The Blog on Branding

Creating a Successful Web Advertisement

You know them. They sponsor most of the sites you visit on the Web, but despite this, you probably feel no gratitude and still hate them. That’s right. I’m talking about Web ads.

Web advertising is becoming increasingly popular as the Internet becomes more and more critical in our everyday lives. And why not? There are several benefits that advertising on the Web offers that other advertising mediums lack, including:

• Being able to target a specific niche
• Immediate statistical return for how the ad is doing
• Building brand awareness and customer relationships

“Targeting specific niches makes bank!”



This article covers:

• Main goals of Web advertisement
• Types of Web advertisements
• How Web ad success is measured
• The Impact of ad size and position
• Other Ways to make a Web ad more effective

Main Goals of Web Advertisements

You may think that Web advertisers’ main goal in creating these ads is an evil scheme to trap you into a world chalk full of diet pills, pornography and celebrity IQs, taking you to sites which cause your computer to freeze at the worst possible moment with the worst possible pictures held up on the screen, scarring you for life, but that is not the truth.

“You may think their main goal is to trap you…”

The main goal of Web ads, as in most advertisements, is mere exposure and brand awareness. A study by Hot Wired found that Web banner exposure can increase consumer brand loyalty from 5 to more than 50 percent, whether or not the viewer even clicked on the ad.

The ability to click-through is just an added bonus to advertising on the Web.

Types of Web Advertisements

Web ads, or banners, come in several different formats. Included among these are:

• Rectangular banners (large horizontal banners)
• Popup banners (everybody’s favorite)
• Button banners (the smaller banners)
• Skyscraper banners (large vertical rectangular banners)

How Web Ad Success is Measured

As I mentioned above, a big benefit of Web advertising is its ability to instantaneously give statistical feedback, in order to evaluate how the ad is doing.

There are 3 main ways in which the effectiveness of Web advertisements is gauged:

• Impressions
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rates

Impressions
Impressions are simply views of the ad. This is how all forms of advertisements are measured. On the Web, it can be measured by how many times someone visits a particular site and actually sees the ad. For example, if there is an ad for a diet pill on AOL.com, and someone goes there three times, then they would have three impressions. Impressions are also the way in which most Web ads are priced.

Click-through rates
An ad’s click-through rate is just like it sounds. It is the percentage of those impressions that actually click on the ad. In the U.S., click-through rates are very low, averaging at about 1 percent and continuously declining.

Conversion rates
Conversion rates are the percentage of the people who saw the ad and performed a specific action. For example, if an ad were trying to get someone to sign up for a newsletter, it would be the percentage of the people who saw the ad and signed up for the newsletter.

Impact of Ad Size and Position

Using the statistics of impressions, click-through rates and conversion rates can show which ads perform better than others. Web advertisers have performed a lot of studies trying to gauge what sizes of Web banners and positions on the page are the most effective.

“Many studies have been performed to optimize ad effectiveness.”


Rectangular banners, popup banners and skyscraper banners have demonstrated higher conversion rates, according to a study by Advertising.com, Inc. Wider formats also perform better, but this is not a steadfast rule, due to a lot of success having to do with how the advertisement fits in with the site, according to Pheobe Ho of Google AdSense’s Optimization team.

Larger ads have higher click-through rates, but smaller ads have a higher conversion rate and perform better in driving purchases. This may be because those who click on the smaller ads are more motivated to get the product and fit the niche better.

Position of the ads is also important. According to a DoubleClick study, banners at the top of the page do twice as well as the average. Banners at the center, near site navigation or images, above the fold and at the end of articles also do better than others.

Other Ways to Make a Web Ad More Effective

So, by now, we’ve covered effectiveness of ad size, type and position.

Here are a few more rules for making your Web ad sparkle and fighting off “banner immunity”:

• Use keywords, such as FREE or CLICK HERE
• Make the ad interactive and/or animated
• Have an attention-getting element or a reason for the audience to click-through
• Ask questions
• Utilize bright colors
• Avoid trying to create a sense of urgency in the audience
• Stay simple to encourage the message while avoiding distraction from it