Banner advertising on the Internet: what it is and how it works

Marketers have been using banner ads for almost 30 years. During this time, it has seriously changed and acquired new forms, but it still attracts the audience. But what is banner advertising, and what are its types? Let’s consider it in detail in the article.

What is banner advertising

Banner ads are advertisements that attract the user’s attention and motivate them to visit the site. You can find examples of banner advertising everywhere: on various sites or aggregator platforms. Banner advertising in mobile applications is also popular. (Read also: Google Discovery Ads format).Banner advertising is a powerful performance strategy tool that allows you to increase website traffic, reach a significant audience segment and solve other image problems.

Types of banner ads

Most often, there are two types of banner ads: statistical and dynamic. If a statistical ad is an image in PNG or JPEG format, then everything is more complicated with a dynamic one. It can be created based on various technologies, in particular:

1. HTML5. Adaptive type of banners, the size of which changes depending on the device screen resolution.
2. AMPHTML. Banner format based on HTML code using AMPHTML technology. The display of such banners starts only after validation, which guarantees safety and efficiency.

In addition, banner advertising is also divided by the following criteria:

• size (the most popular sizes are 1200×1200 and 1200×628);
• goal (targeted, informational, remarketing/retargeting, internal);
• form (full width, at the top of the page, on the background of the page, etc.).

Banner advertising: advantages and disadvantages

Even though banner advertising is a relatively old advertising tool, it is still popular due to its advantages:

1. Significantly increases brand awareness.
2. Affects a wide audience.
3. Has flexible settings.

But at the same time, banner advertising has its disadvantages, which we should mention:

1. High probability of budget draining due to incorrect settings.
2. The appearance of untargeted clicks.

Separately, it is worth mentioning such a phenomenon as banner blindness. Due to the excess of information and various advertisements, the user does not see the necessary information and gets lost in the information space. Therefore, people do not respond to banners. Moreover, their presence is annoying if banner ads prevent them from seeing the page content.But the statistics prove the opposite and confirm the effectiveness of banners. The main thing is to remember that it is unlikely that a banner ad that worked on one site will work on another. It is always necessary to look for something that resonates with the requests and interests of your target audience. (Read also: Target audience portrait: how to make it).

The effectiveness of banner advertising

With Google, it’s easy to see where your ads are appearing, which ads are getting the most clicks, and which sites are the most profitable to advertise on.When analyzing the effectiveness of banner advertising, you need to monitor the following indicators:

• ad impressions;
• coverage;
• frequency of contacts with the banner;
• CTR; CPM, CPC and unique CPM;
• conversions from clicks into leads;
• ROI; viewability (visibility);
• the intersection of advertising audiences.

To quickly respond to a decrease in efficiency, monitor the quality of traffic in Google Analytics: bounce rate, time on the site, browsing depth, sociodemographic characteristics of the traffic, etc. (Read also: How to add a website to Google Analytics).To determine the effectiveness of advertising, it is necessary to evaluate it comprehensively, paying enough attention to each of the indicators.

Where to place advertising banners

One of the most popular is Google Ads banner advertising. Various tools are used to create such banners, including a special tool from Google — Google Web Designer.The network offers advertisers a wide range of banner placement formats, especially if you are interested in banner advertising on thematic platforms in the English-speaking segment. After all, Google has more than two million partner sites, and it also covers foreign ones.Most often, users can find banner advertising on the Internet on websites. Banner advertising on a site with a high share of your target audience will help you create a solid image and increase brand awareness. (Read also: Google video ads: how to launch).

How much banner advertising on the Internet costs

The cost of banner advertising is calculated individually for each case because it depends on many factors. In particular, it depends on the site for placement, business area, promotion region, and others.