Banner advertising is still one of the most popular online marketing instruments. In classic banner advertising, graphic, moving advertising messages are usually placed or rented on websites outside the company.
Behind the banner there is usually a hyperlink that leads to the corresponding offer (e.g. landing page or eShop of the advertiser) when clicking on the banner.
Banner formats
For the Internet there is a variety of different banner formats. The best known are fullsize banners and skyscrapers. In the course of time these were supplemented by a large variety of different formats in order to achieve the desired attention with the visitor of a website also in the future.
Banner types
A further differentiation besides the differentiation according to the standard sizes is the type of banner. There are four types of banner:
Static banners (still)
Animated banners (moving)
Interactive banners (within the banner selections can be made)
Rich media banners (contain small video sequences, which can also be set to music)
In addition, there are other types such as nano-site, streaming or pixel banners. Banners with Flash technology are now very popular with advertisers. These banners can be counted as rich media formats. They allow the advertiser more flexibility in the design of the banners. Usually, these banners contain animations that aim to attract the attention of visitors and ultimately prevent them from doing what they were supposed to do.
A phenomenon called “banner blindness” reflects the rejection of this banner form by Internet users. It occurs primarily among experienced Internet users and means nothing other than that all banners or content that blink, animate or glow in any way etc. are simply ignored or simply no longer recognized. Ad blockers are also frequently used to prevent particularly annoying advertising.
Principle of Banner Advertising
In principle, the banner advertising corresponds to the advertisements known from magazines and periodicals. Just as in the offline world, it is important to increase efficiency, including the selection of the right advertising partners (here platforms on the Internet, “publishers”). For example, an advertising banner aimed at bringing products on the subject of toddlers to customers will be more likely to be clicked on on a website that mainly has parents as visitors than on a website that focuses on Formula 1 races.
Furthermore, you have to be aware of the fact that you usually need a lot of Ad Impressions until someone needs the product at that very moment or at least has an interest in it, whereby there are now various technical possibilities that should make it possible to increase the efficiency of banner advertising.
They usually also take care to categorize the advertising (the service behind it) and to display it on the corresponding web pages of your portfolio. Nevertheless, you often see too undirected advertising on the web. Here it will make probably above all the mass instead of the goal orientation.
Billing of Banner Advertising
Here, billing is based on visual contacts (ad impressions), whereby a certain amount or price is determined for 1,000 ad impressions. If, for example, a page is loaded once by a visitor and thus also the banner, this represents a visual contact. The CPM is based on a thousand insertions.
CPC (Cost per Click)
After it was recognized that CPM was often an inadequate billing model for advertisers because too few visitors actually clicked on the advertisement, a fairer billing model was introduced (CPC). According to this model, the advertiser only has to bear the costs for the actual clicks on the banner (ad clicks).
CPL (Cost per Lead)
This billing model not only involves clicking on the banner, but also carrying out a pre-defined action (Ad Lead). This can be, for example, a subscription to a newsletter, registration on a website or simply a purchase. In the case of an actual sale, this is also referred to as an “ad sale”, which is certainly an efficient form of billing for the advertiser.
Measure success of banner advertising
The CTR (Click Trough Rate) is used to measure the success of a campaign. It measures the click-through rate of the banners by comparing the number of clicks to the ad impressions. For example, if 10 out of 1,000 visitors click on a banner, the CTR is one percent. In addition to the click through rate is the conversation rate. It does not measure the click-through rate, but the proportion of “converted” customers.
This means that the number of visitors who clicked on a banner and then actually carried out a predetermined action, such as a purchase, is measured here. To continue the above example: 10 out of 1,000 visitors clicked on the banner. Here we had a CTR of one percent. Now if one of these ten people carries out a certain action, the conversation rate is 10 percent.