The Heavy Chef Project

I was sent a request today from one of my clients to do some banner advertising.
Personally I have a real aversion to banner advertising. When it is possible to target a visitor and only pay when they hit your site, pay per click (or even now- pay per lead) is far more cost results driven. Renting links, sponsoring content or content based text ads could also be viable alternative because they are less intrusive and fit more closely into the way in which the visitor to the site wants to use and interact with the page.

People have become “banner-blind” and tend to ignore the top part of
the page now-a-days. The page impressions may be high but the click
through rate is usually very very poor.

However I have seen banner ads work successfully if the placement is targeted correctly and the ad done well.

Go to the sites you are thinking about advertising on and if possible contact someone else adverting on that site and find out what response they are getting from it (usually the smaller companies will be able to respond to you on this one). Another indicator is to ask the seller what is their retention rate for advertisers is - do they come back a second year?

From a design perspective please bear in mind that although one would probably think that having a very overt design for a banner ad would work, they actually work best when they look exceptionally similar to the site design. This is because they engender more trust.

Also make sure the page the ad is placed on is the most relevant one. It is better to be on a page with only 2,00o visitors per month (that is targetted) than the home page of the site which has 10,000 visitors a month.

And most importantly make sure the landing page you send them to when they click on the ad is relevant to the message you have portrayed in the ad. Don’t highlight a particular product then send them to your home page and expect them to find that product.

- Perky