Five Ways to Get More from Banner Ads
A lot has been written about designing banner advertising to be effective. Common concerns are keeping messages concise and compelling, calling viewers to action, using animation to tell a story and generate interest, and tracking results of alternate versions of banners to identify the most effective ads.
Many companies, though, fail to optimize the actual delivery of their banner advertising. By looking at the information available in web requests, companies can deliver better results to advertisers, show visitors ads that are more relevant to them and maximize the value of their web site "space".
Five Ways to Get More from Banner Ads
Many sites fail to use banners effectively, using Flash with browsers that don't support Flash, showing ads that may be geographically limited to all visitors, or just displaying the same ad over and over, monotonously, and then wondering why it doesn't get many clickthroughs.
A lot of work typically goes into creating effective ads; companies need to think through how they deliver the ads in order to make the most of their investment. Here are five options for using ads and ad space more effectively.
Avoid Excessive Repetition
Eye-tracking studies have demonstrated the so-called "banner-blindness" effect. Visitors to sites quickly learn where the content is and where the ads are. If ads don't change over time, people learn to ignore space on sites where ads are displayed.
They ignore the space if your site delivers static, irrelevant information. This is annoying to users, and it's taking space on your site and throwing away its potential value.
Sites should optimize the use of their space by minimizing the repetitive display of ads to users. One option for minimizing repetition is to place absolute limits on the maximum number of times a user sees any individual ad. This is possible even with anonymous user visits, using a cookie. Another approach is to limit the frequency that any ad will be displayed to each visitor; once a banner has been shown once, it won't be shown for "x" days, hours or minutes.
By limiting the number of times any ad is displayed, you avoid boring users with ads that they've already seen, and you also avoid training users to ignore sections of your site.
Know Where Visitors are Coming From
You can also use referral information to improve user experience and the value of your ad space. You can display ads, or avoid displaying, them when users come from specific domains or pages.
For example, if your site is promoting an advertising partner's site, their main goal may be to introduce your site's visitors to their site. If someone comes to your site from the advertiser's site, though, it's a waste of your site space and users' attention to show them the advertiser's ad. They've just been to the site - they don't want to see an ad it!
Similarly, there may be situations where it makes sense to display an ad when visitors come from specific sites. An example of this would be a retail site displaying promotions specific to the type of site a user comes from. A site that sells electronics might want to display music gear to visitors coming from popular music sites, computer gear promos to users coming from computer technology sites or gadgets to people coming from popular gadget blogs.
Display Ads When they are Relevant
While many ads can displayed at any time, other ads may be irrelevant at certain times and most effective at other times. Some temporal options for ad display are time of day, day of week, times of month and start and stop dates.
For example, if a site displays ads for local restaurants, it might make sense to display ads for breakfast spots early and late in the day, lunch spots in the morning and dinner restaurants and bars in the evening.
If an advertiser is promoting an event, say a conference, it might make sense to display "branding" type ads before online sales are available, switch to ads encouraging sign-ups or ticket purchases once online sales are available, and then switch to promoting event coverage once the event starts.
By using temporal options intelligently, you can make ad space more immediate to both your visitors and advertisers.
Understand Where Your Visitor Is
Many sites serve visitors from around the world. If you are showing local advertising on a site, it will probably be irrelevant to international visitors.
When your site gets page requests, your servers can usually identify the IP and language preference for users making the request. This can be used to get high-level information on where a user is located. Using this info, you can display ads specific to certain regions. Where you have no region-specific advertising,you can default to internationally relevant ads.
Similarly, by understanding a user's language preference, you can display native language advertising, whenever possible.
Degrade Ads Gracefully
For many years, most sites have received most of their visits from Internet Explorer running under Windows. In the last few years, though, there has been a growth in the use of other browsers, operating systems and device types.
By understanding what type of system a visitor is using, you can avoid delivering content that they can't use. For example, if a browser can't support Flash, "degrading" an ad to a .jpg or .gif may improve the visitor's experience at your site. If someone visits your site with a portable media device, it may make sense to insert smaller ads or text ads into your content.
Use browser, OS and user agent information to understand visitor browser capabilities, and deliver ads that will work for them.
Sites frequently contribute to "banner-blindness" by displaying ads ineffectively. By using the five options discussed here, sites can increase the value that they deliver advertisers, avoid displaying irrelevant ads to visitors and maximize the value of the space on their pages.