What are the best banner ads to use on your site? If you are new to internet marketing you’ve heard all kinds of things about banner ads. Most of them are not true but the old myths persist. The truth is banner advertising works and it works very well.
Bad Advertising Banners
There are three kinds of banners that are bad. The first is the banner that doesn’t get noticed. However that could be a positioning problem on your website. There are certain places on a webpage that will generate more clicks than other spots on your site.
The next type of bad banner ads is the animated ads that use weird colors and flash off and on so much that they actually drive users away from your site. Obviously you don’t want that to happen. Another thing that happens with animated ads is using to many of them on your site. The conflicts they set up can be damaging to your site and your income.
The last bad banner ad is one that doesn’t have your keywords in the banner. If you have a website that you are optimizing for blue widgets and the SE are sending you some traffic for blue widgets you definitely need a banner to sell the blue widgets and it needs to have the keywords somewhere on the banner. If’s hard to get a good click through ratio if you don’t have the searched for keywords in the banner.
Best Banner Ads
THere is no magic formula for creating banners as each niche is very different and a banner that works in one may not do anything at all in another. However banner ads that are eye catching with text that is short and sweet will work well. With some practice and some learned knowledge from your efforts you will find it easier and easier to create banners that do what you want them to do. Make you more money.
The best ads aren’t shown to a visitor to your site 42 times in a row. That will just irritate them. You want to show them different banners on each page rather than just showing them the same ad over and over again. That means how often you show a banner ad can make it a good or bad banner. Less is better but you want to show it to your visitors at least once per visit to your site.
The best ads don’t cover up 3/4 of the page when it loads like some do. That’s irritating to most people and not something you really want to do. That’s another of those things that once per visit is fine, however not on the first page. Covering up content on every page with huge ads just doesn’t work.
Don’t put ads for blue widgets and a page selling lingerie. It won’t work. You want your best banners to match the content of the site you are putting them on.
Besides the standard jpg and gif banners there are the rich media banner ads. These types of ads usually use audio, video, java or flash programming and can be interactive. These banners work very well but the file sizes are a consideration. If your banners slow down your web page they will cost you sales as your visitors will leave instead of waiting for the banners to load.
When designing your banners checkout other places on the net that are offering the same thing you are and see what banners they are using. Then design your banner to fit in with the best ads you’ve seen.
Keep you graphics and text as simple as you can. Long messages or complicated banners reduce the effectiveness or your ads and drive off possible customers.
Try to make your point on your banners using seven words or fewer. Considering you should be getting in the search term that still leaves you some words for selling. Using fewer words lets you use a larger font size and makes your message even better.
Try to use power words in your ads. If you don’t know what the power words are just do a search on it and you’ll find lists of a few hundred words that make an instant impact. Free, incredible, secret and others.
Be careful with the images you use. Using the wrong images will destroy your banners effectiveness and you won’t make much money. It’s a case where less is actually more. Messages or banners that aren’t all cluttered up will work much better than crowded banners. Crowding your banners makes them harder for people to read and figure out.
As for the best banner ad sizes I tend to go along with Googles recommendations as Google is the biggest marketer on the net and has the most useful information because of their size. They test everything just as all webmasters should so I trust their suggestions for best banner sizes to get the best ctr. Google says the 768×90 header, the 160×600 and the 300×250 sizes work best. Oh, you might want to check out Googles heat map for banner placement, too.
There you have it, all the information I know about creating the best banner ads. Stick to what I told you and you will do well with your banners and ads.