How much do they cost?
According to http://www.markneting.com/internet_marketing.shtml, banner advertising is the most expensive online form of advertising. This is partially because of the cost-per-impression payment model, and also because of the low click-through-ratio that banner advertisements receive.
Although the cost will vary based on the site, I recently had a client that was quoted that it would cost him about $6-$10 for each click he would get from running a banner ad on several sites including automotive and financial sites.
Do the People who “click” care about your product?
Many people will argue that these clicks are not as “qualified” as the ones they will get from search engines, since the consumer was not actively searching your product. This is because banner advertising is a form of indirect advertising such as TV or Radio advertising versus the more effective direct advertising such as direct mail, telemarketing or search engine marketing.
How do I make my banner ad experience more successful?
According to “Web Marketing for Dummies”, with banner advertisements, bigger is always better. The smaller the ad, the less clicks it will potentially receive. Also the best positions for banner ads are:
- The right side by the scroll bar
- As close to the top of the page as possible (above the fold)
- Rectangles integrated into the page layout
They said to avoid the standard banner ads that run across the very top of the page (486 x 60). These are the most popular, but surprisingly the most ineffective.
According to a Burst Media study, the more banner ads that display on a single page, the less success the advertisers will have. They said that “ad clutter not only annoys the audience but it also diminishes ad effectiveness. An astonishing three-quarters (75.5%) of the respondents who remain on a site they perceive to be cluttered say they pay less attention to advertisements appearing on its pages”.
In my opinion, spending money on Search Engine Optimization is the best form of online advertising and has a much better ROI than banner advertising. As shown in the illustration, it is second only to customer referrals.
December 29, 2008 at 5:45 pm |
Nice post. I agree that SEO offers better ROI than banner ads… especially if banner ads link to a poorly optimized site. Frankly, SEO shouldn’t be optional, but a foundation element of any website.
In my experience, banners are best used as part of an integrated marketing communications campaign. So when clients ask me to write a banner ad, I usually recommend tying in the banner ad message to that of a larger, integrated campaign that could include offline mailers, online landing pages, microsites, email marketing, blogs, newsletters, etc.
December 30, 2008 at 8:22 pm |
Agreed, SEM and SEO are much more effective than banner display campaigns when looking to get the best ROI. However, banner ads can work if they are based on performance vs. CPM. For example, affiliate programs such as LinkShare give advertisers a chance to run banner ads while only paying for each acquisition. Which is often a revenue share or flat fee model…
February 9, 2009 at 8:05 pm |
Banner ads vs text ads. Of course wins texts ads (average results). But you can use the same text ad tactics with banner ads – don’t use long scenarios, don’t use long animations, don’t use complex interactions. Say as simple as you can, and so on… – using the same tactics like building message in text ad, and you can use text ad graphics. (For example this tactics lets reach 10 times bigger CTR vs competitors.. but it works with specific products) Use CPC ad-networks, use only wright channels/sites. Re-optimize campaign during time period (remake creative, change message to avoid burnout and to reach conversions on site/landing page). But anyway if you have to start short-term huge-reach brand-based campaign on limited market – you have to use banner and CPM/Flat rate positions in media plan.