Banner Advertising
It's almost impossible to surf the Internet for even a few minutes without coming across dozens of banner ads. They're everywhere. Banner advertising has become one of the main ways that many commercial Web sites generate revenues, just as magazines and newspapers are supported by print advertising.
A banner ad is simply an advertisement that appears on a Web page. It works like this: You click the ad and are taken to another Web page, which can be a sell page (which we covered in the previous section), a microsite, or the company's main Web site. Regardless of where the campaign leads you, the overriding purpose of a banner ad is to get clicked.
In print advertising, space is usually sold by inches. On the Internet, however, the size of an ad is sold by pixel dimensions. A pixel is a unit of measurement on a computer screen. 486 x 60 is the most common banner ad size, which is a long, thin rectangle.
Plain and Fancy
The most basic banner advertisement is the static image. Like most print ads, there are no special effects. Usually just a headline followed by one or two lines of copy.
However, some advertisers are taking advantage of the multimedia capabilities of the Internet by using GIF-animated banners. These are ads that display several different images in quick succession. The effect is like animated motion — similar to that old trick of making a stickman walk by flipping through several pages of drawings.
Then there's a thing called rich media, which adds sound and video to a banner ad. Some of these rival even the best television commercials.
Writing a Better Banner
Writing an effective banner ad can be a challenge simply because of the size restrictions. You don't have much space. Most banners have less than ten words, which doesn't give you much elbowroom to get the reader — perhaps already captivated by other elements on the Web page — to notice and click it. Here are some writing tips that will help:
Focus on what the readers will get when they click the banner. That could be a free report, free shipping, an online demonstration, or a virtual tour.
Edit the copy to its bare essentials. Get rid of any extraneous words (often these are the adjectives) that don't add much oomph to the sales message.
Don't assume that the reader will know they have to click the ad. Make sure you clearly say, “Click here,” “Go there now,” “Visit today,” or some other call to action.
If possible, work closely with the graphic designer. Make sure the layout and the images are as motivating as the text. The graphics should help the reader see the benefits. For example, a banner ad for a travel destination might show a family throwing a Frisbee on the beach.
For animated banners, make sure each image is effective on its own. For any number of technical reasons, the prospect may not see all the images.
For banners that contain audio and video, make sure the ad works well without sound. The prospect may have his or her computer speakers turned down or off.
In a traditional print advertisement, you can sometimes get away with a headline that is cute or clever — an interesting play on words perhaps, or some other headline that requires the reader to decipher its meaning. Not so in banner advertising. Your ad must contain a clear benefit to the reader, and a good reason why he or she should click now. The curiosity headline “Sales Should Always Be This Easy!” won't work as well as the benefit-oriented headline “7 Secrets of Rejection-Free Cold Calling.”
