Making banner ads better

Posted: December 15th, 2010

There was a post on how to make bad banner ads, better on AdAge.com today, you can read it here. It broke down the three main factors of an effective advertising campaign into: creative, frequency and targeting. I can’t speak much to frequency or targeting, not my area of expertise, but I can speak to the creative.

I’ve picked up a few best practices over the years that, generally speaking, raise brand awareness and improve click through rates. Here are a few:

• Make your logo bigger: really, it’s surprising how many banner ads are out there where you have no idea who the offer is from, because the logo doesn’t exist or it’s tiny. Make it bigger.
• Keep your CTA on the banner at all times or as long as possible. People scan through websites and they rarely stop to watch a banner for 10–15 seconds. They scan you’re banner. Every frame counts. Make it scannable. You don’t have to be that flashy, you just have to make it scannable and noticeable.
• Have something worth saying. I know, you’ve heard the whole content is king argument before, but it still holds true with banner ads. People scan your banner and if you have something interesting (or entertaining) on your banner, they’ll engage with it.

These maxims don’t always hold true, but most of the time they do. Something to keep in mind the next time you’re working on a banner campaign.