Are you using flash banner ads on your website or in your emails? While flash banners look great and almost every browser can play the flash banner ads they still have a serious drawback. Search engines have a very difficult time figuring out what’s in a flash banner. If you are into using SEO to get traffic from the search engines you probably don’t want to use the flash banners for that reason.
If you plan on using flash for the banners on your website there are a few considerations to take into account. The longer your flash ad is the bigger the file size is going to be. The more colors you use the bigger the banner is going to be. You don’t want your banner file size to get so big it hurts your website or slows it down. I see flash ads that have file sizes bigger than the webpages we designed 5 years ago. Do what you need to do to keep the file size of your flash banners down to a reasonable size.
Use fonts that are easy to read and big enough to read. If people can’t read your ads they won’t click on them and that defeats the whole purpose. You should also use websafe fonts like arial or verdana. You can always make the fonts bold if they are still hard to read.
To help keep your file sizes in the appropriate range you can also limit the amount of animation you use in the banner. If you can you may want to consider using animated gifs for your banners as often they can get out the same message but with smaller file sizes. Keep your flash banner ads short so people can see the whole ad in 10 seconds or less.
When I go to a website filled with flash ads I get irritated because there is no way to kill or stop them from running. Always, always use a pause and a close button on your banner ads so your surfers don’t get irritated and leave your site before they’ve seen all of the ad. If the surfers leave for that reason you won’t make any money. It’s always a balancing act to provide the info you need to against the file size and the length of time the ad plays.
Flash banner advertising is totally different from magazine, newspaper or tv advertising as customers can click on your banner ads to satisfy their curiosity right now. Other sorts of advertising venues just don’t offer what the internet does. Satisfaction with one click of the mouse. It’s a very powerful way for surfers to make their choices and it’s easy for you to track which of your banner ads they like the best.
Flash banner ads and video ads provide, most of the time, a better user experience than do static banners using .jpg. .png or .gif. However I recommend using those formats where you can, where they will be effective and provide information the surfer needs without the hassle and file size of flash banners. I can’t tell you enough about file size. Surfers have very little patience and will quickly leave a site that takes forever to load. Having the greatest flash banner ads means nothing if no one sees them due to slow loading.
By using flash you can also provide a degree of surfer interaction with the ad. If you can get surfers to interact with your ads you will get more click thrus and make more money. I don’t know about you but my goal is to make as much money as I can with any of the ads I use, flash based or other types.
If you don’t know how to design flash banners don’t worry as there are a lot of places on the web where you can get templates for free. Then all you have to do is replace the text, pictures and animation with your own. Then you need to export the ad into an SWF and put it on your website. If that’s to much for you to handle there are also a lot of places that will make your ads for you. Having a professionally designed flash banner ads can be a bit expensive but if you hunt around the net you’ll find you can get some really great ads fairly cheap.
If you want to enhance your website try using some flash banner ads and see if you make more money with them or without them.