Banner Advertising: A Good Addition To An Advertising Arsenal

For most marketers, if asked, they will say that banner advertising has seen its day, and that now it is past its peak and not worth it. This couldn't be father from the truth. If used correctly, this form of advertising is still as effective as it has been in the past.  According to Eyeblaster Analytics, a leader in the industry, click through rates have dropped to around 0.2% for standard banners and about 0.5% for media rich banners.

While those are the statistics, many companies still report great success from using display advertising, and consider it a good addition to their advertising arsenal. Banner advertising has evolved over the last decade since their inception, and advertisers have gotten more sophisticated in the way they use display advertising.

Knowing the terminology will go a long way towards getting a handle on banner advertising.

Banner impressions or hits is a term related to the number of times a website has been requested to present a graphic image - i.e. your banner. This can be misleading many times, because what you're looking for is the number of "hits" to a specific web page and not the number of graphics including your banner, have been loaded on the page. Hits should really be pageviews or impressions which is a more accurate representation of what is occurring.

Pageviews or impressions means the number of times someone requests a specific webpage from the server. Banner impressions or views is the number of times a banner has been presented on the webpage. This is usually the same as pageviews or page impressions. The only difference can occur if there is a time constraint put on the viewer before it counts as a banner impression. Usually, a person needs to stay on the webpage a minimum amount of time for this to be counted as a banner impression.

CPM is Cost per Thousand which stands for the number of times a banner is viewed in chunks of 1000. This is usually for pricing purposes or $10 CPM means for every 1000 banner views, the purchaser will page $10.

A banner advertisement is the actual image you've created to advertise your product or service. This graphic usually has a hyperlink to your website that is used by the visitor to click through to your website. Banner ads can be animated or static, and while you don't want a flashing or blinking ad, some animation improves the conversion from viewer to clicker.

The standard size that is most common for banner advertising is 468 x 60 pixels, which is standardized by the IAB or Internet Advertising Bureau. They have specific sizes in their Ad Unit guide which has made standards for different banner sizes including 300x250, 728x90, 160x600 and so on.

Creative is the actual banner ad, and in graphic design it is also considered the person creating the graphic. Click-throughs are what the visitor does when they click on the graphic to be directed to the product or service website, while CTR or Click Through Rate is the number of clicks by banner impressions related in percentage. What this means is that a 1% CTR is when 1000 banner impressions have seen about 10 clicks.