Experts assume that even 65% of the total population belongs to the visual group. Images influence our emotions, evoke specific associations, are easy to remember and strengthen the presented messages. This knowledge is eagerly used by marketers, creating advertising campaigns for specific brands, products or services. Banners are the Internet type of image ads. What should a decent banner ad look like? We've collected everything every advertiser needs to know about banners on the web.
The beginnings of banners on the Internet
To talk about banner advertising, we have to go back to the 90s of the last century. It was then, precisely on October 27, 1994, that the first advertising banner appeared on the web. It was a slim, black rectangle with the words "Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE?" and an arrow pointing to the words "YOU WILL". Behind the banner was a promotional message from one of the American telecoms AT&T. Advertising turned out to be a great success. Almost every second internet user clicked on it. The result was impressive and actually today - impossible to repeat. Why?
In 1994, banner advertising was something new. A breath of fresh air in the world of marketing. Internet users, intrigued by the message, clicked on it, thus ensuring the company's marketing success. With the development of the Internet and the incredible progress in the world of new technologies, advertising banners have become commonplace. They have undergone a revolution since pioneering advertising. They took the form of extremely annoying pop-unders, intrusive pop-ups and invasive, colorful, even repulsive gifs from which you could get nystagmus. How is it today?
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Banner advertising today
Banner ads today are not deterred by their intrusiveness. They are subtler, more subdued and eye-friendly. Contemporary advertising banner on the internet, otherwise known as a display ad, usually takes the form of a simple .jgp, .png, or .gif graphic or a multimedia element created with HTML5. It can be in a static or animated form. The most frequently used banner ad size is 750 × 200 px.
Today's banners can be found on virtually every page - also on brands' own websites. Google offers a great solution for advertisers. As part of Google Ads, a marketer can place his banner ad on the Google network of over 2 million pages and reaching over 90% Internet users around the world. The use of Google Display Network in your campaign allows you to generate high ranges, and thus increases the effectiveness of advertising activities - it supports sales.
How does banner advertising work?
Behind the banner ad there is a link that redirects the user to a specific website when clicked. Banners work like any other form of online advertising. Their main goal is to increase traffic on the website, encourage a potential customer to buy specific products or use a given service and, consequently, increase sales conversion and gain profit. Banner advertising is a kind of sales lead generator.
A well-prepared banner ad is a great promotional tool. Advertising banners placed in the right places on the web generate high ranges, and thus increase the company's message on the market. They build its recognition and thus facilitate the implementation of marketing assumptions. A coherent message in the form of an interesting graphic advertisement naturally prolongs the company's communication with the recipients. It is an element that builds its image and shapes relations with the target group.
Banner ads are also a great way to remind your customer about yourself. We are talking about dynamic remarketing, i.e. personalized banners presenting specific products. These are activities aimed at people who have visited a given online store before, but for some reasons have not decided to take advantage of the offer. The purpose of remarketing is to re-attract the potential customer with the brand and subtly persuade him to buy.
What's the plus of banner ads on the web? Apart from the pleasant form, it is also their measurability. You can easily check the effectiveness of a banner using the click-through rate (CTR). The indicator is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of times your ad is displayed. The higher the CTR, the more effective the message. How to improve the ratio? What matters is who we show specific ads to and how we have prepared them.
Who to display the banners?
The determination and detailed analysis of the target group has a huge impact on the final success of banner ads. Every marketer knows that the essence of effective marketing is to meet the needs of recipients and create messages that affect their emotions. Getting to know your potential customers will allow you to create campaigns that will translate into real effects in the form of increased sales and attractive profits.
The target group analysis will help you choose the sites where you should place your banner ads. Interestingly, Google Ads allows only those pages from the campaign that the advertiser deems inappropriate. In addition, it displays ads on websites that it considers to be thematically similar to the campaign being run. This mechanism increases the effectiveness of advertising activities.
Banner ads are also displayed as part of the previously mentioned remarketing. This is a great way to fight the so-called abandoned carts in online shop.
How to create an effective banner ad?
Banner advertising will be effective if it is prepared in a professional manner. The banner should encourage the recipient to click, and not reject it with its intrusive, invasive nature. Minimalism is a friend of every advertiser. The best banner ads are those that tempt with their subtlety, are pleasant to the eyes, and do not contain bright or intensely flashing elements. The banner should be legible, aesthetic, full of valuable content and, most importantly, consistent with the corporate identity and vision of the company. The photos or graphics used must be natural. They should be distinguished by outstanding quality and high authenticity.
On a banner ad, it is worth placing the brand logo and CTA (call to action), i.e. an inscription encouraging interaction - e.g. "buy now", "read on".
The problem of today's advertising on the Internet - banner blindness
Recently, a lot has been said about banner blindness, i.e. banner blindness. It is a phenomenon of instinctively ignoring all graphic resembling elements Internet advertising. For advertisers, this creates a considerable challenge: how to prepare an advertising banner that will bring the expected results? And here we come back to the concept of the target group. The key to success is because targeted advertising. Targeting messages is showing them to the right people. If a user hits an ad at the right moment, they're more likely to be interested in and click on it.
In addition to targeting, the appearance of the banners is also very important. We have already mentioned that the bright, unpleasant to the eyes, pop-up ads in the center of the screen is more annoying than interesting. Does that mean banner ads have to be boring? Nothing could be more wrong. They must be prepared skilfully and interestingly so that they do not irritate users, but encourage interaction with the brand. How to do it? How to find a compromise? It's real art! Bet on the experience and skills of specialists. contact us. We know how to help you!