Internet Banner Advertising

Does banner advertising work?

If it did not then banner advertising would not have become such a huge industry.

However, there are several points to consider when booking banner advertising.

All advertising works best when a customer wants to see it.

One of the major factors influencing the effectiveness of banner advertising will be the quality, popularity, and specific target audience of the website carrying your banner advert.

Advertising a car supermarket on www.carsupermarkets.co.uk or car leasing company on www.contracthireandleasing.com will work very well because these are very busy, industry specific websites. Advertising car leasing on a website listing used cars for sale or vans on a car website will not deliver the same level of response or reach the target audience.

Measurement of success

How do you measure success?

• Being seen by your target audience?
• Clicks through to your website?
• Telephone calls from your banner?
• Response to other forms of advertising on the same website as a result of people already having seen your company name?
• What are you asking users / visitors to do?
• Are you asking users to Click or Call? Are you asking them to do anything at all?

Factors affecting response

Quality & popularity of the website featuring your banner. A trusted, respected website will deliver better results in most cases.

• Is the website hosting your banner is very busy & specific to your industry / audience?
• Quality of banner. Does your banner look professional & appealing? Does it stand out on the page?
• Can your banner be viewed by all visitors – If your banner is designed in FLASH then lots of users will not be able to even see it.
• Appeal of your company. Does your company appeal to the whole audience seeing your banner?
• Some companies will also achieve higher response due to their popularity, perceived image or maybe just because they are recognized “brand” names.
• Appeal of your offering. If you have a good offer / message on your banner then response will be far higher than a banner that states “Click Here” displaying your logo.
• Position on the page. Make sure that your banner is as well positioned as possible.
• What page on your website does the banner link to? A banner stating “1000 cars in stock” should deep-link to your stock search page taking users exactly where they want to go.
• If you have advertised on the same website for a long time then you should change the creative from time to time to keep users interested.

General

Do other companies have banner ads on these sites?

Are other advertisers consistent with their banner presence? If other companies continue to advertise for several years then it would be reasonable to assume that they are achieving good results.

Costs
Banners have traditionally always been charged on a CPM basis. This means Cost per Thousand times that your banner is seen. For example a banner viewed 200,000 times at a CPM of £20 would cost 20 x 200. Some publishers charge a lot less than this whilst some charge considerably more depending of the website, number of banners booked, availability of space and target audience.

Some publishers, often with a low demand for space, charge a CPC – Cost per click.

Some publishers charge a flat tenancy charge, which depending on the number of impressions for your target audience can offer far better value for money.

Click Through Rate – CTR
This is the number of times that your banner has been clicked divided by the number of times that it has been seen. For example a banner seen 100 times & clicked once would have a CTR of 1%

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