professional banner designer. If you don't have the advertising knowledge, design skills, and creativity to design an effective, targeted ad, you could be wasting the money you spend displaying that banner. Share your knowledge of your target audience with your designer.

Effective banner ads have some or all of these features:

Banner ad appearance

• They load fast.
• They have both visual and text elements with a contrast between them.
• Their appearance is uncluttered.
• The visual part of the ads include a metaphor, such as sunshine in a laundry ad (implying that your clothing will be as clean as sunshine if you use the product).
• They're designed with the target audience in mind.
• They have a hook to get viewers' attention. The visual part may be the hook, or words such as free can work as a hook.
• They're animated. According to some (but not all) studies, animated ads have a higher success rate than static ads do.

Banner ad location

• They're on pages with related content.
• They're at sites that your target audience visits.
• They're positioned above the fold.

Banner ad content

• They advertise a specific product or service and link to a page about that product or service.
• They have a simple message that's easy to take in at a glance and remember.
• The text part is short — probably under eight words — and includes power words such as affordable.
• Their content is relevant and interesting to their audience.
• They have a specific offer and a clear benefit, for example, Join today and save. They give viewers a reason to click on them.
• They're truthful and believable.
• They include a call to action, such as Buy now or Act now.

Test different banner designs

Click-through rates and conversions measure in part the effectiveness of ads. To find out if your ad could be more effective, have different versions of your banner created and run them at different times. Some possible differences to measure:

• Leave out some elements that are in another version.
• Use different sizes and colors of an image in the banner.
• Use a noticeably different font.
• Include different text or a different call to action.

When testing different designs, be sure that the differences are big enough to make a difference. With similar banners, change only one variable at a time.

You can also test very different versions of banners. For example, if you want to take some risks with a banner design, run it and one that's more within the usual bounds. If the risky one doesn't do well, you can always replace it with the safer version.

Related articles

• Getting Started with Online Advertising
• Forget Pay-per-Click: Pay for Performance