Tell a friend about maddisonmultimedia.co.uk

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.

Banner Advert varieties - Leaderboard, Skyscraper, MPUs and buttons/tiles

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.

Page Impressions vs Click Throughs

Banner ad campaigns are measured by 'page impressions' and 'click throughs'. A page impression is incremented every time a user looks at a web page displaying that banner in their web browser. A click through is every time someone views that banner advert and it inspires them to react by clicking to find out more.

How are banner adverts paid for?

They are sold on an either CPC (cost per click) basis, where the advertiser would pay a small amount for every time their advert is clicked on by a unique user, or by page impressions where the advertiser would pay for their ad to appear a fixed number of times (usually in the 1,000s).

How are banners adverts magaged?

An ad server is a company employed to manage and track banner advertising campaigns. They will arrange the delivery and placement of banner adverts, where and how often they appear and created reports detailing times and locations of clickthroughs, page impressions and conversion rates, ie how many times the banner advert was seen by a user compared to how many times it was clicked on. This is beneficial for webmasters wanting to concentrate on building great websites with good content and also advertising clients who can monitor how successful their campaign is as it unfolds.

Similarities between digital banner ads and other advertising

A banner campaign on the internet works in a similar way to a regular advertising campaign. Its intention is to give viewers an awareness of a service or product, and to let them know why they should choose it over the competition.

Monitoring banner advert campaigns

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

If designed properly banner adverts can be incredibly effective, but if designed badly they can be perceived as being annoying and distract the viewer from a web page's actual content, and if they are too big they can waste bandwidth.

If an advert is considered an annoyance can, by product association, affect the way users perceive your business.

Adwords - cost effective targeted online advertising

The new online advertising tool that has increased in popularity in recent years is the Google Adwords model, which is its main source of revenue. It offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. Text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines and their banner ads can be any of the standard IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) banner ad sizes.

Creative Rich Media in Flash

Rich Media is the term for anything more creative and interactive than a standard banner advert. Attention grabbing new media such as online games, videos, sound, puzzles and interactivity are now possibly due to Adobe/Macromedia Flash. Digital advertising can also now be displayed in a number of new and exciting ways on a page such as page corner peels where the user 'peels' away the webpage to reveal an advertising message, expandable banner ads which react to interaction to fill the entire screen, and a page overlay/interstital which fill the browser window for a short time when the user first opens the site and then disappear amongst others.