Banner Advertising Rates

If you are a regular user of the World Wide Web, then you have been definitely distracted by flashy, fast-moving bands, advertising different products, services and websites. Well, you have just been inculcated into the group of people familiar with one of the most popular forms of Internet advertising, known as banner advertising. Well, in plain and simple terms, a banner ad is a hypertext link that instead of the normal text has graphics with text, which when clicked on leads the user to another web page. It is used as an advertisement by using the hypertext link to showcase the url of the organization or person advertising. Banner advertising is largely known to be one of the effective forms of advertising that reaches out to a transnational audience making it more effective than a television, radio or print ad. Also, banner advertising rates depends largely on whether the user is either clicking on the ad or performing an action leading him to the advertisers page, which also makes it a feasible option for organizations that cannot afford to allot huge funds for advertising.

Banner Advertising

Simple text advertising is not extremely effective as it may not appeal to a user. With animated GIF images included in banner advertising, you have flash banners being created to advertise various products and services. The Internet Advertising Bureau, which is also known as the IAB has divided banner advertising depending on the size of the banner. The full banner is the most popular type used, as it allows the user maximum viewability and also more probability of clicks.

Type	Width (in pixels)	Height (in pixels)	Aspect Ratio
Full Banner	468	60	7.8
Half Banner	234	60	3.9
Micro Bar	88	31	2.84
Button 1	120	90	1.33
Button 2	120	60	2
Vertical Banner	120	240	2
Square Button	125	125	1
Leaderboard	728	90	8.09

The reason banner ads are so popular are because they are effective. If people see an ad for a product, whether they click on it or not, there is an effect that has been created on their minds. This in one way or the other increases awareness that leads to an increase in sales, whether direct or indirect. Also with technology becoming such a huge part of our lives, we spend more than half of our waking hours in front of the computer. This enhances the chances that a person may come across your ads and be influenced by it. Of course, it is all not good with this form of advertising. In case the user is preoccupied, he may view banner ads as a distraction eating into the time he has. You also have no way of knowing whether or not you are reaching out to your target audience, unless you advertise only on related websites, which again narrows your consumer base. It is in such cases that rates for banner advertising may seem a little steep and a cost that is unnecessary.

Banner Advertising Rates

Many advertisers are not of the opinion that banner advertising is very effective as in comparison to television and radio, it is easy to ignore these ads. Also the response rate for banner ads from Internet users tends to be on the lower side. If there are 1000 impressions of the ad online, that is if there are 1000 web pages on which the advertisement appears, then the possibility of people clicking on the ad is as low as two to five. This low click rate does not bring in much revenue for advertisers and also leads to low banner advertising costs

Banner advertising prices have declined to a level, where the average cost of banner advertising is now around 50 cents per 1000 impressions for advertising on most websites. There are some websites on which banner advertising rates are higher. But the reason for that is that these premium websites rank amongst the top 100 websites in the world, according to user density. Another way that you can increase the banner advertising rates on your website is by a method called targeting that a lot of websites use. An example that will allow you to understand this is, if you are selling a car and you advertise on an article on car prices, there are more chances that the user accessing the article will click on your advertisement. This also increases your revenue for the website and increases traffic. The amount of users that visit your website or the traffic to your website is what to a large extent determines how you can fix your banner advertising rates.

Banner advertising rates are affected by factors like the size of the banner ad, the popularity of the website, the rate at which your competition offers ad space and the profile of your target group. The pricing of banner advertisements depends on different models that the advertiser opts for.

• The most common model is cost per impression, where one impression is the page on which the ad is displayed and the advertiser is charged, regardless of whether or not the viewer clicks the ad.
• Another pricing model is cost per action, according to which the customer is charged depending on whether or not the viewer performs an action in response to the ad on the web page.
• The third model is cost per click, where the advertiser has to pay each time the viewer clicks on an ad. This pay per click advertising mode is very effective in cases of advertisers who are unfamiliar with the websites they are advertising on.

These are the three pricing models that determine banner advertising rates, along with other factors like the size of the banner, the position of the banner and the unique visitors visiting the web page.

For banner advertising to be effective, it is important that there be a brand recollection, without which it is impossible to have an effect on the target audience's conscious. Banner advertising rates are so low that if you opt for this method of advertising, the chances of you losing out, as an advertiser are very low. Understand the pros and cons of banner advertising with particular websites, pay attention to the banner advertising rates for the website and then determine whether you should go in for this form of marketing or not.