Category: Paid Placement
Summary & Overview
A “web banner” or “banner ad” is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. The advertisement is constructed from an image (GIF, JPEG, PNG), JavaScript program or multimedia object employing technologies such as Java, Shockwave or Flash, often employing animation, sound, or video to maximize presence. Images are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape (i.e. either wide and short, or tall and narrow) hence the reference to banners. These images are usually placed on web pages that have interesting content, such as a newspaper article or an opinion piece. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry trade group, sets some standards for online shapes.
Setup Time:
Less than 3 Hours.
Ongoing Maintenance:
Minimal.
Cost:
Varies per advertiser.
Speed of Results:
Moderate.
Basic Use:
Banner advertisements are the image ads you commonly see on websites. Banner advertisements are generally placed along the top of a website (underneath the website’s header) or along the left and right margins of a website, but you can also find them embedded in the content of a website. Two factors generally influence the cost of a banner advertisement: the website’ traffic and the actual placement of the banner advertisement within the website. Banner advertisements can be a very effective form of marketing as you can accurately target your desired audience. Banner advertisements can also provide a consistent flow of traffic as you’re able to plan your advertising in advance.
Basic Action Steps:
- Get Familiar with the Terminology
Impression: Each time your banner ad loads on a website, this is considered an “impression.”
Click: Each time someone clicks on your actual banner, this is counted as a “click.”
Conversions: When someone fills out the form on your website, this is considered a “conversion” (or lead).
CPM - Cost Per Thousand: This is a method of measuring how much you will pay for a banner ad. Often times you are charged “on a CPM basic” which means you are charged for every thousand impressions. A “$2 CPM” means you pay $2.00 for every thousand impressions your banner ad receives. Be wary of sites that charge more than $4 to $5 CPM for banner ad placements. $2.00-$2.50 is ideal, but we've seen sites out there charging up to $15 CPM, which is very high.
CPA - Cost Per Action: This is a method of measuring how much you will pay for a banner ad, based on the actions taking. An action can be considered a click, or it can be considered a conversion. If a website offers banner advertising on a “CPA basis” this means you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad (as opposed to impressions).
CTR - Click Through Rate: This is the ratio of impressions to clicks. For example, if there are 1000 impressions (or page views) on a website, and 10 people click on the banner ad, that would be a CTR of 1%
Cost Per Conversion: How much it costs you to get one lead. If you spend $30 and you received 8 leads, than your cost per conversion is $3.75. Cost Per Action - If your specified action is a “click,” and you spent $30 to get 100 clicks, than your cost per action, or cost per click, would be $0.33.
Publisher: These are the websites that accept advertising on their site.
Advertiser: The individual or company placing the banner advertisement (you).
- Research Websites
Step One: Understanding How Websites Make Money
It’s important to examine any possible banner advertising opportunities through an understanding of how websites make money. Most websites are in business to either (1) make a profit, or (2) cover their site’s hosting and maintenance expenses. Closely examine the websites you look at to decipher if they’re selling advertising space (i.e. banner advertisements, text advertisements, Google’s Adsense ads, etc.), selling a product or service, or a combination of the two.
Step Two: Create a List of Websites to Research
Be sure to keep this research list in a manageable form (ex: Excel spreadsheet) so you can easily refer to it in the future.
- What Sites Do I Visit?
Start by looking at websites and blogs you personally visit to see if there are any banner advertisements on their site. If so, add this website immediately to your research list. If not, quickly scan the website to see how they make money. If they’re running other forms of advertising add them to your research list. If not, move on.
- Choose a Target Market
This can be anything … teachers, motorcycle enthusiasts, college football fans, investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners, dancers, golfers, etc. Go to Google and start typing in the keywords your target market would use to search for their area of interest. Quickly visit the websites you find in the natural/organic search listings (on the left side, not the sponsored results) to see if they’re running any advertising. If so, add the website to your research list.
Step Three: Research Websites
- Alexa.com
Go to Alexa.com and type in the URL of the website you’re researching. You can find a wealth of research on websites on Alexa. Specifically, however, you are looking for the overall traffic rank as well as traffic rank by country, related links (you can get ideas for other websites to research here) and keywords (it’s helpful to know what search terms are used when the site comes up in a search). In very general terms you are looking for websites with a traffic rank between 1 and 100,000 (with 1 being the most visited website). However there are exceptions to this rule: you may find a highly targeted website with a very loyal following that is well above 100,000 in traffic ranking but still a great place to advertise. They key here is to gain a general understanding of the site, who visits it and how much traffic it receives.
- Examine the Website
Quality Content: Does this website offer the reader valuable content or does it look like the Las Vegas strip with a flood of blinking and flashing banner ads? Make sure the site has a good balance of quality content that keeps viewers around. The longer a person is on the website, the more likely they are to click on your banner ad.
Targeting: Does this website attract the type of viewers you want? Does it attract people who would be interested in what you have to offer? Most people want to make more money, so most websites will fit this criteria, but the more targeted your banner ad placement is, the better your results will be.
- Place Your Banner Advertisement
Step One: Understanding Advertising Rates
Most websites post a “rate card” on their site letting potential advertisers know how much they charge for advertising space. Of course they are hoping you will just pay that published rate without any negotiation. If you do, however, you will most certainly overpay for your banner advertisement. By contacting the website owner, webmaster, or advertising/circulation manager directly you can usually negotiate these rates down significantly. You can do this by email, but a telephone call is preferable. On average most site owners have room to give you up to 40% to 50% off the published rate. Don’t be obnoxious or a pest, but why pay full price when you can save significantly?
Step Two: Understanding Placement
Without question you want to be “above the fold” (the top portion of the website you see when you open it in your browser) so your intended audience will not have to scroll down the page in order to see your banner. This is important because an “impression” is counted every time the page loads. If the page loads, you will be charged regardless if someone sees your banner ad or not and most people do NOT scroll down the first page.
Step Three: Start Small
While you may be pressured for a long-term contract at a “special rate”, it is always advisable to start with a smaller budget for shorter time period. Explain to the site owner that you are conducting a test run and if your banner does well you will be happy to commit to a long-term relationship with the site. As soon as you see your banner ad doing well you will want to secure a good long-term rate and specific placement with the site owner.
Step Four: Submit Banner
The site owner or webmaster will work directly with you in getting the artwork, URL links, and anything else they require to run your banner advertisement.
Step Five: Track Your Results
- Tracking
Set up tracking for the domain you use in your banner ad so you can track where your leads are coming from.
- Determine Cost Per Lead
Take the cost of your banner ad and divide it by the number of leads you received from that campaign. For example, if you spent $30 for your banner ad and you got 10 leads, 30/10 = $3.00 per lead. Your goal should be to pay $5 or less per lead.
- Review Applications
Check out your applications and see which ones are coming from your banner advertisements. If you have applications coming in from a banner ad negotiate with the site owner for a long term contract at a special discounted price.
Intermediate Strategies
Google Adwords: You can create a banner ad campaign within Google Adwords by selecting “Site Targeted Campaign” when you go to create a new campaign. You can choose to set this up on either a pay-per-click or a CPM basis. You can use Google site targeting to also choose websites that accept banner ad campaigns and then contact the site owner directly to negotiate a better deal.
If you are using customized banners that you created, they should either blend in with the site very well (same colors and fonts) or stick out like a sore thumb. There's no money in the middle.
If you have a site that pulls extremely well, test out a banner that looks as though it's a part of the site.
This can be extremely effective as people may assume it's a part of that website.
Related Marketing Strategies
• Text Advertising
• Google Adwords
• Blogging
Questions, Comments, Feedback & Suggestions
For questions about Banner Advertising, please send an email to resources@michaelwyrosdick.com with “Banner Advertising” in your subject line.
