Banner Advertising Aint Dead

Sorry about the “aint” in the title, but I’m from Alabama. Anyways, if you’ve been in the business for a while, you might have read somewhere that banner ads are dying out. You probably read that people are developing “banner-blindness” and that they really don’t notice your banner ad anymore. While this may be true, it shouldn’t deter you from developing a good banner ad campaign. There are several ways to overcome the challenges, and, if you’re creative, you might come up with some ways of your own.

Text Banners… Aint No Oxymoron

The first tip I’ll present is that flashier is not always better. We’ve all seen those amazing video banners, and some have even caught our attention. The flash banners that take up the whole screen are pretty cool, too. However, if you aren’t a company like Toyota, Netflix, or Shrek (he’s incorporated, right?), you’re not going to get that many clicks. There are times when I use nothing but text in my banner ads. I’m NOT insane, and it does work.

What is the secret to text banners? Well, I try to exactly mimic the look and feel of the website that the banner will appear on. I’ll spare you an ethics discussion here, and just state that I’ve used this tactic a few times and haven’t been banned yet. Anywhere from 1800Banners to BuySellAds has allowed me to use this tactic, and it works. I like to mimic the background color, text color, and anything else that would make my ad look like one of the menus of the site. I always add my own text, or course, and I always include an “advertisement” line in the corner somewhere.

If you’re not comfortable completely mimicking the menus of the site, you can always just use the background color and a list of “links”. Now, of course, this will be an image file and none of the links will be clickable, but the entire area of your banner will lead to your site. If this is confusing, you should look up banner advertising on Google, and learn more about it. Just think of this tactic like camouflaging your Google Adsense ads. You always try to match your text and background colors, don’t you? So, what’s the difference?

Careful With Over-sexing Your Banners

Have you seen those Evony ads? Yoooouu know the ones… Hot girl, showing lots of cleavage, with absolutely nothing to do with the actual game? Those banner ads are very effective, and if you think it would speak to your target audience, then use should try to mimic them if you can. The only problem: how much skin can you actually show AND get away with it? I don’t know the universal answer to this question, as every website will have different standards. Think of it this way, though: just consider what sites you were on when you saw the Evony ads, and think about the content of that banner. You can use this as a loose guideline, but you should probably err on the side of caution.

Now, sites such as Facebook prohibit using any type of suggestive pictures on your ads, kind of. Quick note: this isn’t REALLY banner advertising, it really falls under PPC and PPV advertising, but I’ll go ahead and mention it anyway. The Facebook support team claims that any picture you insert into your ad has to pertain to the related product or website. I’ve had success with getting around this by including the hot pics I used in the ad somewhere on my site. In a roundabout way, the pictures in my ads are pertinent to my website. You don’t even have to include them on your main index page, just set up a separate sales page with the pics included. Seriously, I have hundreds of different sales pages, all streamlined for different keywords, audiences, and ad copy.

One last thing I have to point out here is that you should use common sense before using this tactic. I know that people say “sex sells”, but that’s not always true. I really hope that the Captain Obvious bells are going off here, but I must say that your content should at least be relevant to this type of advertising. It should go without saying that if you’re trying to sell family oriented stuff, or products aimed at the general female public, you might not want to slap any bikini pics on your banners!

Where To Put Banners

Now, this is hotly debated in the internet marketing forums, but I always try to use the leader board slots, usually 728x90. I also go for the big 250 squares, and the skyscrapers aren’t bad. If you noticed, all of these are the top dollar spots, but you will occasionally get lucky. You can find some spots on BuySellAds for as little as $90 per month. I used one of these slots and got around 300,000 impressions and 3,000 clicks that month, so it worked out well for me. Just do your homework on the actual site your banner will be placed on, and make sure it is visited by your target audience.

On sites like 1800Banners, you will have limited control as to where your banners are placed. You can, however, control factors like target audience, site category, ad location, and so forth. Honestly, I have found that the 1800Banners traffic is VERY unresponsive. With the 3000 clicks from BuySellAds, I made about 200 $15 sales; the traffic from 1800Banners came out to be around 5,000 or so in a month, and I think I squeezed 15 sales and 20 emails out of it. Really no comparison as far as the numbers go, but I have to admit that I did a MUCH better job fitting my ad, landing page, and placement site with BuySellAds. I seem to recall Clicksor being one of the better banner ad sites, but I am currently only focusing on BuySellAds at the moment.

Do You REALLY Need To Outsource That

If the thought of creating your own banner graphics has you nervous, don’t worry, you’re not alone. I balked at the idea myself, but 3 years of pumping out pretty good graphics have given me some confidence in that area. You don’t have to come up with ultra high quality textures and stuff, and you can pick up some really decent vector art to use online. I also like to go to BigStockPhoto and browse their royalty free pictures. This is a step below complete outsourcing, and may be necessary to get your creative juices flowing.

Now, as far as the graphics program, I use Microsoft Expression Design 3. Blasphemy!! You say, what about PhotoShop? Well, back in the day, I couldn’t afford PhotoShop, and the college I was attending had the Expression Studio at a really steep discount, so that’s how I started using Design. I really like it, I’m comfortable with it, and the tools are robust enough for me to do anything I like with my graphics.

Before you fork over money for outsourcing, usually $20-$40 per banner (728x90), you might just want to try your hand at creating your own. Of course, start out simple. Work with the actual layout of the banners to begin with. There are plenty of ebooks and ecourses available for free on this topic, so go Google it. Try to make your banners look like a part of the website that they’ll be placed on, or not… It’s your choice.