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A GUIDE TO ONLINE DIGITAL BANNER ADVERTISING

Web Banner Ads

Advertising on the internet appears most commonly in the form of banner adverts. First widely sold to major corporate advertisers by website HotWired, a banner advert or web banner is either a graphic (GIF, JPEG, PNG), animation (Flash), or text that is embedded into the page, and is designed to attract traffic to the website of the advertiser. They may contain video, interactivity or sound to maximise impact. Typically when someone clicks on the banner ad they will be taken to that website.

Click here for examples of these ads.

Skyscrapers, Leaderboards, MPUs, Tiles, Buttons

Banner adverts are designed to fit around the main content of a web page, and it is because of this that the two most popular forms of banner advertising are long and thin (leaderboard) which slot in along the top of the page, or tall and narrow (skyscraper) which slot in to either the right or the left of the main content depending on the page design. To fit in a number of ad slots within any page banner ads come in a number of sizes with differing proportions. Tiles and buttons are small and rectangular, MPUs (Multi purpose unit) are almost the same proportions as a television, Skyscrapers are tall and thin and Leaderboards are long and thin.

About page impressions and click throughs

Whenever someone visits a web page displaying a banner, one "page impression" is registered for that ad. Whenever one of those viewers clicks on the banner, they are directed to the website advertised in the banner and this is known as a "click through".

Page impressions vs cost per click

An advertiser would usually either pay for a banner advertising campaign which guarantees them a certain number of page impressions (the number of times as ad is displayed in a user's browser) or the alternative is a CPC (cost per click) campaign, where the host website would charge the advertiser only when a user clicked on his ad to visit his site.

Ad servers

In many cases, a website will employ a company to manage their banner advertising campaigns. This companies are known as ad servers and they will deal only with banner advertising, their placement on websites and monitoring page impressions and click throughs.

Similarities between digital banner ads and other advertising

Web banners work the same way as traditional advertisements in that they are designed to notify consumers of the product or service and giving the consumer reasons why they should choose that product or service.

Constant monitoring

The real boon to digital banner advertising is that a campaign can be monitored and tweaked 'on-the-fly' to improve its effectiveness as the campaign is running.

Don't annoy potential customers

Whereas a banner advert that is designed well can produce amazing results, a poorly conceived and put together banner ad can be an annoyance and hamper the viewer in reading the main content of the page they are ultimately there to read. A banner advert that isn't optimised with size in mind can also take up a lot of important bandwidth.

Whilst it is important to grab the attention of the user it is also important to consider that if he or she finds it too offensive it will leave them feeling exasparated and is that how you'd like your customers to feel?

Adwords - cost effective targeted online advertising

Adwords by Google is a PPC, or pay per click advertising tool which allows you to promote your site with text ads or banner ads in all of the usual sizes on related Google results pages or related sites. Text ads are limited to a title and a two lined description. PPC advertising means that the advertiser only pays for ads that a user has clicked upon resulting in traffic to their site.

Flash Rich Media - Games, Videos and Interactivity

Other more creative options are available for digital online advertising, which is largely down to the versatility of Flash. This is known as Rich Media which includes videos, interactivity such as forms, puzzles, apps, games, videos and much more. There are also other non-traditional ad slots available such as expandable banner ads which react to fill the screen when a user interacts with them using their mouse pointer, page peels which appear to peel away the page when the user moves their mouse pointer over a selected area, a page overlay (or interstitial) whereby an advert fills the entire screen over the content of the page.