Banner Advertising

Banner Advertising is the placement of banners on the Internet on various targeted resources as well as in mobile applications for attracting quality clients at a certain cost for a certain period of time. It is recommended to give preference to the placement of banners on targeted resources rather than in mobile apps as the second option reduces the effectiveness and increases the cost of the advertisement because of the mixed interests of mobile app users.

Each banner

is a unique advertising message that looks like an animation or a static image. By clicking on the banner the user goes to the advertiser’s website.

Quite often digital advertising is associated only with banners, but in fact there is a variety of formats, from images, video and audio spots to interactive special projects.

Banner advertising allows advertisers to increase brand awareness and solve traditional image problems. This type of communication allows you to increase website traffic or tell your target audience about discounts, special offers and promotions.

Banner ads are usually used to reach a cold audience and generate demand. But by adding interactive buttons to your banner you can speed up the process of attracting a quality target audience. For example, by adding “Order” or “Buy” buttons to a banner advertisement you can attract a warm audience from the whole audience reached.

Types of banner advertising

There are a few types of banner advertising, they are classified by both manufacturing technology and size. If we talk about the size of banners, the most popular is a block of 468x60 pixels, which appeared in the distant 1994 and to the present day is widely used by major advertising networks, such as Google Ads. Banner advertising has no generally accepted standards, but large corporations and webmasters in the advertising business follow these popular formats: 728x90 px, 300x600 px, 300x250 px, 240x400 px.

Static Banners

Nowadays, the PNG format is considered to be the main format for graphic banner advertisement. The advantage of PNG is that this bitmap format for storing information uses compression technology without losing image quality. Banners in this format are comfortable, simple and quite effective, but their capacity is limited. Moreover, heavy graphics can lead to slow loading speeds of the webpage.

Dynamic Banners

Refers to the type of advertising banners of increasing complexity. The following technologies are used for making dynamic banners: Flash, HTML, CGI, Java.

1

Flash banners

A popular format for animated banners in the past. They were created with a flexible technology developed by Macromedia that allows users to interact with banner ads using the mouse pointer, for example, filling out forms, turning on and off the sound, changing separate parts, images or texts, etc. It was widely used in game themes as well as in other industries. However, Flash banners were gradually abandoned giving preference to a new and more flexible HTML5 format.

2

Java banners

They are integrated into the HTML code content, but the user needs to have Java applets support activated to display them correctly in the web browser. The loading of these banners directly depends on the bandwidth of user’s Internet connection and if the Internet connection is slow it will take a long time for them to be loaded. Java banners have been used in the market much rarer than other formats and today have lost their low popularity.

3

CGI banners

It is a group of HTML tags for implementing interactive mechanisms together with graphic objects, which together represent a graphic image in one of the formats PNG, JPEG, GIF. It consists of graphics and interactive HTML form directly inside the banner. The advantages of this format are instant loading, the ability of entering information and flexible navigation.

4

HTML5 banners

The most popular and up-to-date format for animated banners. They have gained popularity thanks to their adaptability, such banners automatically adjust to the screen resolution of a computer or mobile phone. CGI and Flash banners allow you to set only a fixed size while the HTML5 has no fixed size. HTML5 banner automatically adjusts to the user’s device without making it difficult to view the main content on the website. This format is widely used by such giants as Google Ads.

Banner placement

A detailed selection of the platform and advertising placement will allow you to get the best results with your banners. The most prospective position for placing a banner is the top of the page, where you can place an advertising block with the size of 468 x 60 pixels. Maximum reach can be achieved thanks to the fact that the banner is located at the top of the page, where it can be viewed by all the website users, increasing the CTR rate.

The topic of the website is also an important criterion. Choosing websites it is recommended to give preference to those with a content that is wholly or partially similar to the topic of your advertisement. If not, the budget will be wasted as you will pay for non-targeted visitors. Websites with a broad topic are also essential. It is advisable to use targeting on such platforms. If these tools are not available, you can highlight the main categories on the website and limit the range of stakeholders.

Banner ads should attract users’ attention, motivate their interest and encourage them to buy your services and products. In order to encourage a visitor to go to your website, it is worth using elements of understatement.

Advantages and disadvantages of banner advertising

Banner advertising on the Internet is widely used for promoting products, services or websites of any subject. It is useful for advertisers to know the advantages and disadvantages of such advertising.

Advantages

Increase of brand awareness. Frequent appearance of banners on website pages increases brand awareness among users.
Large reach. The reach will be maximum if the advertisement is placed on the homepage or pass-through page of the website.
Customization of design. According to the interest of the audience or the characteristics of your product, you can choose how the banner will look like.
Focus on the target audience. According to the subject, you will be able to sort your audience and decide which resources will be available for your banners.

Disadvantages

Big budget. Due to the huge reach of this type of advertising, the cost for placing banners is much higher than placing contextual advertising by targeting.
Pay per impression or click. There are two types of payment for placing banners, specifically, payment per click or a fixed cost for a certain number of impressions of the banner. The only exception is some websites that require weekly or monthly payment, no matter the number of clicks and impressions.
Necessity to create high quality banners. A highly productive advertising campaign can be achieved by creating attractive graphic materials that can interest users, lead to action and encourage them to visit the website.
Frequent hit to a non-targeted audience. It can happen both because of the advertiser with no experience and no knowledge of all the details of advertising platforms and because of the large reach of the website.
Sharp reduction in the number of visitors after the end of the advertising campaign. Ads are active as long as you pay for them. There is a significant flow of users. But there will be a sharp reduction of activity after the end of the advertising campaign.

Evaluating banner ad performance

Performance is measured by CTR (click-through-rate) - the ratio of clicks per ad to impressions. The following formula is used to calculate CTR: clicks÷impressions=CTR%. For example, with 10 clicks per 100 banner impressions, the CTR will be 10%, so the higher the value, the more successful the advertising is. According to the advertising network and advertising platforms, as well as the quality of ads, CTR may vary, for example, Google Ads generally considers a regular CTR of 5 to 10% and the average CTR is 3%.

The second and equally important ad performance indicator is the bounce rate that can be checked in Google Analytics. The information in the ad should correspond to the final page that the user reaches after clicking on the ad, as the discrepancy between them will have a negative effect on the performance and will increase the bounce rate. That means you should not try to indicate invalid and/or inappropriate information in the banners to increase CTR, because it will also lead to a higher bounce rate.