Banner Advertising

Blinking, fast moving, flashy color in front of your eyes, exceptional idea, eye catching picture and words that you wish to read… all are characteristics of banner advertising. Banner ad is hot in web space.

"A banner ad is simply a special sort of hypertext link. A bit of HTML code instructs a Web server to bring up a particular Web page when a user clicks on a certain piece of text. Banner ads are essentially the same thing, except that instead of text, the link is displayed as a box containing graphics (usually with textual elements) and sometimes animation." – How Stuff Works

A banner ad is an ad graphic hyperlinked to the URL of the advertiser. These are usually animated GIF images, though we are seeing an increasing number of MacroMedia Flash banners. The full banner size is 468 x 60 pixels, and most sites limit the file size of the graphic to 12K to 16K. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) specifies eight different "standard" banner sizes. The full banner (468 x 60) is by far the most popular, but you will see all these variations all over the Web.

"Never underestimate the selling power of a well positioned banner ad" said Joe – Target Marketing Magazine.

Online effectiveness tracking has historically been framed in terms of ad impressions, click-through rate, and the resultant direct-response action registration, purchase, etc.

Effectiveness – a simple example:

1. People see an online ad for product, click on it, and buy through web site. OR
2. People see an online ad for product, don't click on it but become more aware of the benefits of product and are perhaps more likely to buy product next time in the store
Online advertising creates effect in mind. Either it may increase direct sale or indirect sale through other mediums.

Why Banner Ads?

Journey of Internet has just begun. Internet is attracting mass users. Today users just get introduction for product but once they are assured with security part definitely they will buy on the spot.

Amazon.com is excellent example of online book shopping. E-Bay is another successful example of shopping experience online. Thus it is necessary to attract buyers online on the spot.

Web surfers are accessing general portals (vortals). Yahoo, MSN, AOL and many other portals & vortals are expert in making mass web surfer group. Where else will you get mass to advertise? B2B portal is common interest (e.g. Diamond & Jewelers portal) where you can advertise for your product and likely to be visited for the same. Google provides advertising link on right hand side with key word searched by the user. Tim Armstrong, Google's vice president of advertising sales "The decision to wade into banners came after nine months of interviews with Web surfers, publishers and advertisers, and was based on what he called Google's core mission"..

Internet is becoming interactive medium. Submit request form, contact us, e-newsletter, forward to your friend, ideas forms and neural programs enable buyers & sellers interaction more user friendly and worthy. Marketers are beginning to redefine brands in ways that take advantage of the interactive nature of Internet.

Now a days banner ads are not so boring. Due to increase in speed of Internet due to DSL, cable and wireless high-speed technologies – transfer of big bytes is possible easily. Flash based animated advertising makes banner ads look up totally different.

It is possible to target those who can be prospective buyers. So flash your banner ad on such sites or portal where you can get interested personnel. Web marketers are getting better at communicating with online customers. If it is not in interest of visitors, banner ads can become intrusive too.

Problems with banner advertising are:

- All of target audience is not on Internet.
- Online listeners have so many other things in mind. All are not what we want. They are highly scrappy and fragmented.
- We have not reached yet up to the remark in online branding.
- If it is unrelated, it is intrusive and disturbing to see ad online.
- Integration between online & offline business is not yet established.

Measuring Banner Ad’s Success

Click Through Rate (CTR)
CTRs range from the industry average of about 0.39% to 10%. The more targeted the banner exposure, the higher the CPM (cost per thousand banner views). The banner ad is a real success if the visitor not only comes to the site but also buys something. Failing a click-through, advertisers hope that a publisher site visitor will see the banner ad and will somehow register it in their heads. The visitor consciously notes the content of a banner ad and decides to visit the advertiser's site at some time in the future, or it might mean that the visitor only peripherally picks up on the ad but is made aware of the advertiser's product or service.

Cost Per Sale
A much more important figure is the actual cost of making the sale of a product from banner ad. Don't care how high the CTR is if it doesn't result in a proportionate number of sales. Many advertisers keep track of visitor activity using Internet cookies. If you just measure clicks, you are not capturing the real effect of advertising, What you want to see is whether people are purchasing items.

Branding
Banner ads create brand awareness, and a brand image in the viewer's mind, whether or not the viewer clicks on the ad. Brand awareness is sometimes measured in surveys with questions such as: "What brand names can you recall in the field of drink?" If it is due to banner ads, yes it is addition to your banner ad campaign. The majority of the company's banner ads focused on brand-building, and typically consisted of the name of the Web site and a line describing the benefits of purchasing from the site. More than eighty percent of the company's advertising activity during this period was on portal and alliance Web sites such as Yahoo!, America Online, Women.com, iVillage.com, Healthcentral.com, and E*Trade. A given banner ad typically appeared on these sites over several weeks.

Page Views
The number of times a particular Web page has been requested from the server. Advertisers are interested in page views because they indicate the number of visitors who could have seen the banner ad. The most common way to sell banner ad space is cost per thousand impressions, or CPM (In roman numerals, M equals a thousand).

Final step..
Managers need to optimize the number of creative and advertising sites by making the tradeoff between quicker visits and lower expenditure per visit, or slower visits and higher expenditure per visit.