Banners do not have a particularly good reputation, but will continue to play an important role in online marketing in the future. Find out now what distinguishes good from bad banners, how you can win the battle for attention and what the future holds for display advertising.

Where do banners come from?

Banners have been around since 1994 – what the first banner looked like you can see here, how the performance of the banner is tested today here. Since then, advertising banners have become much more diverse. And yet they have often caused head shaking.

In 1999 boring (i.e. static) banner advertising was declared dead and the multimedia banner event was conjured up. We will find out later to what extent this prognosis has been met.

Today, banners are still so widespread that users either hide them from the outset with plug-ins or automatically don’t look at popular banner areas – e.g. at the right column of web pages. Since our reading flow goes from left to right, this has not only something to do with conscious avoidance of banners, but is also a matter of habit.

Applied to the avoidance of banners, this phenomenon even has its own name: Banner Blindness. Nevertheless, many users can be reached via banners and this form of online marketing should not be dismissed as outdated.

What is banner advertising?

The basic principle of banners has remained unchanged since 1994: your advertising is integrated in the form of a banner on another website. Banners are provided with a hyperlink that leads the user to your website after clicking on the ad. In the best case he will land on a suitable landing page.

Banner advertising is also known as display advertising and can be integrated into websites as a graphic or animation file. The bandwidth is large, from interactive banners to static banners to banners with sound and huge areas – depending on your technical and financial possibilities there is hardly a limit to your imagination.

So banners are popular, because they can be designed in different ways and very individually. With banner advertising, for example, these goals can be pursued:

Sales increase
awareness
branding
retargeting
Billing models for banner advertising

Depending on what the destination of the banner is, there are also payment options that are more and less suitable:

In the example above it is also about a banner that is placed in front of the regular website. In this case, the editorial content (marked blue) and the ad are almost blurred – which certainly has a positive effect on the ad. The video does not start automatically.

The banner itself is a two-dimensional combination of static image and video content that clings to the article. Here, too, people make eye contact and, since they work at FedEx, inspire confidence – it is not an anonymous large company, but a personal, human business. The logo and CTA are clearly positioned and highlighted, even if the CTA does not immediately attract attention.

Depending on what the destination of the banner is, there are also payment options that are more and less suitable:

With Cost-per-Mille (CPM, also: thousand contact price, CPM), the actual number of clicks is irrelevant. The basis for billing here is how often the banner was displayed. There is a fixed price per thousand insertions.

In addition, there are success-dependent billing models:

The pay-per-click model, where you pay for every click on the banner. And don’t forget that many customers accidentally click on ads – according to Hubspot it’s about 34%.

With Pay-per-Sale, you have to pay for every purchase you make,
Pay-per-Lead works similarly. However, in this case you will be asked to pay for leads, i.e. registrations.

These banner positions are available

Banners can be placed at different positions on the website and have different formats. In the graphic you can see three examples where the banner is dark red. Layer Ads lay themselves for a certain time over the content of the website. Often this banner also follows when scrolling.

In the middle, a small content banner spits the article. The aim is to blur banners and articles and to prevent advertising from being perceived as advertising.

On the right you can see a skyscraper. As the name suggests, this banner is long and comparatively narrow. Since skyscrapers are usually in the left or right column, they are particularly susceptible to banner blindness.

A special form are pop-ups or pop-unders, which are opened as extra windows either in front of or behind the browser window. Strictly speaking, layer ads also belong in this category.

No matter which position and size the banner has to attract attention, the ads are often animated, rich in contrast and contain little or no text.

Examples of Banner Ads

We made a ramble through the Internet and felt a few banners on the number. Goal: to find out what makes a banner successful and arouses interest.

Here, the choice of the image is especially noticeable. The model looks directly into the camera, i.e. towards the user. Faces automatically draw our attention to the display, which otherwise would be in great danger of drowning in the banner blindness of the right column. This is supported by the fact that the size of the face changes, because movement attracts our gaze similarly to faces.

The advertiser’s logo can be seen well in every shot, the orange corresponds to the corporate design (CD) and creates a high recognition value.

The CTA (call-to-action) in Shot 4 can be recognized as such despite the comparatively restrained design and the assessment (“excellent performance”) inspires confidence – an aspect that is even more important online than offline and particularly relevant in the context of health insurance companies.

The ad is skyscrapered to the right of the content and animated. However, the animation not only attracts attention, but even tells a short story. In keeping with this, the logo is not displayed permanently, but only towards the end of the story.

Here a model also looks directly into the camera and creates a contrast to the surroundings through the unorthodox context (bed).

A video banner is displayed above the actual website. The video starts automatically, but only plays sound as soon as you activate it with a click.

The display takes up much more space than a skyscraper. Compared to the previous examples, the CTA is clearly highlighted in colour (“Learn how”), and the user is also addressed directly with a question. Adobe’s recognition is ensured by the logo being prominently placed and the specific CD being picked up.

It is also about a banner that is placed in front of the regular website. In this case, the editorial content and the ad are almost blurred – which certainly has a positive effect on the ad. The video does not start automatically.

The banner itself is a two-dimensional combination of static image and video content that clings to the article. Here, too, people make eye contact and, since they work at FedEx, inspire confidence – it is not an anonymous large company, but a personal, human business.

The logo and CTA are clearly positioned and highlighted, even if the CTA does not immediately attract attention.