Do You Design Banner Ads?

A couple years ago a friend of mine who sold ad inventory for premium publishers told me the key to making his banner ads work was to not make them look like banners, unlike the below tongue in cheek effort:

For how many years was the banner the standard format for online advertising? As the web evolves and each of us learn better business practices many standards become irrelevant relics of the past. Every business person is a creature of laziness. Sometimes laziness prevents us from changing, and sometimes it helps us make ourselves more efficient. If a macros can do the job then why not let it?

What ideas have you held on to for far too long? What information and productivity tools convinced you to break those habits?

Published: November 25, 2007 by Aaron Wall in business

Comments

Hawaii SEO
November 25, 2007 - 8:44am

Banner advertising can be amazingly expensive if you don't know what you're doing. (It can be amazingly expensive even if you do know what you're doing)

If you're on a budget... Try LeadBack.com. It's part of the Advertising.com network that has a “Re-Targeting” service. They can do it on a cost of $2.00 per click or $2.00 per thousand impressions with a minimum buy of only $200.00. You just need a privacy statement on your website somewhere to participate.

You can place the LeadBack script on a PPC landing page or expose all visitors by placing the script on a site-wide footer. You can likely do something in between where you display the script based on referrer. (If referrer = Google, then display script) After they LEAVE your website... they begin to see your banner ads all over the internet.

Something I’ve been wanting to try is to place the script onto other niche websites or blogs. The prospect sees your banner ad on the blog (or not) and then begins to see your banners all over the internet after they leave the site. (I might create some websites just for that specific purpose.)

Also… The ads are displayed in places that already have ads. You’re not increasing the number of ads that the prospect sees, just targeting the ad placements that the user is going to be exposed to anyway.

November 25, 2007 - 9:50am

That is brilliant. In essense your ads follow people who visited your site as they move around the web.

I guess those ad impressions are better for targeting niche sites than they would be for targeting sites with broad coverage.

DvB
November 25, 2007 - 5:44pm

Indeed, it's true: traditional, old-skool flashing banner ads don't work. And to Aaron's point, the trick is not to make them look like banners. When you're clever like Apple, you can mix it up to draw the kind of attention that extends beyond the ad. Here's the perfect example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvpGACmQaoI

I actually saw it live on CNET, and it was hilarious. Needless to say, MSFT was surely pissed that the competitive 'ad block' filter wasn't activated. Talk about a mockery - and one helluva effective ad stunt.

Igor The Troll
November 26, 2007 - 12:48am

Nice Banner!
Did you lady make that?
Looks like a woman's touch..:)

November 26, 2007 - 1:05am

My soft fingers (and Xara) made that banner. Hehehe

Igor The Troll
November 26, 2007 - 4:08am

Cool You are a Virtual Reality Genius, you should make me a nice logo for www.igorthetroll.com

I glad I stood up for you @Sphinn

November 26, 2007 - 5:25am
Igor The Troll
November 26, 2007 - 9:06am

I am going to play around with the new toy, and see Where it goes. Leave it life for now..:)

Click this-->
http://www.seobook.com/images/igorthetroll.gif

Igor The Troll
November 26, 2007 - 9:10am
Hawaii SEO
November 26, 2007 - 10:11am

Thanks Arron.

Banner ad re-targeting works with a lot of other forms internet marketing.

Let's say you hit the home page of Digg and you get 10,000 1st time visitors to your site... It would be fairly cheap to re-message to them through banner ads for the next month. (100K banner ad impressions cost $200)

With PPC... If you pay $2.00 per click... Why not spend an extra dollar to follow up and send them 500 banner ad impressions over the next 30 days?

You can place a different script on different pages. People who visit the Blue Widget page see Blue Widget banner ads & people who visit the Green Doodads page see banner ads about Green Doodads.

If the consideration phase is a long one, (Real Estate or BtoB) why not re-message to them for the next 30 days?

The ads appear on hundreds of very popular and HUGE national websites as remnant inventory. It can create the illusion that your small company is able to afford to advertise on one those websites just like the national brand advertisers.

Geo-Targeting works great as well. You can have banner ads for your local business appear on national websites for pennies per impression. (Only the locals will see them)

Banner advertising works. AND... if you know what your doing... it can be cheap. In my opinion... Most internet marketers are only doing half the job they could be.

Igor The Troll
November 27, 2007 - 4:43am

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