Hi all

Just wondering what everyone's experience was with banner ads and their success. Has anyone changed one particular thing and found it made all the difference?

I work at a youth social website with thousands of members and am looking to crack the American market and need to know all the positives+negatives/ pros+cons/ dos+donts to create the ultimate, in your face and successful banner ads.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My advice: Don't.

Nobody likes banner ads. Seeing a banner ad representing your company will not make people want to buy your product. On the contrary, the exact opposite is likely to happen.

I'm agreeing with PSI. After all - how many times have you clicked on an ad banner. Concentrate on things like getting on top of search engines. Also, there'll be several books on promoting your website in your local library. Might be worth giving one of those a read.

With banner ads, "in your face" and "successful" never belong in the same sentence. E.g. The Jamster banners - very in your face but very annoying. Those ads probably only attract little kids.

Hi,
I think any kind of advertising is good for your product or getting out a message. even banner ads; but not the type that is constantly flashing; very annoying.
It is said, by Paul Harvey on the radio, that it won't be long before 75% of what you see on TV will be commercials. It is very close to that now!
So, advertising does work, as many companies as spending more and more money on it.
A Banner Ad, not flashing, with wording different from "Life Insurance", "Mortages", "Auto Insurance", might attract attention; especially if it has the words "Youths", "Children", or anything pertaining to the well being of children.

There is such a thing as bad advertising. As PSI said, bad advertising is likely to backfire.

WEB site ads are clearly becoming more acceptable as evidenced by the amount of money being spent on them. But the more successful web site ads are the targeted ones. Look at the ads on this site (which uses Google). The ads change and usually bear on what category you are looking at. Obtrusive banners turn people off. Simple ads that mesh with a surfers interests are what is more successful.

Hi,
I must reply again, to disagree with ScottGem. Here is a link, using Trends and Statistics, showing Banner Ads are effective.
http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/...cle.php/154501

I am sure there are many, many links available on the web with statistics showing they are effective; this is only one.
There are also others, one by Microsoft, giving tips on how to set up the most effective banner ads, using "power words", etc.

The site you referenced is an online marketing website. They would have a vested interest in promoting.. um.. online marketing of any sort. A more neutral report would be interesting to see but hard to find.

As Need pointed out, this article is tainted because it comes from a site and is based on a survey done by organizations with a vested interest in promoting online advertising.

But even if you accept the findings as valid. What does it say? It only shows that 40% of respondents remembered a brand based on seeing an ad. Brand recognition is all well and good, but it's the least important factor in online marketing. What counts is click throughs.

I remember the brands of many products I've seen advertised in various media. Some of them I remember as being rather stupid and turning me off to the product. I remember the brand, but what good does that do the advertiser?

Hi,
"I remember the brand, but what good does that do the advertiser?"
The above is quoted from ScottGem's response above this post.
If you remember the brand, Scott, then the advertiser got across his point.
The one main major reason for advertising is for you to remember the brand!
With the brand name in the back of your mind, you will possibly use that brand to buy when, later on, you are looking for a particular product.
The reason for saying a brand name in a TV commercial, over and over and over and over, in a 1 minute slot, is for you to remember the brand. Whether you like the brand, or how it's presented to you, is not as important to advertising, as to just simply remembering the brand name. Even if an advertisement "turns you off", you will still remember the name. thereby, possibly buying it later.
Banner ads have increased tremendously since 2003, evident by web research, with Google and Yahoo making millions off the advertising. Now, do you really think these ads aren't working? With their major purpose?
If so, there are really many CEO's out there who don't know what they are doing, spending all this money on advertising with Banner Ads. I seriously doubt these companies and corporations are spending all their money, continuously, without results from their advertising...

I added the bolding above. If you believe that, then you don't understand marketing. It is true that brand recognition is an important part of advertising. But that recognition has to be favorable. What good does remembering the brand do if it doesn't induce me to buy? What good does it do if I deliberately avoid a product because of its advertising?

Yes Google and Yahoo are making millions off advertising, but not primarily from banner ads. Most of the advertising is for targeted marketing. Do a Google or Yahoo search, for example search on MP3 players. What happens is the top hits are vendors of such players. The sidebar will list vendors of such players. Vendors will be highlighted. The reason for those highlights is advertising dollars. The sites that come up for such searches pay big money to float to the top. The dot.com bust came about because companies believed they could give free content that would be subsidized by advertising. But the advertising didn't work. Companies were not seeing a return on their ads so the ad dollars dried up and lots of WEB sites went bust. Then Google and Yahoo perfected ways to target search results. To not only show people sites that matched their search criteria, but to show them sites with products that might interest them based on that criteria. That's when the advertiser's came flocking back. That's the type of advertising that works and generates click through rates that keeps advertisers coming back.

That's the REAL story, Fred.

Remember the X10 camera ads? God I hated the ads and the company - most of the internet community agreed with me.

I agree, those ads were intrusive and annoying. What's worse was the company has a great product and an established place in the field (Home automation and security). But they turned off lots of people with those ads and wound up having to back off them.

Scott's got a point Fred. Show somebody who doesn't eat fast food the McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut etc. logos and they will probably still be able to tell you what they were. Doesn't mean they will go into the store and buy Big Mac though.

Brand regonition is important but not so much on the internet.

That's a key point here. Ads on other media are very different from Internet ads. The focus of such ads are different. Ads on broadcast media have a focus primarily of brand recognition. People watching TV or listening to radio tend to tune down when the commericals come on. Their minds wander (sometimes their bodies too ;) ) So the ads main thrust is to subliminally make them remember the brand, preferably favorably, but still the goal is primarily brand recognition. On the other hand print ads have a different focus. Their focus is to grab the reader's attention and draw them in to read the copy to learn more about the product.

But Internet ads are a different animal altogether. Especially with Banner ads. The idea there is to capture the surfer's attention enough so they want to investigate more and they will click the ad. The problem is that people have become inured to Internet ads and mostly ignore them. Again that's what contributed hugely to the dot.com bust of the 90s. What resurrected Internet advertising was the ability to target ads, especially for searches.

Hi,
This tread has really turned into disagreements of opinions over advertising; not just banner ads.
I disagree with Curlyben's bad rating of my post where I stated that "banner ads, especially flashing, are annoying".
He rated me badly using the reason that "banner ads are annonying".
To me, this isn't a valid rating, because I had already stated that!

The main objective of advertising is to get across the name of a product, or brand name, and have you remember it. That was my simple statement, which has drawn quite a few differing opinions; especially from ScottGem. He is entitled to his opinion just as everyone is. Me, too.
Here is another link with the same opinion as mine, as to the primary purpose of advertising:
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising

I have not gone into, as another has, the "pros and cons" of advertising, and how to do it. My simple statement about Banner Ads must work, else CEO's would not be using them, still stands. Whether you like them or not wasn't the original question.

Fred,
Not everything is opinion. There are some long standing principles of marketing that some of what you are saying flies in the face of.

As for your link, it does not, as you contend, have the same opinion as you. It is a very brief and simplistic definition of advertising. Marketing and advertising is a much more complex field.

What proof do you have that CEOs use banner ads? If you look more closely at them, they are not greatly used by larger, major firms. Nor are they used as much on larger, well trafficked sites.

The key to Internet advertising is TARGETED ads. This is not my opinion, but an industry fact.

I was disagreeing to this Bold statement.

Banner ads have got to be the MOST annoying thing there is on the internet at this present time.
They take up valuable browser real estate and get in the way of the main reason that you have visited a site.

Now if advertising must be present then something more toned down and subtle is more acceptable.

The best thing about advertising is that by using an alternate browser to Micro$haft's IE, like Firefox, then they can be avoided.

And things that are annoying give a negative inpression that carries through to the purchasing decision.

Your last point is the reason that Internet advertising initially failed. With broadcast and (to a lesser extent) print advertising, the viewer had little choice to avoid the ads. With Internet advertising, there are numerous ways to avoid them. Advertisers and content providers learned that they needed to make ads less annoying and obtrusive and more targeted to get people to pay attention.

Hi,
Did anyone miss my point about being rated badly for something I had already stated?

Nope, didn't miss it, just ignored it.

The real issue here is that prior to your response 2 respondents had warned against them. You came in and gave some advice that went against established and reasonable marketing techniques. And you have continued to defend that advice even though several others have disagreed with it.